All Raiffeisen banks in Switzerland finally live on Avaloq
After some delay, all Raiffeisen banks at 900 sites in Switzerland have gone live on Avaloq’s core banking system.
“IT history”
According to Raiffeisen and Avaloq they have made “IT history” as one of Switzerland’s biggest IT projects was “successfully completed at the start of January”.
However, as reported in June 2018 when FinTech Futures attended the Avaloq Community Conference in Zurich, the project was delayed.
At that time, Avaloq said it expected all 255 banks that make up the Raiffeisen Switzerland group to be live on its platform before the end of 2018.
It claimed an initial 22 cut over since the start of 2018 but Avaloq’s CEO, Jürg Hunziker, admitted the project was running six to seven months behind schedule.
In the latest chapter, Avaloq says 253 banks (246 Raiffeisen banks, six branches and the central bank) will now be operated on one platform. The platform is available to all 11,000 employees at the separate Raiffeisen sites throughout the alpine nation.
Rolf Olmesdahl, COO and member of the executive board of Raiffeisen Switzerland, says via this platform it is “laying the foundation for the agile implementation of future digital projects”.
He adds: “After completion of the migration, for strategic reasons we wanted Raiffeisen Switzerland – and contrary to the original plan – to be able to operate and further develop the banking platform ourselves in the future.”
Hunziker comments: “To date, no other fintech and software company has succeeded in migrating 253 banks to the same platform.”
Along with this development, Avaloq and Raiffeisen, the third-largest banking group in Switzerland, plan to continue their long-standing collaboration.
To this end, they have signed a long-term agreement for the operation of the new platform. Olmesdahl mentioned this above.
Under the agreement, Raiffeisen Switzerland will acquire Avaloq’s 49% stake in the previous joint venture Arizon Sourcing. In future, Raiffeisen Switzerland will further develop and operate the platform itself. Arizon will be fully integrated into Raiffeisen Switzerland in the first half of 2019.
The Raiffeisen Group has 1.9 million cooperative members and 3.8 million clients. As of 30 June 2018, it had CHF 211 billion ($212.4 billion) in assets under management.
