Case Studies: Financial Services

PREMIER Bankcard, LLC (PREMIER) one of the largest VISA and MasterCard credit providers in the United States, needed to enhance scalability and performance for its business intelligence (BI) data warehouse and online transaction processing (OLTP) databases. “BI began as an area of research for us, but has become absolutely mission critical,” says Dan Zerfas, Vice President of Software Development at PREMIER. The company enhanced its BI infrastructure by upgrading its 10-terabyte data warehouse to Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), hosted on a server computer with 16 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors. PREMIER also upgraded its 1.5-terabyte OLTP database to the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005. The upgraded deployments provide a better view of the business, enterprise-grade scalability, maintenance without scheduled downtime, and easier database management.

Progressive, with annual premiums of more than U.S.$14 billion, is one of the largest insurers of private automobiles in the United States. Its internally developed application for managing policies is at the very foundation of the company’s operations. As the company prepared to replace its mainframe-based application—first deployed in 1979, and frequently updated over the years—it needed enterprise-grade technology that would scale and provide the flexibility to easily deploy new solutions. Progressive is creating its new policy management application, using Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) database, with development being done using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. The company’s 45,000 agents will access policy data through Web-based access supported by Microsoft technology.

Shinhan Bank (SB), a leading financial service provider based in Seoul, Korea, completed a merger with Chohung Bank in April 2006. In preparation for the merger, SB developed a business plan for a total modernization of the combined institutions’ IT infrastructure. It wanted to transfer the Chohung Bank groupware to its own Goldwing groupware to form an integrated communications nucleus for its IT activities. SB successfully transferred the Chohung Bank Unix/Oracle-based groupware solution to Kaoni exFlow2000, optimized under Microsoft® Windows®, Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 and Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003. The system went live for 22,000 users on the same day that SB merged with Chohung Bank. By transferring all sectors with excessive workloads to a 64-bit based environment, the bank improved its business efficiency, and now effectively meets increased user demands.

With approximately 300 branches throughout Italy’s five central regions, the Banca Marche Group has more than 450,000 customers and 2,900 employees. The growth of the group over the last few years has added pressure to employees’ daily lives and led management to standardize and improve control of the bank’s information assets. After a careful assessment of the solutions available on the market, the group chose the powerful combination of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 and Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based servers. The new platform has increased employees’ productivity and helped the group realize a 75 per cent cut in production costs for management reports and a 90 per cent reduction in average distribution times. In addition, the lower costs have played a key role in the company doubling net profits

Vital Forsikring ASA, part of DnB NOR ASA, is Norway’s largest privately owned provider of pension and life insurance. Soon-to-be-implemented pension laws in Norway are expected to increase the number of new pension insurance subscribers. Anticipating the new legislation to take effect in January 2006, Vital wanted to be ready with convenient ways for customers to access its expanding pension product offerings. By using Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 and SQL Server™ 2005, programmers delivered a feature-rich pension application that provides better scalability and performance. Developers enjoyed increased productivity, and Vital is poised to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of new individual and corporate pension insurance subscribers with a reliable, cost-effective solution.