Saturday, 21 December 2024
Japan's Mizuho Bank on verge of replacing crash-prone system
Mizuho Bank's new integrated core banking system is finally on the verge of completion and ready to be phased in starting next fiscal year, 18 years on from the merger that created the Japanese banking group but left its digital plumbing prone to messy backups.
The new system is now expected to be complete at the end of this month, paving the way for 24-hour wire transfers, longer ATM hours and new financial technology services.
Two major ATM network outages -- one marring Mizuho Bank's debut in April 2002, the other occurring after the March 2011 Japanese earthquake -- left customers unable to receive pay deposits, make payments or withdraw cash. The social impact of these breakdowns was serious enough to put pressure on the group to rebuild from scratch.
"We weren't going to be let off if it happened a third time," a Mizuho Bank employee related.
Mizuho decided on a total overhaul in 2012, but the going has been slow. Initially slated for March 2016, completion of the new system was pushed back in 2014 to the end of last year. Last November, Mizuho Financial Group President Yasuhiro Sato announced a second delay of "several months."
Mizuho estimates the total system development costs at upwards of 400 billion yen ($3.57 billion) at most, which would make it one of the biggest IT investments in corporate Japan. The development team included the Mizuho Research Institute, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM Japan and NTT Data.
Jerry-built
The foundations of Mizuho's current IT architecture date back to before the 2000 merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Fuji Bank, and the Industrial Bank of Japan under a holding company. Group lenders Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank were formed in 2002 and merged into the current Mizuho Bank in 2013. But their old systems still exist as separate entities, as does that of Mizuho Trust & Banking.
Partial rebuilds have complicated the structure, making it difficult to trace the causes of breakdowns. The new system is supposed to do away with these problems and reduce the cost of upgrades, such as the new digital services Mizuho is planning. One is a digital wallet that enables customers to manage all of their credit and debit cards with one app.
Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker from Nikkei Asian Review
