RBA to overhaul core banking

The Reseve Bank of Australia is set to overhaul its core banking platform, yesterday approaching the market for proposals on a replacement system.

The RBA is unique from Australia's major banks in that it does not provide services directly to the general public - its customers are federal government agencies.

It is Australia's central bank and sees its role as providing price and economic stability for the country.

Part of its role involves setting cash interest rates, issuing banknotes, managing gold and foreign exchange reserves, and maintaining Australia's payments system.

But the current architecture enabling it to provide such services is ageing and not as responsive as the organisation would like.

It has approached the market for a "more contemporary architecture and programming platform" that would "enable greater responsiveness to our customers' requirements", it said in tender documents. Its current core banking platform is unclear. iTnews has contacted the RBA for comment .

Given the significant transaction volumes and values it deals in, the winning solution provider would need to have a "substantial and proven track record" in its supply and implementation of their solution.

The chosen solution would need to be able to integrate with the RBA's existing IT environment - the organisation says it must be hosted on the RBA's infrastructure, on either Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle's relational database server, and Microsoft Active Directory. It will also need to be able to interact with the RBA's PeopleSoft general ledger.

It would prefer to implement a core banking solution that is based on either Windows or Linux, written in either Java, C or .NET, and be virtualised through VMware or Oracle technology.

The new core banking platform must also be scalable - the RBA's payment systems process more tahn 320 million payment and 25 million collection transactions each year.

Vendors and suppliers have until July 30 to submit their expressions of interest.

The RBA is currently on an IT hiring spree, advertising for roles ranging from information security, to .NET developers, IT business analysts and systems administrators.