Training on bank architecture

On the occasion of the European Football Championship, this article on banking architecture does not start with all the exciting information we learned in the training course. But rather with the comparison to a soccer team.

As the saying goes: “A team is only as strong as its weakest member” . What good does it do the team to just stand on the spot and hope that the ball comes straight at you? And not showing the initiative to hit the ball into the opponent’s goal together as a team?

Just like soccer, consulting is a team effort. And the stronger your own team is, the better and more goal-oriented the project can be implemented and success achieved. Our trainer Dr. Sebastian Höfer sat down with us one lunchtime and started the training with the basic topics on banking architecture. At the beginning, we were given an insight into the daily business of the banking world and learned about the connection to the income statement and balance sheet.

Why is it so important to understand how banks are structured? What upstream systems are there? Which tools, functions and processes are used to get data correctly to the relevant recipients? And what regulatory issues need to be taken into account?

Or to put it in soccer terms: we learned about the basic rules and offside and when it is a foul. However, it is not only the theory that is crucial to winning the game, but the above points must also be put into practice. Using practical examples, we got to know the various architectural images of banks and learned how to organize and cluster them.

But what exactly did we notice?

No matter which bank architecture you looked at, the core remained the same. All architectural images could be sorted into one and the same diagram. Similar to soccer. Every soccer team has forwards, midfielders, defenders and a goalkeeper on the field. Apart from the latter, the number on the field can vary. At the same time, there are enough interchangeable players who can be swapped in for any situation.
Every banking architecture has upstream systems, ETL tools and data consumers such as internal and external reporting. And here too, a bank can have a different number of upstream systems as well as a variety of data pools and integration levels.

But even the best player gets on in years and needs to be replaced. At the end of the training session, we were introduced to a new player – the FPSL. It makes subledger accounting easier for the banking world and can be incorporated into any existing architecture. The important thing is to understand the context.

Just like in soccer: if a new player is traded in, he must be compatible with the rest of the team in order to be at least as strong as before, if not stronger. Last but not least, I would like to thank our coach Dr. Sebastian Höfer. As a trainer in banking architecture, he didn’t leave his team out in the cold, but equipped us for our daily work.