Life of BIAN

The Banking Industry Architecture Network is a collaborative initiative to establish, promote, and provide a common framework for banking interoperability and integration issues. It aims to become a recognised world-class reference point for interoperability in the banking industry. 

As a reference architecture for the banking industry, BIAN provides the guidelines for implementing a composable architecture.  

This is achieved using self-contained Service Domains; from an implementation perspective, they can be viewed as individual micro-services. 

A Service Domain is constrained by a bounded context — everything related to a specific domain is contained within that bounded context. For example, for current accounts, get balances, get fees, process deposits and withdrawals, generate statements, etc, would all be part of this service domain. 

Why would a financial institution want to implement BIAN? 

There are many different reasons to implement the BIAN framework, including interoperability, standardisation, and agility and innovation. 

BIAN is a composable architecture that promotes reuse, and that reuse leads to cost savings and offers the following benefits: 

• Change or create new service domains 
• Self-servicing teams focusing on business value 

All sounds good so far, but BIAN is not a turnkey solution for implementation. While it provides the framework and guidelines, successfully implementing BIAN requires careful planning and adaptation to each organisation’s specific needs. Currently, there are approximately 326 separate service domains identified in the BIAN landscape. 

While it’s not expected that any organisation will require all 326 service domains, there’s a high probability that you’ll need close to or above 100. 

How do you consistently build across your project teams at speed while maintaining quality? 

Automate, automate, automate. 

In 1908, Henry Ford started mass production of the Model T. In 1913, he combined interchangeable parts with subdivided labour and fluid movement of materials to create his moving assembly line. The resulting productivity gains and price cuts led manufacturers of every type to adopt Ford’s innovative production methods. 

DevOps, CICD, Agility and modern development tools are the digital equivalents of those production lines that allow us to implement various levels of automation. 

Wrapping all these together under a platform engineering banner benefits organisations by: 

• Increasing developer productivity 
• Enabling scalability and flexibility 
• Improving reliability and stability 
• Enhancing compliance 
• Offering collaboration and knowledge sharing 

BIAN is designed to be flexible and adaptable to emerging technologies and industry trends. It provides a foundation for banks to embrace digital transformation, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other disruptive technologies.  

By implementing BIAN, banks can future-proof their architecture and ensure compatibility with future advancements in the banking industry. 

Now that you have a foundational understanding of BIAN, the next step is to start with a clear strategy for implementation. You’ll never build the perfect solution on the first attempt; it’s an ongoing, iterative process of continuous improvement. Your platform engineering solution can and should be enhanced over time to meet evolving business needs and emerging technologies. 

It's also important to recognise that it's not just about the code. Documentation plays a key role throughout the development process, helping teams maintain clarity on the work being done and ensuring a smooth handover between different stages of implementation. Embrace a "docs-as-code" approach, like Spotify's TechDocs, to continuously document your steps and processes. This ensures that all team members, new and old, have access to the most up-to-date information and can contribute effectively. 

Overall, implementing BIAN offers banks a standardised and modular approach to architecture, leading to cost savings, increased agility, collaboration opportunities, and readiness for future innovations. 

However, there is a need to do this in a repeatable manner and apply those same principles to your code. 

The good news is scalability, governance, consistency and standardisation can be built into your platform engineering process so new developers and engineers never have to worry about it. If you want to learn more about BIAN, reach out to us at Fusion5.