When Kookmin Bank undertook its initiative to consolidate its business operations onto a next-generation core banking application system, one of the expected benefits was that the system would be a platform to grow the business.

As noted in yesterday’s blog, the bank, through its adoption of IBM System z10, would have a world-class, customer service-oriented IT infrastructure. In an interview in New York conducted through an interpreter, the bank’s IT group managers discussed the key benefits they expected to achieve with the next-generation banking system (NGBS). Here are some of the highlights of that interview:

Growth in banking means having more customers and more customer accounts.

One path to more customers is through mergers and acquisitions. To get the most out of such activities and to bring the newly acquired customers onboard faster and without interruption of services requires a flexible architecture. The NGBS provides standard interfaces so that existing applications and associated data can quickly be integrated into the bank’s operations.

A second path to increasing the number of customers and customer accounts is to offer satisfactory services to existing customers and to meet their desires for new services. The NGBS helps improve customer service in a number of ways. For example, with the NGBS, more information is available to bank staff to help tailor services based on an individual’s preferences. And marketing efforts can be made more efficient by selectively offering new products or services based on a customer’s past transactions with the bank.

In August, look for a final blog about the Kookmin Bank NGBS effort. In that blog, I’ll share some comments from the project’s chief developers and planners.