Banking software is enterprise software that is used by the banking industry. Typically banking software refers to Core Banking Software and its interfaces that allows commercial banks to connect to other modular software and to the interbank networks. It can also refer to the trading software used by investment banks to access capital markets.
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Retail banks
Commercial or retail banks use what is known as core banking software which record and manage the transactions made by the banks' customers to their accounts. For example, it allows a customer to go to any branch of the bank and do its banking from there. In essence, it frees the customer from his/her home branch and enables him to do banking anywhere. Further, the bank's databases can be connected to other channels such as ATMs, Internet Banking and SMS based banking.
Banking software is used by millions of users across hundreds or thousands of branches. This means that the software must be managed on many machines even in a small bank. The core banking system is a major investment for a retail banks and maintaining and managing the system can represent a large part of the cost of running a bank.
Trading banks
All banking and other financial institutions have areas which they specialize in. Bloomberg is another privately held financial software, news, and data company located in New York City, USA. It offers financial software tools such as analytics and equity trading platform to financial companies around the world through the Bloomberg Terminal, its core money-generating product.
Reuters is headquartered in New York City, United States with thousands of worldwide employees, and their products specialize in financial information management, purchase order management, positions and risks, and financial instrument sales. Reuters software offers a complete line of Front to Back Office solution. Another important banking software company is Wall Street Systems, headquartered in New York, USA. It provides solutions for control and overall productivity for corporate treasury, improved workflow, central banking, bank treasury, FX trading and global back-office operations. Examples of these back-office tasks include IT departments that keep the phones and computers running (operations architecture), accounting, and human resources (customer relations). The front office tasks include sales and marketing: sales and marketing personnels come in contact with their customers.
A closer view of these firms shows how each of these organizations need each other. For example, when a company comes in contact with a customer who wants a product they do not have, that company could refer the other companies to the customer and vice versa. Accordingly, each company can promote its brand name and even mutually profit from their agreements with a fellow banking software company.
With the help of these software companies, there is efficiency and proper management of transactions both in the front and back offices of the banking firms and other financial institutions. This in turn has a big impact on the consumers, making the process of banking run much more smoothly and quickly.
