Brazil is changing. Rapid economic development has spurred demand for sophisticated banking and insurance solutions. It has also created the need for a new way of banking: a way focused on consumers and their needs for always-on, mobile services. Banco Bradesco is poised to meet these needs with an innovative, reliable, and secure platform
Bradesco must ensure their banking solutions satisfy the demand for sophisticated banking and insurance solutions, and provide always-on, mobile services that consumers need.
Bradesco created a reliable, secure, and innovative online banking experience using IBM® Z™ and IBM® Storage™ systems to deliver agile services to customers across Brazil.
The rising demand for online and mobile services in Brazil has emerged in parallel with rapid economic development and a dramatic increase in the middle class. Consumers expect to be able to access and manage their accounts anywhere, at any time, and from any device. But they want to do so without compromising protection or privacy of their data. Competition within the Brazilian banking industry is also fierce, requiring the highest level of banking services.
These converging trends have created opportunities for Banco Bradesco, the second-largest bank in Brazil. To address evolving consumer needs, Bradesco sought to develop an innovative banking platform that allowed customers to bank the way they wanted to. It also aimed to remain a leader in a competitive market by offering banking services that were more reliable, available, and secure than competitors.
To remain a customer-centric market leader in this shifting environment, Bradesco required an IT infrastructure that was agile yet reliable and secure.
Bradesco’s approach enables customers to [bank how they want in a digital age]. At the same time, traditional banking customers can rely on Bradesco for the same availability and security they’ve come to expect. The foundation of this approach is a secure yet [agile] core banking system powered by IBM Z.
Waldemar Ruggiero Jr., Executive General Manager, Bradesco explains: “Our existing core banking systems have always been extremely reliable and remain at the heart of our IT strategy. Our new expanded model uses APIs from core banking to provide digital services with IBM Z and IBM DS8950F. Near-continuous availability of these services is critical.”
Bradesco’s innovative Next solution is a true digital bank that meets the mobile, always-on needs throughout the customers’ journey. Next is an application that enables the transfer of money and discounts to lifestyle and daily living choices. Next is powered by the agility and reliability of IBM Z. a strong set of solutions, such as IBM CICS®, the application server that enables developers to create new applications in their language of choice, IBM IMS™, a high-performing data management software, and IBM DB2®, an AI-driven hybrid data management platform, to support this solution.
Continual innovation helps Bradesco meet its clients’ evolving needs. And IBM Z makes this innovation possible.
Keep customer data protected
Bradesco’s customers depend on the security of their information and data. In addition, for Bradesco, ensuring compliance with country regulations for the protection of confidential information is imperative. The entire Bradesco banking experience must always be secure.
Ruggiero comments, “IBM Z, in combination with IBM DS8900F provides tools that enable Bradesco to offer a secure banking experience 100% of the time, including two-factor authentication. These solutions ensure security of confidential information. Our customers trust us because of that.”
Serving a new market segment
Another market opportunity for Bradesco is the unbanked population. In Brazil, approximately 45 million people do not have a bank account, according to research by the Locomotiva Institute. To address this need, Bradesco established the Expresso In-Store Banking initiative. At over 39,000 in-store branches across Brazil, partners sell Bradesco services and products to their customers. To accomplish this, Bradesco is using IBM CICS® to develop and enhance the applications that support this initiative, and IBM DB2® to manage the data in the back end, and IBM WebSphere® on z/OS for frontend requests. This solution provides a fast time to market for highly available and responsive services and data.
Bradesco is taking a cost-conscious approach to these new, affordable services by employing Tailored Fit Pricing. Tailored Fit Pricing is a flexible new pricing model that simplifies existing pricing landscape. This new model, which applies to both new and existing workloads, provides two new pricing options to IBM customers: Enterprise Consumption Solution, a usage-based model which offers price predictability and financial certainty; and Enterprise Capacity Solution, a full-capacity licensing model which offers the simplest pricing available.
An integrated banking environment
The bank’s current IBM Z landscape includes three data centers, including one for backup, and consists of 10 IBM z15™ servers, including one LinuxONE III, and another 10 IBM z14® servers. The core banking transactions and customer information are all managed on the IBM Z infrastructure. Many of the digital experiences, including Bradesco’s innovative Next solution, are run on a hybrid cloud environment that combines public and private cloud, distributed architecture and IBM Z. IBM Z integrates seamlessly with other components of the hybrid cloud environment to ensure an optimally smooth experience for customers.
For storage, Bradesco is using the IBM DS8950F enterprise data system with 12 2-way grids of TS7760 tape libraries, each with 240TB Cache, connected to TS3500 tape libraries. On the open systems side, Bradesco has approximately 14PB of data stored on IBM FlashSystem® arrays. Both the Mainframe and open environments are managed with IBM Spectrum® Control.
The insurance side of the business is using IBM WebSphere® Application Server Portal running on distributed systems to build external web portals that can be connected seamlessly to back-end services running on IBM Z. This further reduces development time and costs and makes it easier to bring trusted functionality online.
The use of IBM Z across the banking ecosystem allows Bradesco to provide trusted, secure services to the market, and to quickly adapt as customer needs and market conditions evolve.
By relying on IBM Z as the backbone of their ecosystem, Bradesco provides a [reliable], secure banking experience that adapts to customer needs and quickly delivers solutions to customers across Brazil. The resiliency and agility of IBM Z has helped Bradesco achieve several tangible benefits as well.
Bradesco has expanded its business to address new market segments with online banking. Besides providing new customers and enhancing customer engagement, online banking helps Bradesco save money and drive efficiency by reducing its dependence on physical locations. branches, which cost more to operate and can only serve local customers during normal working hours.
And, by adopting IBM Tailored Fit Pricing, Bradesco provides superior services while keeping their costs low, and can introduce new services at a competitive price.
“For more than 50 years, IBM has been helping us to provide an agile, resilient, and secure banking services business for our customers. These three main characteristics provided by IBM Z and IBM DS8900F help us to support new clients, new banking models, and the new demands on our clients. The resiliency of these IBM enterprise solutions supports the whole banking ecosystem – from traditional to digital banking,” explained Waldemar Ruggiero Jr.
Bradesco is one of the largest financial groups in Brazil, with a solid performance focused on the interests of its clients since 1943. In addition to the excellence in services, it stands out for being one of the best asset managers in the market, with results built on sustainable bases.
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