PNB taps IBM versus production slowdowns

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine National Bank (PNB) has completed a core banking modernization initiative project with IBM, eliminating production slowdowns and reducing batch processing time by 75 percent.

In a statement, IBM said the initiative with the Lucio Tan-led bank was delivered in collaboration with BizTech consulting firm CROZ, an IBM Business Partner.

“Financial institutions across the Philippines face the imperative to modernize mission-critical infrastructure while maintaining the stability and security their customers depend on,” IBM Philippines country general manager and technology leader Leo Capinpin said.

“This collaboration with PNB and CROZ demonstrates how IBM is helping BFSIs in strengthening operational resilience while building a foundation for future innovation,” Capinpin added.

Since going live, PNB saw operational improvements such as production slowdown being eliminated entirely, from twice per month to zero, the tech firm said.

In addition, IBM said nightly end-of-day pre-processing validation time was reduced to two hours from five hours, while batch processing time decreased by nearly 75 percent to just three hours from 13 hours.

This upgrade freed IT teams from late-night monitoring and troubleshooting and allowed them to focus on other critical tasks.

The IBM Expert Labs?led project has enabled PNB to significantly boost operational resilience, supporting its long?term sustainability and capacity to meet shifting customer and business demands, while aligning with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ mandate for a secure and reliable banking system.

“The two-year project involved PNB’s core banking system upgrade from IBM z/VSE on z14 to run on the modern IBM z/OS platform on IBM z16, along with using IBM Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) to strengthen mainframe security and system controls,” IBM said.

Ensuring the reliability and resilience of operations are at the core of PNB’s push to elevate customer experience as expectations and regulations evolve, PNB senior vice president and group head for digital channel management and innovation Constantino Yap said.

“Aside from modernizing PNB’s core infrastructure, the IBM-CROZ team shared their z/OS knowledge and assisted the Bank’s z/VSE mainframe technical support personnel, who were keeping the lights on with the z/VSE core banking system while implementing and learning the modern z/OS operating system and built-in tools,” PNB first senior vice president and group head for information technology Cesar Buhay and project director Michael Morallos said.