Before Boucher left he was investing money in IT infrastructure, what they did with it god knows.
900m IT update…one system i had used was so old you couldnt use a mouse with it…
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Z-OS? A lot of the banks data is still on IBM mainframes.
AS400
do they still use Fax?
fuck, that is old
yeah I’ve used z/os which is similar.
it’s actually strangely efficient when you figure out how to navigate it.
True…but efficetn at one thing only…so then the bank had their new system built on top of this…
thankfully i have moved on…before the roll out of the new beast…
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Banks are only puppets … who’s pulling the strings?
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what did they do, put an api over the as400?
ah the auld ctrl key to enter something as well.
yeah exactly…securities and accounts apps could be merged…
Do any of the systems talk to each other? 
the exact phrase used in meeting about the roll out of the new one
the shape shifting lizards
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Can we stay on topic please guys.
Sorry pal.
To answer the OP.
Yes.
It was actually gas thinking back on it.
None of the antiquated systems in BOI were in sync with each other so you’d disparate pieces of information floating around on really fundamental things like, eh, what security was in place on loans and stuff like that.
I don’t see much difference in BOI 365 online to AIB etc for personal customers but the business 365 offering was meant to be absolute crap compared to competitors - hence the desire to revamp it. But it required a huge investment when they were already loss making and taking write downs on loans so it kept getting postponed until things improved.
Corporate customers had a dedicated operations contact who’d know the online system inside out and a load of “cheats” to make it operate more efficiently like how to force through fx payments after cut off times, how to create batch payments when the system was set up to make them one by one and so on. These folk would usually have joined from school as entry level staff but would really know this stuff. Trouble was you’d get some FD or CFO types who’d look down on them and refuse to deal with them directly so they’d ring up our team and we’d have to act as a go between. A total waste of time.
Typing about different system downloads with loads of inconsistent information - post bank bail out you’d get these gigantic excel spreadsheets sent around by a central team set up to ensure Central Bank queries/requests/demands were appropriately handled. CBI was obviously keen to show they weren’t asleep at the wheel anymore so you’d get these emails from the central team saying “Review these 15 spreadsheets and complete the checklists contained therein by close of business today. This is an urgent CBI request and responses must be submitted on time.” Of course the central team were specifically set up to reply to these CBI requests but they wouldn’t have a breeze. They’d go to pull the info and it’d be different from system to system so it would fall on the lending team to drop everything and deal with it. That central team was effectively a post box / go between too.
An absolute avalanche of this admin and reporting work was never ending with no junior / admin staff to do it, and this was aside from the actual day job of meeting customers, generating business, preparing credit applications and getting them approved, doing periodic review papers on existing loans etc.
I don’t know how we did it in fairness. But that’s the way it’s gone these days in fairness etc etc. Customers don’t realise this, or indeed care, and why should they? All they know is they’ve asked their bank contact a simple question and the dickhead hasn’t responded to it yet.
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