
BIAN Adoption & Change eLearning
Module 00: What is BIAN?
Who is this course for
This BIAN Awareness and Change Agent course is intended for professionals who work in banks and that aspire to help their banks become more Agile by leveraging the Banking Industry Architecture Networks (BIAN).
This eLearning course will provide guidance on how BIAN can be applied. It’s less about the BIAN architecture or management approach, and more about how you can adopt or apply it within an organization, and what teams, structure and professionals you can best leverage.
What to expect
This eLearning course is a set of lessons that will help you to manage insights on BIAN, such as its benefits, and how to implement it and adopt it. Where to start, and how best to demonstrate success. What pitfalls can be expected and how to best overcome these.
Understanding BIAN and its importance
BIAN was established in 2008, coinciding with the rise of the Agile movement. The concept originated from financial services vendors who recognized that 80% of banking architecture is similar across all institutions.
The goal was to create a standardized blueprint for banking services, similar to architectural blueprints for buildings. Instead of each bank developing its own framework, BIAN proposed a reusable, industry-wide architecture.
In this course (itinerary)
- Module 00: What is BIAN?
- Module 01: Why BIAN is applied in organizations
- Module 02: The Benefits of using BIAN
- Module 03: What is the BIAN journey for organizations
- Module 04: What do you need to apply BIAN? (coming soon)
- Module 05: Who do you need to apply BIAN? (coming soon)
- Module 06: What is already there to enable BIAN adoption? (coming soon)

1. A blueprint for financial institutions
By offering a standardized, service-oriented architectural framework tailored for the banking industry. BIAN serves as the architectural blueprint for financial institutions, offering a structured, standardized, and future-proof model that enhances agility, efficiency, and innovation while reducing IT complexity. Whether a bank is undergoing digital transformation, modernizing its core, or integrating fintech solutions, BIAN provides a clear reference framework to guide these initiatives.
Common services such as mortgages, payments, and mobile banking arestructured into reusable service layouts.

2. Why BIAN is a reference architecture for the financial service industry
BIAN (Banking Industry Architecture Network) is widely recognized as a reference architecture for financial institutions. It provides a standardized, modular framework designed to simplify banking IT architectures, improve interoperability, and support digital transformation.
This means that banks can take modular pieces of architecture and copy and/or implement them easily in their own organization, much like building with LEGO bricks.

3. Why BIAN enables banking agility
BIAN (Banking Industry Architecture Network) is designed to enhance agility in financial institutions by modularizing banking architectures, standardizing service domains, and enabling seamless integration with emerging technologies.
BIAN acts as a catalyst for agility by:
✔ Breaking down monolithic banking systems into modular service domains.
✔ Enabling faster innovation through plug-and-play APIs.
✔ Supporting seamless integration with fintechs and open banking ecosystems.
✔ Allowing progressive core modernization to reduce risk and avoid downtime.
✔ Ensuring scalability and regulatory compliance adaptability.
By adopting BIAN, banks can accelerate transformation, respond rapidly to market demands, and future-proof their IT landscape while maintaining operational stability.
Here’s how BIAN drives agility:
1. Modular & Service-Oriented Architecture
BIAN introduces a service-domain-based approach, allowing banks to decompose their traditional monolithic core into smaller, independent components.
Each service domain represents a specific banking function (e.g., payments, lending, risk management), which can be developed, upgraded, or replaced independently, reducing dependencies and speeding up innovation cycles.
This modular design reduces complexity, enabling banks to rapidly introduce new services without disrupting the entire system.
Example: A bank adopting BIAN can replace its loan processing module without impacting customer relationship management (CRM) or risk assessment functions, ensuring smoother updates and faster go-to-market strategies.
2. Faster Innovation & Time-to-Market
Traditional banking systems are slow to adapt to new business models and regulatory requirements due to tightly integrated legacy architectures.
BIAN’s standardized interfaces and APIs provide a plug-and-play framework, allowing banks to rapidly integrate new fintech solutions, AI-driven analytics, and open banking services.
By eliminating custom-built integrations, BIAN reduces development and deployment time, enabling banks to react quickly to market trends and customer demands.
Example: A bank looking to launch embedded finance services can seamlessly integrate third-party lending and payment solutions using BIAN-compliant APIs, significantly reducing development time.
3. Seamless Fintech & Open Banking Integration
BIAN supports API-driven banking, allowing financial institutions to securely connect with fintechs, third-party providers, and regulatory bodies.
By standardizing APIs, BIAN removes interoperability challenges, enabling banks to quickly adopt new financial services and enhance customer experiences.
This API-first approach ensures that banks remain agile in an ecosystem-driven financial industry, where partnerships and innovation are crucial.
Example: A bank implementing real-time payments and digital identity verification can integrate fintech solutions in weeks rather than months, thanks to BIAN’s standardized API structures.
4. Agility in Core Modernization & Migration
Many banks hesitate to modernize their core systems due to the risk of operational disruptions.
BIAN provides a structured roadmap for progressive migration, allowing banks to gradually transition from legacy systems to cloud-native architectures.
This incremental approach minimizes risks, avoids downtime, and allows banks to modernize at their own pace.
Example: A bank migrating from a mainframe-based core can prioritize customer-facing services first, using BIAN’s reference models to manage dependencies, before gradually modernizing the back-end systems.
5. Scalability & Resilience
BIAN enables banks to scale operations flexibly, ensuring that IT infrastructure can handle increasing transaction volumes and regulatory changes without massive overhauls.
The decentralized, service-oriented approach allows banks to scale specific business areas without affecting the entire ecosystem.
Example: A growing digital bank can rapidly expand its service offerings across multiple regions by leveraging BIAN’s reference architecture, ensuring consistency and compliance while scaling operations.
6. Regulatory Adaptability
Financial regulations are constantly evolving, requiring banks to quickly adjust their compliance frameworks.
BIAN’s standardized models for risk, compliance, and governance provide banks with a ready-to-use foundation, helping them adapt to new regulations faster and with less cost.
Example: A bank preparing for Basel IV or PSD2 compliance can leverage BIAN’s structured data models to align risk management processes without disrupting business operations.

4. API library
BIAN’s API Library serves as a critical enabler for modern banking transformation. By adopting BIAN-standardized APIs, banks can accelerate innovation, improve agility, and reduce integration costs while ensuring regulatory compliance and future-proofing their IT architectures. Collaborative Development: More than 100 financial institutions contribute to and refine BIAN’s standards, ensuring continuous evolution and best practices.
1. What is the BIAN API Library?
BIAN’s API Library consists of a growing collection of standardized APIs aligned with its service-domain model. These APIs help banks and financial institutions to achieve:
Interoperability – Seamless integration between different banking systems, vendors, and external fintech providers.
Standardization – A universal framework that reduces the need for custom-built integrations.
Modularity – APIs are designed to be plug-and-play, allowing institutions to replace or upgrade components without disrupting the entire IT landscape.
2. Key Features of BIAN’s API Library
Service-Domain Aligned: Each API corresponds to a BIAN service domain, ensuring structured and logical banking functionalities (e.g., payments, lending, KYC, fraud detection).
Open & Vendor-Agnostic: The APIs are designed to be technology-neutral, enabling banks to integrate them with any platform or system, regardless of the provider.
REST-Based APIs: Most of BIAN’s APIs follow RESTful principles, ensuring ease of use, scalability, and flexibility.
Regulatory Compliance: The API structures align with global regulatory requirements such as PSD2 (Europe), Open Banking (UK, Australia), and other local compliance frameworks.
3. Benefits of Using BIAN APIs
Accelerates Digital Transformation: Reduces development time by providing ready-to-use APIs that integrate with modern banking systems.
Supports Open Banking & Embedded Finance: Enables banks to securely expose their services to third parties, fintechs, and partners while maintaining compliance.
Reduces IT Complexity & Costs: Eliminates the need for costly custom-built APIs by providing standardized, reusable components.
Enhances Agility: Allows financial institutions to adapt quickly to market changes, customer needs, and new regulatory requirements.
4. BIAN API Use Cases
Core Banking Modernization: Banks can progressively migrate to modern core banking solutions by replacing legacy functionalities with BIAN-compliant APIs.
Fintech Integration: Banks can leverage APIs to integrate with fintechs offering specialized services such as payments, lending, fraud prevention, and wealth management.
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): When banks merge, they can use BIAN APIs to streamline IT system consolidation and data harmonization.
Open Banking & API Monetization: Financial institutions can offer BIAN-compliant APIs as products, enabling third-party developers to build new financial services.
5. Continuous Evolution of BIAN APIs
BIAN regularly updates and expands its API Library to keep pace with emerging banking trends, including:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) – APIs supporting AI-driven decision-making, fraud detection, and predictive analytics.
Blockchain & Digital Assets – APIs for integrating digital currencies, tokenized assets, and decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions.
Sustainability & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) – APIs facilitating green finance, carbon tracking, and ethical banking initiatives.

5. Aligns with ISO standards
BIAN aligns with ISO standards, particularly for payment services.
Financial institutions adopting BIAN automatically align with ISO-compliant business objects, easing regulatory compliance.
BIAN continues to gain momentum as financial institutions recognize its value in accelerating digital transformation, enhancing efficiency, and fostering industry-wide collaboration. By providing a unified architectural approach, BIAN enables banks to innovate while maintaining consistency, compliance, and interoperability.
End of this module
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CC&C Solutions, co-author of this page
In every step of their Digital Transformation journey powered by BIAN, organizations benefit from CC&C acting as their trusted partner. CC&C stands by them throughout, offering mentorship, training, skill transfer, clarity provision, and continuous support, ensuring the sustained momentum required to achieve self-sufficiency and realize business value goals.
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Phone number: 0318 – 49 53 72 |
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