New banking regulations required Fortis to more efficiently process credit applications. To achieve this, Fortis needed real-time access to external information resources, as well as seamless integration among branch offices. By doing so, the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) would be able to prevent lenders from extending credit to customers who were already too far in debt.

Problems arose when Fortis found that its systems could not easily exchange business information with NBB's repository due to conflicting messaging structures. That meant that the company had no fast way of learning about the credit record of lending candidates. To exchange data between the bank and the NBB database, Fortis is using IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker. Running on two of the bank's four IBM pSeries® systems, IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker enables Fortis to dynamically reconfigure information without reprogramming its mainframe end-point applications, allowing it to respond with speed to changes at NBB. The solution gives Fortis the flexibility it needs to quickly adapt to changes in message structures or formats introduced by NBB.

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