AWS for Industries
Modern AWS Data Strategy and Architecture for banking using BIAN Framework
In today’s dynamic rapidly evolving financial landscape, banks face evolving challenges and opportunities. Rising customer expectations, increasing stringent regulatory requirements, and ongoing digital disruption are reshaping the industry. The Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) framework, when implemented using Amazon Web Services (AWS), offers an effective solution to these challenges. This blog outlines a strategy approach for implementing the BIAN framework and associated data models while harnessing AWS’s data capabilities. It covers modern data strategy development, governance establishment, and scalable architecture design using AWS services.
What is BIAN Framework
The BIAN framework provides a common language and structure for describing banking services and operations. It simplifies the complex banking systems by breaking them into reusable “service domains.” These domains represent distinct business capabilities within a bank, such as customer management, payments processing, or risk analysis. Key benefits of BIAN include Streamlined IT architectures, improved interoperability between systems, faster adaptation to changing business needs and regulations, and enhanced collaboration with fintech partners. For detailed implementation guidance, refer to the BIAN framework.
Solution Overview
The solution follows three essential components:
- AWS Modern Data Strategy and Governance
- Mapping BIAN capabilities to customer data domains
- Core components of AWS Modern Data Architecture for BIAN implementation
1. AWS Modern Data Strategy and Governance
Data is fundamental to BIAN’s success since it enables standardized information flows between banking service domains and promotes consistent interpretation of banking operations. Effective framework implementation hinges on leading with a modern data strategy and strong governance, ensuring successful adoption across the organization.
AWS’s proven Modern Data Strategy and Governance Framework comprises eight key pillars:
- Data Strategy/ Data Domains
- Data Organization
- Data Policies and Protection Guidelines
- Data Access and Sharing
- Data Security and Compliance
- Data Operations
- Data Quality
- Data Tools and Technology
Implementing this framework ensures compliance, improves quality, speeds decision-making, and protects data for successful BIAN adoption. It also facilitates a customer-centric approach, enables advanced analytics and AI integration, and provides the flexibility needed for scalable, future-proof banking architectures.
Figure 1- Modern Data Strategy & Governance Framework
Enabling the right tools for Data Governance in BIAN implementation empowers Data Domain owners with comprehensive oversight while ensuring scalability across the enterprise. Key technical capabilities include:
- Centralized Data Catalog
- Data Lineage
- Data Quality
- Data Policies
- Access Controls
This approach provides Data Domain owners with the necessary tools to effectively govern data within the BIAN framework, supporting consistency and scalability across the organization.
Figure 2 – Data Governance Tools from Data Domain Owner view
Centralize Data Catalog: The foundation of effective BIAN governance is a unified, up-to-date understanding of the service landscape. AWS Glue Data Catalog and Amazon DataZone provide a scalable, secure solution for ingesting, curating, and managing BIAN metadata. This included service definitions, data models, process flows and integrations, ensuring a single source of truth for BIAN taxonomy.
Data Lineage: Maintaining visibility and control over data flowing through BIAN services is crucial for risk management and compliance. AWS Lake Formation and AWS Glue can help capture comprehensive data lineage, enabling you to understand data origins, transformations, evolutions, and dependencies across BIAN ecosystem.
Data Quality: Ensuring accuracy, consistency, and reliability of financial data across services is vital. AWS solution offers data profiling, cleansing, and validation capabilities, often integrated with data catalogs and lineage tools. These features help maintain data integrity, support regulatory compliance, and enable effective decision-making within the BIAN framework.
Data Policies and Access Controls: Effective data governance is essential for BIAN compliance and risk mitigation. AWS Lake Formation allows you to define and enforce granular data access policies, data classifications, and security controls. This ensures sensitive information is properly protected and accessed only by authorized BIAN services and users.
By building a robust, data-centric BIAN governance and quality assurance framework on AWS, banks can ensure the ongoing health, compliance, and continuous optimization of their BIAN service landscape.
2. BIAN Capability with Customer Data Domain Mapping
Mapping existing capabilities to BIAN requires a strong data strategy. By connecting BIAN capabilities to the Customer Data Domain, banks can better leverage customer insights for decision-making, product development, and service delivery, thereby fostering stronger customer relationships.
Figure 3 illustrates how the Customer Reference Service Domain maps to the Customer Data Domain and its sub-domains. By mapping key data elements from legacy applications to these sub-domains can create a unified view of their customers.
Figure 3- Customer Data Domain Design under BIAN Structure
By leveraging BIAN capability mapping-aligned data domains and sub-domains mapping, customers can streamline and optimize their data. This lays the foundation for a more agile, efficient, and innovation-driven BIAN implementation that delivers tangible business value.
3. Core Components of AWS Modern Data Architecture to Implement BIAN Framework
AWS Modern Data Architecture provides a comprehensive reference for ingesting, processing, storing, and analyzing data from various sources, including:
- Core banking systems
- Customer interactions
- Third-party data providers. This architecture complements the AWS Well-Architected Framework and the Financial Services Industry Lens which help financial services customers assess technical risks and implement best practices. By embracing these AWS artifacts and the BIAN standard, banks can future-proof their operations, drive digital transformation, and deliver superior customer experiences while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.
Figure 4 showcases a sample conceptual federated architecture aligning with the service-oriented BIAN model. This blueprint suits enterprises organized into autonomous business domains. A producer data domain (customer data domain) onboards data from various sources using reusable patterns and makes the outcome available as a data product. The governance account, typically owned by a divisional or enterprise-wide platform team, manages the data product catalog and facilitates federated data access. A consumer data domain (e.g.. finance data domain) is provisioned based on business needs. Shared services at divisional and enterprise levels provide practices, processes, and patterns to individual domains.
In this architecture, the data is treated as a product and managed by decentralized domain teams.
Figure 4 -Federated Customer Data Platform (CDP) Architecture – Conceptual Diagram
a. BIAN Meta Model
The BIAN Meta Model accelerates banking transformation by providing a standardized framework for financial services architecture. Key benefits include:
- A common language and structure for banking solutions
- Faster design and implementation processes
- Easier identification and adaptation of relevant components
- Enhanced integration and interoperability between banking services
- Promotion of reusability in system design
To utilize the BIAN Meta Model, start by registering on bian.org and downloading the model from member resources. For example, refer Customer Profile BOM Diagram for details.
b. BIAN Function Traceability with AWS Components
AWS offers a comprehensive suite of services that align seamlessly with BIAN standards, enabling scalable and adaptable banking systems. This powerful combination allows financial institutions to:
- Implement BIAN standards effectively
- Achieve scalability and operational efficiency
- Drive innovation in their data-centric infrastructure
- Enhance overall agility in banking
Table 1 below provides an extensive mapping of BIAN functions to AWS services, demonstrating the synergy between BIAN standards and AWS capabilities.
Key BIAN Function | AWS Service | Function |
Customer Data Storage | Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB | Scalable object storage and NoSQL database for storing and retrieving customer information |
Real-time Synchronization | Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka), Amazon Kinesis | Real-time event synchronization, ensuring coordinated updates across interconnected banking services. |
Data Ingestion | AWS Glue, AWS Lambda, Amazon AppFlow, AWS DMS | Converts external data inputs for integration into banking service systems |
Data Quality Management Compliance | AWS Glue DataBrew | Automatically cleans and validates data, ensuring accuracy within banking service operations |
Data Governance and Compliance | AWS Lake Formation, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon DataZone | Implements data governance measures and audit trails, ensuring compliance in banking operations |
Analytics and Insights | Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Athena, Amazon Quicksight | Executes sophisticated analytics and ML models to enhance banking service insights and performance |
Security and Compliance | AWS KMS, IAM, Amazon CloudTrail | Secures data, implements encryption, and maintains audit logs for banking service integrity. |
Identity Resolution and Matching | Amazon Neptune, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) | Integrate to resolve identities, match data, and secure access across banking services |
Data Lineage and Audit Trails | AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Config, AWS Glue Data Catalog, Amazon Data Zone | Comprehensive data lineage tracking and auditable banking operations |
API Management and Interoperability | Amazon API Gateway, AWS AppSync, AWS Lambda, Amazon EventBridge | Standardized, secure, and scalable banking service API management and interoperability. |
Personalization Engine | Amazon Personalize, Amazon Pinpoint, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Comprehend | Deliver tailored banking experiences based on customer data and behavior. |
Table 1- BIAN Function Traceability with AWS Services
Benefits of Implementing BIAN framework with AWS
Combining the BIAN framework with AWS services creates a powerful synergy for modern banking. This combination standardizes processes, enhances interoperability, and offers the scalability needed in today’s financial world. AWS’s cloud solutions complement BIAN’s modular structure, enabling banks to adapt easily. This integration transforms data management, governance, and analytics while reducing manual work through automation. AWS’s advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities offer deeper business insights. The BIAN-AWS combination future-proofs banking systems, making them more responsive to regulatory changes and customer needs. Ultimately, this is driving the development of more agile, efficient, and innovative banking systems, setting a new standard for the industry.
Lessons Learned
Implementing BIAN standards on AWS has taught us invaluable lessons, including:
- The critical importance of robust modern data strategy and governance in maintaining BIAN compliance.
- Adopting a federated architecture approach has aligned data strategy perfectly with BIAN’s service-oriented model.
- AWS services have given the flexibility to adapt to evolving standards. These insights have not only improved BIAN implementation but have also enhanced overall banking architecture.
Call to Action
In this blog, we have explored how AWS’s comprehensive strategy, architectures and services can accelerate BIAN framework adoption, enabling banks to modernize operations through standardized processes and scalable data architecture. You can further explore BIAN adoption on AWS professional services offerings such as Modern Data Strategy.
By following these steps, banks can embark on a transformative journey that combines the best of BIAN’s standardized approach with AWS’s cutting-edge cloud technologies, positioning themselves for success in the digital banking era.
If you have any more questions, please contact an AWS Representative to find out how we can help accelerate your BIAN journey on AWS.