New development hub will bring tech solutions faster to Danish banks

January 2, 114 tech people from BEC, Nykredit, Spar Nord, and Arbejdernes Landsbank will be moving out of their familiar surroundings and into a brand new and ambitious tech hub, Scoutz, which is to explore completely new ways in the joint IT development for the benefit of all BEC banks and their customers.

The new hub in in Copenhagen, Aalborg and Warsaw is to accelerate development of the BEC banks’ joint advisory universe on the cloud platform Salesforce. The advisory universe is a central tool for advisors in 19 BEC banks who together serve around every fourth Danish banking customer.

“Our ambition is to deliver the best advisory universe for Danish banks. We will create the strongest innovation and development hub for Salesforce in the Nordics, which with all the highly skilled people that the four partners now bring together will be a magnet for new talents,” says Jesper Nielsen, CEO for BEC Financial Technologies.

Peter Smith is joining Scoutz

Peter Smith will join January 2. as head of Scoutz.

“I’m looking forward to start and together with the team create a fantastic hub for development and innovation for the benefit of 19 Danish banks in the BEC community,” says Peter Smith.

Peter Smith comes from a position as senior vice president and head of Buying and Owning Real Estate in Danske Bank. He was previously CEO in Lunar Bank and Nordea Kredit, and he is a member of several boards in the financial sector.

New, faster development hub

“In Scoutz the toolbox is Salesforce. However, what is interesting is what we deliver to customers: to develop things fast and get them out to the users. Processes are naturally heavier in a large organization, but the core of Scoutz will be to push boundaries for how we efficiently develop compliant finance IT of high quality,” says Jesper Nielsen, BEC.

The 114 specialists in Scoutz move together at their own locations in Copenhagen, Aalborg, and Warsaw. The new hub will legally be part of BEC to avoid extra administration but will to a large extend act as a new stand-alone organization outside many of BEC’s normal structures.

A strong bank and Salesforce environment

BEC and BEC banks have through the past six years established a broad variety of solutions on the cloud platform Salesforce for bank advisors’ daily work with bank customers.

So far, both BEC and BEC banks have developed and exchanged solutions for the joint platform. Now 61 specialists from the banks and 53 from BEC will instead be employed in joint teams in the new development hub where they will together develop for all 19 banks.