Georgian Bank, a fast-growing bank that was founded in 2001 and now has more than $1 billion in assets, has selected services ranging from core processing to loan origination and document compliance from Harland Financial Solutions. The bank selected Harland’s Phoenix System for core processing, along with other services in part because the platform’s SQL server-based structure would help it further its strategy of tailoring its services around complete views of the customer.

Vital Forsikring ASA, Norway’s largest life and pension insurance company, is building a new core pension system that will be one of the world’s first production SOA deployments based on Microsoft .NET 2.0. The system includes 64-bit Windows, BizTalk Server, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, and will also use AmberPoint’s runtime governance software.

RSM EquiCo Capital Markets, a leading investment management firm working primarily with private, middle-market businesses, has converted its homegrown email archiving solution to Microsoft Exchange Hosted Archive to prepare for regulatory audits.

The firm originally had an archiving solution that had been built using Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client. The decision to move to a more dynamic email archiving solution came when the firm received notice of an upcoming National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) audit. RSM EquiCo Capital Markets would need to improve access to archived emails and demonstrate easier supervision and monitoring of emails to satisfy auditors.

Developers who are working with the Microsoft .NET Framework in financial services now have a very focused guide – “Practical .NET for Financial Markets,” by Yogesh Shetty and Samir Jayaswal.

“I have read a lot of books, and this is very different and very impressive,” said Stevan Vidich, senior technology specialist for capital markets at Microsoft. “The book is everything I had hoped for and then some. It is intended for experienced .NET developers that want to learn how to use .NET development to solve business problems in the Trading Value Chain.”