Fiducia IT
Fiducia IT AG was a German IT-service provider based in Karlsruhe. In 2015, it merged with the GAD eG to form Fiducia & GAD IT AG. Its core business was providing financial IT services for co-operative banks, with its customers also coming from the private banking sector, public institutions, and free enterprises. Fiducial's integrated core banking system 'agree' was used by over 700 banks, supporting 97,000 workstations with 67 million accounts worldwide. Fiducial IT AG’s headquarters were situated in Karlsruhe with a branch in Aschheim, Munich. History. Founding. The company was founded in 1924 under  the name of Fiducia Accounting and Auditing Institute AG in Karlsruhe. The name “Fiducia” is Latin, meaning trust, reliability and assurance. In 1958 Fiducia came to the supervised banks with the idea of a merger into a reservation community. Fiducia took over the organization as a new business. During the following years, mainly punched cards were used. Over the course of the 1960s, a gradual transition took place to other media, such as journal strips, magnetic tapes and magnetic disks. Fiducia online system. In the 1970s, Fiducia began to establish subsidiaries and participating interests in other companies, to serve the  expanded customer base with industry-specific solutions and services. The Fiducia online method for interactive traffic was launched. ATMs in dialog system. In the 1980s Fiducia supported automation of payments by installing ATMs in the dialogue system, started the development of a banking application procedure. The firm merged with the cooperative information center GIC, Mutterstadt, Information Center for Fiducia AG and inclusion of the reservation community Saar eG, Saarbrücken. Agree bank workplace. After a further merger in 1999 with the GRK BG data center Kassel GmbH, and the RWG Rechenzentrale Wurttembergischer cooperatives GmbH, Stuttgart in 2001, Fiducia AG Karlsruhe / Stuttgart  developed the Fiducia banking procedures together with the rbg Rechenzentrale Bavarian cooperatives eG. This bank method was based on the previous system NBS Fiducia, and united the parallel banking systems Rubin (GRK), GEBOS (CT) and GENOS (rbg) acquired from the many mergers. Therefore, it was called "Agree" (from the English word) and was released in 2003 for the first time in version 1.0. In the same year, the merger between Fiducia IT AG and rbg took place. Other banks. In the following years, an increasing number of private banks joined the cooperative banks. According to market research firm Gartner in  2004, Fiducia developed into the seventh-largest IT service provider in Germany. In 2006 the PSD Bank made a decision to gradually migrate from Sparda (SDV) to agree, which happened by July 2008. In the same year, Fiducia introduced the mobileTAN procedure (mTAN). The locations of Kassel, Erfurt, Saarbrücken, and Nuremberg were closed. Completion of migrations. Since 25 June 2007, all of the Fiducia IT AG supervised banks had migrated to the agree system. On 25 August, Fiducia put a newly designed IT center into operation, which met the guidelines of BS7799 and ISO17799. In September Fiducia received the Silver  Safety Award from Baden-Württemberg for "outstanding projects of occupational safety". This was awarded for the Security Awareness campaign with the name of "Security Cup 2007". On 21 February 2008, Fiducia put their new data center in Rheinstetten near Karlsruhe into operation. As of March 17, 2008, the first 15 banks of PSD (PSD Bank Nord eG) were successfully migrated to agree and were using the Fiducia eBanking system. Merger with GAD eG. In early 2006, exploratory talks began with the IT service provider GAD eG about a possible merger, which failed. Subsequently, in January 2008, a merger in 2010  was promised. With massive pressure from the owners of both companies and with the objective of saving costs, merger talks began again in September 2011. The Federal Cartel Office approval of the merger was announced in late May 2012, however, talks ended in July 2012 due to differences in company valuation. Fresh talks began at the end of 2013, resulting in the successful merger in 2015. Structure. Subsidiary companies. The subsidiaries of Fiducia included: Former subsidiaries: Investments. Fiducia had stakes in the following companies: Services offered. Banksystem Agree. Agree, a banking system developed and maintained by Fiducia, is a modular  total banking procedure. It is based on the former NBS banking system and was created by consolidating the GEBOS, GENOS and RUBIN systems. Fiducia Agree is not only the backend systems in the data center and the front-end system "Agree bank workplace" (Agree BAP) on Java Web Start technology but also other services and software products. These include additional application programs such as COSMOS, Agree Analyses and VR Control. For all IT solutions, Fiducia offers extensive support for the implementation and optimization of the applications in the form of consulting, training and coaching. Since June 2010 it is also  a free iPhone app that can be found in Apple's AppStore. It makes it possible to list transactions, perform transfers and view your portfolio. Processing centers. Fiducia operates two active and fully redundant data centers with more than 8,700 Unix servers in the Karlsruhe area. The data centers are equipped with an emergency power system and are run completely independently. A high-security data center with a high degree of automation, focusing on protection from failures and attacks, was put into operation in 2008 in the Rhine Stetten (district of Karlsruhe). The new data center comprises around 6,720 square  meters of space for IT equipment. In the first phase, about 60% will be occupied. The new data center is located approximately 10 km away from the backup data center. MPLS network. Fiducia claims to have one of the largest MPLS networks to communicate with the local systems of its partner banks. Giropay. Together with the Postbank, Star Financial and GAD, Fiducia is the founder of Fiducia Giropay GmbH, suppliers of the online payment process of the same name. Fiducia is also, together with GAD, responsible for the technical and operational implementation of the payment procedure in the cooperative banks . Printing and mailing. The Printing and Mailing services include custom printing and enveloping services, mail, electronic signature, archiving and invoice receipt processing. As of 2012 Fiducia operates for 1,500 customers: In 2012, approximately 523 million DIN-A4 pages were printed and 177 million printed letters were enveloped and sent. Discontinued Activities. Internet & Telephone Services VR-Web. Fiducia was the operator of the Internet service provider VR-Web, which completed its business operations in 2012. The main target group of VR-Web were customers and employees of the local cooperative banks and other cooperative institutions. VR-Web and VR-Web Phone  offered Internet access and landline telephones. From 1 December 2010, however, the service was available only for existing customers and on 30 November 2012, the business was finally stopped. Sponsorship. Fiducia IT AG is the main and title sponsor of the Baden marathon. In addition, the company has sponsored the Karlsruher SC since the 2005/2006 season (since 2010/2011 as the exclusive sponsor), and the open-air event "Classic at the tower."