The BIAN Service Landscape is a reference structure that categorizes and organizes BIAN Service Domains for ease of access. Different criteria can be used to classify and organize Service Domains that would result in different layouts of the standard set of BIAN Service Domains. BIAN uses a ‘primary’ Service Landscape view based on agreed categorizations that have been refined in use by the BIAN membership.

The BIAN Metamodel is a detailed and comprehensive (UML) model that defines all the BIAN design structures — it is fully documented elsewhere in its own guide (The BIAN Metamodel). The Metamodel has three elements that capture the design of the BIAN Service Landscape.

  1. Business Area — is the highest-level classification. A business area groups together a broad set of business capacities. For the BIAN Service Landscape they are defined to be aspects of business activity that have similar supporting application and information-specific needs.
  2. Business Domain — at the next level, business domains define a coherent collection of capacities within the broader business area. In the BIAN Service Landscape the business domains are associated with skills and knowledge recognizable in the banking business.
  3. Service Domain — is the finest level of partitioning, each defining unique and discrete business capacities. The Service Domains are the ‘elemental building blocks’ of a service landscape.

The Service Domain relates to generic capacities that do not vary in their scope, but the definitions of the Business Domain and Business Area are classifications that are specific to a particular Service Landscape layout. The Service Landscape layout can be varied depending on use.


BIAN Service Landscape Roadmap

SL 10.0 – Q4 2021

All 322 service domains completed
+ 2000 Business scenarios
+ 2100 Service definitions
+ 250 Semantic API’s available in BIAN’s API portal
New release of:

  • Business Capability Model
  • Information Architecture / Business Object Model
  • Business Vocabulary

Metamodel Aligned
New Pilots of the Coreless Bank
Product Certification
Integrate in Dev/Ops pipeline

SL 9.0 – Q3 2020

All 308 service domains completed
+ 2000 Business scenarios
+ 2500 Service definitions
+ 170+ Semantic API’s available in BIAN’s API portal
New API Developers Guide
New release of:
– Business Capability Model
– Information Architecture / Business Object Model
– Business Vocabulary
– Metamodel Aligned
Additional Pilots of the Coreless Bank
Implementation examples

SL 8.0 – Q3 2019

  • Substantial updates to the BIAN Metamodel and content
  • Significant change in the definition and mapping of Action Terms to the Service Domain Functional Patterns, to improve the mapping to REST
  • Steep increase in the documented Business Capabilities, Business Scenarios and Service Domain descriptions, notably Control Records and Service Operations
  • The model is being documented in BiZZdesign, BIAN’s new repository, which currently includes the Business Capability Model, the Business Scenario Model with Service Domain descriptions and the Business Object Model
  • The BIAN Metamodel Architectural concepts are expressed in version 8.0 in the ArchiMate 3.0 architecture modelling language. This gives Banking Enterprise Architects who are familiar with the ArchiMate Language a more precise understanding of the BIAN defined metamodel elements
  • The BIAN Reference Architecture is expressed in a combination of ArchiMate and UML

The following timeline shows what the completion of the BIAN Service Landscape (SL) v3.0 — v8.0 contains and in what year the assets will be published.

SL 7.0 – Q3 2018

  • MetaModel aligned
  • All SD are stable
  • Business Capability Model Completed
  • Information Architecture aligned with ISO 20022 and complete
  • IT Architecture / Vendor Agnostic IT Model available including internal APIs
  • New Tooling
  • UML / XML available for (non) Members
  • M4 model for different types of FIs

SL 6.0 – Q1 2018

  • All 296+ service domains completed
  • + 1000 Business scenarios
  • + 2000 Service definitions
  • Substantial number of Semantic APIs Definitions
  • First  release of
    • Business Capability Model
    • Information Architecture / Business Object Model aligned with ISO20022
    • Vendor Agnostic Application Architecture
    • Business Vocabulary
  • New Tooling

SL 5.0 – Q3 2016

  • Additional Business Scenarios with a combination of candidate and reviewed for Corporate, CRM, Product & Price, Investment & Trading and possibly other areas.
  • All the deliverables included in the SL 4.5 release with a further refinement of business scenarios, the productivity tool, the vocabulary and business information.
  • Enhanced functionality in the productivity tool enabling it to be used for navigation in the BIAN Service Landscape.
  • Easier mapping to Archimate, St Gallen/CC Sourcing models and TOGAF

SL 4.5 – Q2 2016

  • Approx. 20 new candidate service domains defined
  • 600+ new candidate Business Scenarios focus on Payments/Retail/Lending/Channels/Wealth
  • Vocabulary established and populated with initial information
  • Updated UML model and metamodel
  • New How-To Guide

All content in Release 4.5 is considered to be ‘candidate’ status. Candidate status materials have not undergone a formal review and approval cycle. Content and tooling is liable to change prior to formal release in release 5.0.

SL 4.0 – May 2015

The BIAN Service Landscape v4.0 is based on the MagicDraw repository and contains:

  • 7 Business Areas
  • 36 Business Domains
  • 280 Service Domains
  • 1960 candidate Service Operation
  • 178 Business Scenarios

The BIAN How-To Guides have been aligned:

  • BIAN ”žHow-to Guide I“ — Introduction to BIAN
  • BIAN “How-to Guide II”Â — Design Principles & Techniques
  • BIAN “How-to Guide III”— Developing Content
  • BIAN “How-to Guide IV”Â — Applying the BIAN Standard

The  “How-to Guide”gives organisations a toolset for using and implementing the BIAN model in their own organisations.

SL 3.0 – April 2014

Total of 280 Business Capacities (called Service Domains) 180 business scenarios added
Metamodel Aligned
The “How To Guide”has turned the 3.0 release into a comprehensive set of documents for different targeted groups:

    • BIAN “How-to Guide I”— Introduction to BIAN — this is intended to provide an overview of the BIAN approach for all audiences and for general reference purposes.
    • BIAN “How-to Guide II”Â Â  — Design Principles & Techniques — this is intended for business and technical architects. It explains the theory and design practices for those wishing to understand and review the BIAN approach
    • BIAN “How-to Guide III”Â  — Developing Content — this is intended for BIAN working group members. It explains the working approach and the various tools and templates used to capture BIAN standard content
    • BIAN “How-to Guide IV”— Applying the BIAN standard — this is intended for members and other financial institutions wishing to apply the BIAN design content in various technical deployment situations