With the start of Monetary Union, the disappearance of exchange rate risk premia and the unprecedented fall in interest rates facilitated capital inflows and encouraged risk-taking behaviour, resulting in a rapid rise in private debt and a property boom. The expectation of higher levels of income led to excessive consumption and investment relative to the supply capacity of the Spanish economy.
A few major aspects which need to be reckoned relate to the •  Need for standardisation - across hardware, operating systems, system software, application software to facilitate inter-connectivity of systems across branches  •  Need for high levels of security - in an environment which requires high levels of confidentiality, security is an important requirement  •  Once both the above are achieved, the next logical approach would be towards communication and networking - use of networks which would facilitate centralised databases and distributed processing.