When the chief executive of Beirut Hellenic Bank, James Wakim, commissioned a new core banking system 18 months ago, he was concerned about what sort of investment his bank could make that would give it an online banking platform to make it competitive with the big banks."We had a vastly different budget to what the big banks spend on the core system," said Wakim."The big banks have the ability to manipulate their products - to make special offers and different offers to different customer groups. I can't do that."They also spend a lot on data mining, looking at how their customers are using their banking services and moving their money around. Again, that's something we can't do."Beirut Hellenic is part of Bank of Lebanon, which bought Laiki Bank Australia in 2011. According to the latest APRA data, the bank has $367 million mortgage portfolio, a $382 million commercial loan portfolio and Beirut Hellenic commissioned its new system from Rubik Financial, a software company specialising in financial services."When we looked at what made a good banking website, our research told us customers wanted to be able to get in and out at high speed," said Rubik's chief executive Brent Jackson."They want to spend as little time as possible on their banking but have a high level of functionality. One thing we have been able to do is allow people to set up their own workspace and get to all their regular activities on one screen."Beirut Hellenic's strength is its business customer base and it wanted to provide a high level of business banking functionality. The new system includes an internet-based foreign exchange service. Wakim said use of the system, which has been operational since last year, has been increasing steadily and the bank has attracted new customers. "We rely on our internet banking platform more than other banks because of our limited branch distribution," he said."We started with a Greek customer base. Since we have had the new system more of the customers who are new to the bank are not from a Greek or Lebanese background."