Bank of Nova Scotia has launched a new internal global social networking solution to help encourage more information sharing and collaboration among employees.

The solution, which was developed for the bank by Microsoft, is designed to help transform how workers share knowledge and best practices.

According to Microsoft, it is he first of its kind in the Canadian financial services industry.

“At Scotiabank, we are always looking for innovative ideas to promote information sharing and collaboration in across the enterprise,” says Robert Fournier, vp, enterprise architecture methodology. “By leveraging the knowledge and experience of the Scotiabank team with a business focused social networking platform, we are enabling staff to better serve customers by sharing best practices and identifying experts and skill sets regardless of geographic and organizational boundaries.”

The solution is currently being piloted with the bank’s International Banking Division. As part of the new initiative Scotiabank will create online user profiles for Scotiabank employees. It will also provide employees with new ways to share, store, organize, search, and manage information, including user-driven blogs and wikis, through a familiar and easy-to-use Scotiabank-branded interface.

“The success of social networking in the financial services industry will rely on three factors: ease of use, security and functionality,” says Dan Bloch, director, financial services, Microsoft Canada, in accouncing the launch today.

“SharePoint includes native support for wikis, blogs and RSS feeds as well as privacy and security mechanisms so that employees can connect and share knowledge via a customizable and security-enhanced interface.”