As explained in Entities and Relationships, all information held in the SmartVista is marked as belonging to a certain Master Institution and Agent Institution.

A simple Master/Agent Institution hierarchy is best suited to provide the framework to support the bank's own branch network. It will allow linking customers and transactions to the branch but will provide consolidated reporting and interface files to the banking system and the card networks. All transactions and messages will be sent to the Card Networks and the core banking system as part of the same set of interface files.

As the term Agent Institution suggests, this method may be sufficient if the bank wants to offer its card issuance and processing services through an independent bank who will act as their agent. However, this will mean that all the settings related to the data interchange with the card schemes and other external system, including the core banking system, will be the same for this agent and the bank's own branches. It will also mean that the Master Institution users will have access to the data of this Agent Institution, leaving User Roles as the only access control mechanism available (see Security).

A single SmartVista solution can hold and process information for many Master/Agent Institution hierarchies. To provide total separation between the information and transactions held for different banks, they must be set up as individual Master Institutions, perhaps with an agent Institution hierarchy below each of them.