IBS Journal Supplement 2015


goes into Mambu’s ‘sandbox’ area for a couple of weeks or more, allowing users to test it before cutover. The expectations related to a reduced in-house IT team have been realised, with a single MIS staff member, as opposed to a team of seven or eight IT staff at Micro Africa Ltd. Premier launched on Mambu in


Kenya in January 2014 and in Uganda in May 2014. It now has around 9000 clients in the former, 3500 in the latter. Premier is hoping to buy a small company in Tanzania and would also use Mambu here if this happens. In Kenya, a lot of clients use mobile


payments service, M-Pesa, to pay on a weekly basis, with perhaps 400-500 pay- ments per day, and this is integrated with the Mambu system, so around 80 per cent of the payments are automatically posted, which is a great benefit in terms of reduced workload, says Carson.


For the future, there is nothing


that Carson has spotted that suggests Premier will outgrow Mambu any time soon. At present, Premier is a credit-only institution, so restricted to lending, but its intention is to move into deposit taking in a few years time, at which point the cloud deployment would need to be ap- proved by the regulator. Carson expects the Kenyan authorities to look at other central banks around the world that have granted approval and, with the Bank of England having done so (My Community Bank was the first taker of Mambu in the UK at the end of 2013 and it was followed by Savvy Loans, a short-term specialist lender), he sees no reason why approval should be an issue in Kenya when the time comes. Other countries where cloud-based


infrastructure has been accepted, at least for MFIs, include Mexico (where Mambu


is present and Temenos has a cloud- based version of T24 in use at a number of institutions) and the Philippines (Mam- bu has Mega Mitch Credit and Venture South as users here). It looks clear that, from Premier’s


perspective, the benefits of a cloud deployment more than outweigh the compromises. There were some concerns within the bank at the outset about whether it would be able to access its data if something happened to its supplier, and about security, but these were overcome (for instance, a copy of the bank’s data is provided on a periodic basis). The implementation was a fraction of the cost and time of a traditional one and progress has been smooth since then. The evolution of this model will come, of course, when larger institutions start to head this way but, at least for the MFI domain, it looks ideal.


IBS is releasing a series of white papers, focused on the leading vendors in our sector.


The first ones launched are for Avaloq, Sopra Banking Software (Sopra Banking Platform/Thaler), TCS (Bancs) and Temenos (T24). Others will follow and cus- tomers can also request bespoke ones. Each white paper includes an extensive write-up of the vendor, its system, its evolution, strategy, functionality, technol- ogy, user experiences and product roadmap, plus an extensive user list.


Avaloq (16 pages): The white paper considers the rise and rise of this leading vendor in the private banking/wealth management space. As it moves into tier one banks, will it be able to continue delivering successful projects and will it remain applicable for smaller banks?


Sopra Banking Software (22 pages): How is Thaler faring under its French par- ent? How does it fit with the rest of the product set and what is the strategy? We look at the growth of Callataÿ & Wouters, its success in Western Europe and beyond, the experiences of users such as Rabobank, and where the system is now heading as Sopra Banking Platform.


TCS Financial Solutions (26 pages): Bancs is a long-stayer in the retail banking space, with a key attribute being scalability. Using its considerable resources, TCS has developed a Java version and continues to invest in its flagship core banking system, with its project at US-based Zions Bancorporation particularly in the spotlight at present.


New from IBS: Supplier white papers


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Temenos (48 pages): T24 is consistently one of the two top sellers in the core banking systems sector, benefiting from breadth and depth of functionality, the focus and reach of the supplier, and continued R&D. It gains broad univer- sal banking deals as well as more niche ones, in areas such as wealth manage- ment. What are its strengths, as well as its weaknesses, and what have been the experiences of key users?


case study: premier group


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