International Turnkey Systems (ITS) was established by Kuwait Finance House in 1981. It develops and sells the Ethix banking solution, aiming it mainly at the Islamic banking sector from its headquarters in Kuwait. For many years ITS’s main role in the core banking sector was as a distributor of the much travelled Phoenix retail banking system, owned by US-based Harland Financial Solutions. It also resold Tradewind, a trade finance system from the same vendor, and Mosaic, a branch automation system from Getronics. In addition, it acted as a systems integrator for Phoenix implementations: early Phoenix users in the Middle East included Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), Al Rajhi Foreign Exchange in Saudi Arabia, Alliance Housing Bank in Kuwait, Commercial Bank of Dubai, Dubai Islamic Bank, Industrial Bank of Kuwait, Kuwait Finance House and Qatar Islamic Bank. All these banks signed for the system before 2002. More recent clients have included Kuwait International Bank and Zenith Bank in Nigeria. Ethix is a more recent development, and stems from ITS’s purchase of the IP of Phoenix, Tradewind and the Getronics branch system. ITS has been developing them for a few years from its development centre in Cairo, and since 2009 they are collectively under the Ethix brand. Ethix is supposed to be a total banking automation solution, covering the core as well as delivery channels, according to the supplier. Ethix can run on either Microsoft or Oracle databases. A user of the former is Kuwait Finance House (majority owner of ITS), of the latter Ahli United Bank in Kuwait. The Shari’ah-compliant aspect of Ethix is in the business logic in the middle layer. ITS has undergone some senior management changes and there has been a fairly sweeping strategy review. It is believed that KFH has been looking at whether its subsidiary still fits with its own strategic plans. In February 2017, International Turnkey Systems (ITS), announced the appointment of Kuwaiti national Essam Al-Kheshnam as Chief Executive Officer. He has over 25 years of experience in various roles across IT, management, marketing and business development.
