IBS Journal July – August 2015


Who’s bought what?


WHO? Commercial Bank of Ceylon and Hatton National Bank WHAT? Wolters Kluwer’s OneSumX Finance


The two largest private banks in Sri Lanka, Commercial Bank of Ceylon and Hatton National Bank, have signed for Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ OneSumX Finance solution for IFRS compliance. This follows a lot of legwork in the country by the supplier, alongside its main domestic partner, Providence Global. Previously, says Wolters Kluwer’s global market management director, finance, IFRS and performance, Jeroen Van Doorsselaere, the banks were not ready, waiting for the regulators to enforce the standards. ‘Now they have to do it, there has been a push from the regulators. Before, a lot of banks were doing approximations using Excel.’ The projects at the two banks have just


started, with the supplier’s staff now on-site for the preparation work. Providence is working on the implementations. ‘Certainly in Asia we prefer to have local implementa- tion partners because they know the cus- toms, language and so on,’ says Van Doors- selaere. Both Commercial Bank of Ceylon and Hatton National Bank went through official selection processes and carried out


their own due diligence, including proof of concept studies, but issued a single RFP. They signed separate contracts and could have selected separate suppliers. Wolters Kluwer has visited other banks


in the country and Van Doorsselaere sees the potential for additional sales. Neighbouring India is at an earlier


stage, with ‘a bit of a wait and see attitude’, says Van Doorsselaere. The banks here have seemingly only recently started their investi- gations and there might be some skepticism at recent regulator announcements as the introduction of IFRS has been postponed a couple of times. He feels that, as has hap- pened in other countries, it could be that banks will first try to build solutions and will then find that this is not enough, that they are not maintainable, so will then look to vendors. Wolters Kluwer has around five customers in India for domestic regulatory reporting, including HSBC, so already has a foothold. And he emphasises the compa- ny’s large presence in the region, including a development centre in Pune and offices in Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong.


WHO? Arab African International Bank WHAT? Temenos’ T24 core banking system


Arab African International Bank (AAIB), a long-standing banking player in Egypt, is modernising its core banking software with Temenos and IBM. The two parties were recruited to overhaul the bank’s legacy IT set-up. Temenos’ flagship core banking system, T24, will be implemented alongside a range of other applications. AAIB was set up in the mid-1960s by the Central Bank of Egypt and Kuwait


Investment Agency, and both continue to be its major shareholders. The bank offers retail, private and corporate banking services in Egypt and the Gulf states, and also has a subsidiary in Lebanon. In 2009, the bank signed for the Bancs core system supplied by TCS Financial


Solutions. Temenos was evaluated at the time but lost out at the final stage of that selection to its Indian rival. The bank is also a long-standing user of the payments software from ProgressSoft.


Jeroen Van Doorsselaere, Wolters Kluwer Sri Lanka is introducing a form of IFRS


that has a domestic flavour, dubbed Sri Lanka International Financial Reporting Standards (SIFRS), which is now manda- tory for reporting to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. As well as the regulatory ‘push’, banks are influenced by the potential benefits of compliance, says Van Doors- selaere. As shown recently by a study in Japan, where compliance is currently vol- untary, there are business benefits includ- ing attracting investors, he says. Countries in South-East Asia are somewhat behind those in other regions, he adds, but their next focus could be more robust and trans- parent risk management, influenced by fac- tors such as the Sri Lankan stock exchange becoming more developed. As the Wolters Kluwer suite covers the full governance, risk and compliance (GRC) spectrum, this was an attraction for the banks, compared with point solutions, as it can support their evolving wider needs, he says.


16 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


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