IBS Journal November 2015


Sberbank Switzerland completes trade finance software overhaul with MIT


Sberbank in Switzerland has gone live with a new trade finance platform, comprising the Trac and Credoc solutions from a Swiss specialist vendor, Micro Informatique & Technologies (MIT). MIT’s software covers middle and back


office operations at Zurich-based Sber- bank, which specialises in corporate and investment banking and is part of Sber- bank Group’s larger corporate and invest- ment banking (CIB) division. The contract was signed last year and


the vendor says it was chosen over ‘sever- al alternatives’. No competitor names are disclosed, but the trade finance software market is a niche one, with a small, estab- lished set of vendors vying for the deals worldwide. These are Surecomp, Misys, Complex Systems Inc (CSI), CGI and China Systems. MIT competes on a more regional scale – it has a strong presence in Europe and has made inroads into the Middle East and Asia. Modernising its trade finance software


was ‘a logical step’ for Sberbank’s Swiss subsidiary, MIT says, as it ‘continues to be a centre for Sberbank CIB’s fast growing com- modity trade finance business’.


Zürich, home of Sberbank Switzerland © Andrew Bossi, Wikipedia


MIT’s Trac provides collateral man-


agement functionality, for transactional commodity finance and structured trade finance. Credoc provides back office pro- cessing. The project was split into two major


phases. The first phase saw the go-live of Credoc at the end of 2014. The second phase started in parallel to Credoc’s go-live, and saw the implementation of Trac, which


UK government to invest £10m in blockchain research


The government is putting plans into mo- tion which would see £10 million pumped into research on blockchain and distributed ledger technology. Economic Secretary to the Treasury,


Harriett Baldwin, announced the plans in a speech held at the British Library. In it, she stressed the importance of


backing skills, research and development as well as companies. The Alan Turing Institute, Research


Councils and technology accelerator Digital Catapult will also be joining forces with London’s fintech industry to explore the possibilities of distributed ledger technology.


18 Efforts to set up new regulatory


schemes for digital currencies in the UK are already bearing fruit, says Baldwin, who reiterated Chancellor George Osbourne’s goal of turning the UK into the world’s leading fintech centre.


Blockchain buzzing Financial technology services already employ some 135,000 people, she adds, and has pumped more than £20 billion into the UK’s GDP.


Blockchain, or distributed ledger tech-


nology, is one of the major buzzwords in the financial industry right now. Multiple large banks are looking into


© IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


replacing their aging transaction systems with the technology, which allows instant payments across borders. Blockchain has come a long way in the


eyes of the industry, considering that it was originally associated with the cryptocur- rency bitcoin, which many view as slightly nefarious due to its ties to crime and the black market. Experts at Sibos 2015 in Singapore


recently agreed that blockchain is some- thing that banks can’t afford to take their eyes off of (see p30). Indeed, a number of institutions have invested in blockchain start-ups in an effort to investigate its uses. Alex Hamilton


has recently been completed. Igor Ukrasin, head of corporate bank-


ing at Sberbank in Switzerland says: ‘We are very pleased with the outcome – the solu- tion provider met all project deadlines.’ The new software is integrated with


the bank’s long-standing core banking solution, OBS, supplied by a German vendor Die Software Peter Fitzon. Tanya Andreasyan


news


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