IBS Journal September 2015


Saudi Hollandi pioneers Vayana mobile solution


Saudi Hollandi is due to go live imminently with a ‘soft launch’ of a new mobile banking platform from India-based supplier Vayana. The bank has been a long-standing user of the supplier’s internet banking platform and will become the largest customer to date for the mobile capabilities, with a full launch by the bank expected in the next month or so. Vayana’s channels platform stems from


another Indian supplier, SolutionNet, which was acquired in 2009. Vayana has trans- formed the platform over the last couple of years, says head of sales and marketing, Rajesh Narasimha. There was less sophisti- cated mobile banking support within the SolutionNet platform prior to this, with the main user being India-based Corporation Bank, but this has been redeveloped for today’s location-based app world, he says. At Saudi Hollandi, the SolutionNet


suite is integrated with Temenos’ T24 core banking system and a number of other applications. The bank is replacing its exist-


ing mobile platform. Vayana’s other main customer in the country, for internet bank- ing, is Arab National Bank (ANB). Vayana itself was set up to focus on supply


chain finance around six years ago, with this still one part of its business. The co-founders were H Srikrishnan, who is ex-Yes Bank and HDFC Bank, and RN Iyer, former co- founder and CEO at cash management specialist, Cashtech, which was sold to Fundtech. Most customers are in India and the


Middle East. Vayana claims 65 installations in total. In Africa, Access Bank in Nigeria and I&M Bank in Kenya are users, with the former now rolling out to multiple countries having signed for its domestic market around four years ago. The company is seeking to expand on this continent and is also eyeing South-East Asia, with discussions underway with a number of potential partners. There are a couple of other opportunities in Africa at present, says Narasimha, and Bank Misr is a user in North Africa.


Sudanese Egyptian Bank goes live with Path Solutions’ iMAL core


Sudanese Egyptian Bank (SEB) has gone live with a new core banking system, iMAL, supplied by Path Solutions. The system supports SEB’s Shari’ah-compliant retail banking opera- tions across its seven branches. iMAL replaced a


legacy solution that was supplied on an outsourced basis. Launching new products and services used to take months of development in the old system – a major hindrance that has now been eliminated, noted Sami Hussein Alra- kha, head of IT at SEB. The bank will now also be able ‘to tailor and modify business processes to our exact requirements, signif- icantly improving operational efficiency’.


22


Khartoum, Sudan © muratd, TrekEarth


The modules implemented comprise


branch automation, financing applica- tion management, retail financing, corpo- rate financing, trade financing, provision- ing, treasury operations and central bank reporting. iMAL has been interfaced to the credit bureau and ATM solutions, and also to the payments system from ProgressSoft.


© IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com Extracting and


migrating the data from the legacy core system was cited as a major challenge by Path Solutions. Nevertheless, the full conversion was com- pleted in a concise timeframe of seven months, emphasised the vendor. Khartoum- based SEB is an Islamic banking enti-


ty set up in 2005 as a subsidiary of Piraeus Bank Egypt. It changed hands over the years, and as of 2014 it is owned by another Sudanese bank, Tadamon Islamic Bank. Tadamon Islamic Bank runs the Penta-


bank core system from a domestic vendor, Financial and Banking Systems (FBS). Tanya Andreasyan


HDFC Bank is among the investors in


Vayana (the supplier’s software underpins the bank’s high-profile corporate banking portal, ENet) so too, more recently, Indian conglomerate, Reliance Industries. Some of Vayana’s technology is being integrat- ed with that of Reliance’s telco subsidiary, Reliance Jio.


Martin Whybrow


ibs news


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56