IBS Journal January 2016


UK government facing £180m EU fine for badly implemented agricultural payments system


The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) may have to cough up £180 million per year in fines due to botching an IT implementation connected to Common Agricultural Payments (CAP). The CAP system, which had cost £145


million at the time of its supposed delivery, was expected to accrue around £44m each year in fines due to under or over payment of farmers. That figure is now expected to balloon as the system struggles to keep up. Ineffective collaboration between gov-


ernment agencies was blamed for a failed launch of a digital only Rural Payments sys- tem in England earlier this year. The system was supposed to be an


example of the Government Digital Service (GDS)’s ability to create effective only- only solutions.


‘Counterproductive’ The National Audit Office (NAO) has now revealed in a new report that Defra, GDS and


© Brian Forbes, Wikipedia


the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will have issues paying farmers accurately and on time. The lifetime costs of the CAP system


have also risen sharply, by 40% to more than £215 million, due to continuing issues and problems with the project. According to the NAO, the CAP project


was flawed from the outset, and was more focused on procuring IT systems than cre- ating the wider transformation required. ‘The department failed to prevent


counterproductive behaviours,’ the report


writes, ‘with deep rifts in working relation- ships and inappropriate behaviour at the senior leadership level at many stages of the programme’s three-year history.’ Despite all the criticism, the NAO has


praised Defra’s quick resolution to the fail- ure of the digital-only platform. Replacing it with a ‘paper-assisted’ digital scheme, it says, increases the likelihood that the majority of farmers will receive their pay- ments in December.


Alex Hamilton


Axlacor aims to replace banks’ booking systems with ‘break- through’ blockchain platform


Axlacor, a UK-based technology developer, has claimed to have created what it calls ‘a major breakthrough in blockchain technology’. The ‘breakthrough’ arrives in the form


of the firm’s platform, Axlacor Neon. The system, according to the vendor, enables banks and other financial institutions to replace their legacy internal booking sys- tems with a format powered by distributed ledger technology. Using blockchain technology, the sys-


tem aims to store, process and run ana- lytics on multiple types of specialist data within a bank. According to Michael Kunstel, CEO of Axlacor, Neon will enable banks to both


process ‘millions of transactions and trades a second’ as well as give compliance and regulatory departments access to analytics that can identify rogue traders. The system can be used across multiple


assets, according to the vendor, including FX, commodities and fixed income. The ultimate aim, it says, is to help banks keep their IT costs down by replacing ‘multiple redundant legacy systems’ with the Neon package. Axlacor is aiming to form a consorti- um of banks working towards this replace- ment goal. ‘We believe that if an integrat- ed system like Neon [had been] in place years ago the Libor scandal would not have occurred’, claims Kunstel.


Alex Hamilton


In brief


Arab Gambian Islamic Bank (AGIB) has gone live on the latest version (R14) of Path Solutions’ core banking platform iMAL. The bank signed for the system in


December 2014 and is the first bank in the country to use iMAL. The system supports Shari’ah-


compliant retail and corporate Islamic financing, trade finance, Islamic treas- ury operations, branch automation, and Swift and RTGS interfaces. Muhammed Jah, chairman of


AGIB, says: ‘2015 is a watershed in the life of our bank. For the first time in AGIB’s 17 years of existence, we can now walk tall as a bank with ultra-modern banking technology.’ AGIB has been in existence since the mid-1990s. It has around 130 employees and five domestic branches. Antony Peyton


Need help on your IT strategy? IBS launches IBS Chat


IBS Intelligence has launched its IBS Chat Forum, a global platform to bring industry participants together on everything related to banking and financial services technology. Log on to www.ibsintelligence.com/ibschat and connect with peers across the globe now!


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