IBS Journal February 2015


iCreate rebrands as Fintellix; plans US launch


iCreate, an India-based company that spe- cialises in business intelligence (BI), has changed its name to Fintellix. The compa- ny rebrand coincides with a new market- ing push into the US based on a new cloud delivery model, with Australia and other developed countries to follow, says CEO Vivek Subramanyam. iCreate as a brand was India-focused,


Subramanyam says, and its website had an Indian domain suffix. He also points out that elsewhere in the world there are other companies with a similar name. ‘We want to ensure that, as we expand to new markets, we have a singular identity that is representative of the business we are in, which is financial intelligence,’ he explains. There is also an effort to reduce confusion about the company’s products. Formerly the products had names like Bizscore (for business intelligence, analytics and perfor- mance management) and DRisk (for risk and compliance management) but they will henceforth be marketed as Fintellix Regulatory Reporting, Fintellix Market Risk and so on. ‘We want a singular brand that resonates with the marketplace,’ he adds. Subramanyam believes that there is an


Vivek Subramanyam, Fintellix


opportunity in the US for a ‘platform that is an entire analytical workbench for enter- prise, providing a solution for all ways of extracting value out of data whether it’s for business purposes or risk management and compliance, with a single investment’. The firm will be targeting banks which have assets of between $1 billion and $25 bil- lion. ‘We felt that if you look at the options they have, nothing comes at a price point


IN BRIEF


Kazakhstan-based Altyn Bank has gone live with a new core banking system, CBS from Colvir Software Solutions. The bank, formerly known as HSBC Kazakhstan, switched to the new system on 2nd December, and became the first taker of the lat- est version of CBS, known as CBS-3plus. It incorporates new modules, such as credit front office and CRM. All in all, the project included over 40 modules. The implementation was completed ‘quite quickly’, according to a spokesper-


son at Colvir. The work kicked off in late April 2014, not long after HSBC announced its intention to sell its Kazakh subsidiary to a local entity, Halyk Bank. Halyk is one of the largest players in the country’s banking market and a long-standing custom- er of Colvir. Halyk purchased HSBC Kazakhstan for $176 million, with the deal closing in


November. It was decided to keep it as a standalone subsidiary and by the end of that month the bank’s new brand – Altyn Bank – was unveiled. There was also a management shake-up, including the arrival of a new chief executive, Askar Smagu- lov. He joined the bank from, Halyk Bank, where he was deputy CEO. Altyn Bank employs around 600 people and is ranked 17th largest in the coun-


try in terms of assets. Meanwhile, the system selection at another medium-sized bank in Kazakhstan,


Housing Construction Savings Bank (Zhilstroysberbank), is nearing completion. Colvir is understood to be in the final, alongside a Russian developer, CFT, with its CFT-Bank offering.


that these banks can afford, even though there is the aspiration to do it.’ The cloud delivery model is Fintellix’s answer to this. Cloud should make it easy for banks to come on-board and negate the need for new infrastructure. ‘We feel this is going to give access to advanced technology, to a larger segment that nobody is truly focused on.’ Subramanyam claims that the work


has been completed internally to prepare the platform for the cloud and Fintellix is in the process of signing with a data cen- tre provider. There is also a search under way for partners in different regions of the US. There should be three steps to the expansion of Fintellix in the US, Sub- ramanyam explains. The first step will be finding early adopters and then another ten or so in each region where the compa- ny has a partner. At this point Fintellix can make more investments in its data centre capacity and other infrastructure, which should allow for an easier transfer of new customers onto the platform. ‘Given the size of the market, I see getting from ten customers to 100 in twelve to 18 months,’ Subramanyam believes. The company is also planning a


launch in Australia. Beyond that it is look- ing for other suitable countries. The crite- ria are that there need to be a large num- ber of banks in a market which is already showing signs of cloud uptake, and where the central bank holds the banks to strin- gent regulatory standards. For most emerging markets, ‘we don’t know if it will have the same value. We are tracking them for new regulatory mandates before making an entry’, says Subramanyam. The company has a broad customer base in a number of countries. In India, it claims to be the market leader for compli- ance automation solutions, with users like HDFC, Indusind Bank and Dhanlaxmi Bank. Bank Mandiri in Indonesia is a customer. There are also users in South Africa, Viet- nam, the Middle East and the UK among others. It has signed a couple of deals with tier one banks recently which can’t be named yet. It has also recently completed a project with VPBank in Vietnam, to over- haul the bank’s data management model and set up a data governance framework (see opposite page).


14 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


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