IBS Journal June 2015
PKB Privatbank live with Ambit Private Banking system from Sungard
PKB Privatbank in Switzerland has gone live with a new core banking system, Sungard’s Ambit Private Banking (formerly Apsys). It has replaced an in-house development that has been in place at the bank for 30+ years. ‘Since the go-live in April we’ve had minor crises here and there a few times, and a number of times we had a few hours where we experienced some downtime problems, but there has been no major blockage so far,’ says Matteo Saladino, COO of PKB and head of the project. Saladino took over the COO role on 1st May, follow- ing the retirement of the previous COO after a 40-year stint. Saladino has been with PKB since 2011 as head of special projects and controls unit. The old system is now in ‘view only’
mode for historical data. There are no plans to shut it down completely as being ful- ly home-grown it costs the bank ‘next to nothing to maintain’. The new platform, Ambit, has the data for the last year migrat-
but the bulk continues to reside in the leg- acy system. Saladino emphasises that the
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ning the legacy core system throughout the years. The bank has 25 people in its IT department, of whom ten focus on net- work/telecoms, and 15 are software devel-
Switzerland, Antigua and Panama. Saladino explains that the project to
move to a new core banking system was business-driven. The legacy system was ‘tailor-made and stable’ from the IT point of view, but it was limiting the bank on the business side. ‘As we were growing and gaining more international clients, we were really struggling to keep up with all the legal and compliance issues,’ Saladino says. ‘Most of the time was spent on writing requirements for the system instead of cre- ating new products and services.’ PKB evaluated three possible routes:
business process outsourcing (BPO), IT outsourcing (ITO) and an onsite deploy-
- and the bank felt that it is the banks that - ment that opt for outsourcing. So, an onsite © IBS Intelligence 2015
www.ibsintelligence.com 11
went through a complete overhaul over the last couple of years; it now has C++ for the core and Windows for the CRM com- ponent). ‘In my opinion, Ambit is the best system for a mid-sized bank in Switzerland today,’ he says. Three months were then spent on
well-spent,’ he comments, ‘as it gave us the
Matteo Saladino, PKB Privatbank
deployment was deemed to be best for PKB.
Of twelve recipients of the RFI, four
were shortlisted for an RFP (all Switzer- land-based developers). The list was then narrowed to two and these were invited for workshops. This stage of the process last- ed around six months as the bank’s team wanted to take time and really get to know
Sungard’s Ambit core system was the
preferred option, states Saladino, as the bank liked its functionality set and its ‘mod- ern underlying technology’ (the system
took under two years to complete. Whilst the legacy system was ‘highly personal- ised’ for PKB, the bank decided not to go to the same level of customisation for Ambit. A number of internal processes were reviewed and aligned with the system, but in some cases a compromise had to be struck and the system had to be accom- modated to keep the existing processes. ‘We tried to convince people to relinquish the old processes, but in some cases we just had to give up, and move on with the implementation,’ he recalls. ‘The mind-set is
The bank carried out the project
under its own steam, with no integrators involved. Sungard provided onsite consul- tancy services.
IN BRIEF
Sopra Banking Software has gained a new customer in Africa, La Banque Sahélo- Saharienne pour l’Investissement et le Commerce (BSIC). The banking group’s head
BSIC has embarked on a group-wide technology overhaul, and the new system
to be implemented is Sopra Banking Software’s Amplitude, which stems from the French vendor Delta Informatique (acquired by Sopra in 2011). The system, formerly known as Delta-Bank, is well-established across French-speaking Africa. Société Générale, for instance, has been running it across its wide regional network for many years. More recent takers include Orabank, a West African banking group; Senegal- based Banque Nationale pour le Développement Economique (BNDE), Cameroon-based Compagnie Equatoriale pour l’Epargne et le Crédit d’Investisse- ment (Comeci) and Kwanza Capital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The project at BSIC is expected to last three years and is set to harmonise the
was quoted by a source close to the project. On the way out is the Smartbank system from a small Egypt-based vendor, B&F Soft. BSIC is the largest client of B&F Soft, and its Smartbank core has been used throughout the group for around 15 years. It is understood that Temenos testant for the project.
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ibs news
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