IBS Journal March 2015
WHO? Philippine National Bank WHAT? FIS’s Systematics
Philippine National Bank (PNB) is rolling out FIS’s Systematics core banking sys- tem as part of its plans to consolidate its IT operations with the recently acquired Allied Bank. The acquisition was initiated in 2013, with the IT strategy being fleshed out and finalised last year, and the systems integration now in full swing. Both banks have a long history with
Systematics, dating back to the 1990s, and both have subsequently had mixed results when trying to replace it with newer offer- ings. PNB’s attempts to move to Oracle FSS’s Flexcube, which it signed for in 2006, were moderately more successful, with the bank claiming to have gone live in 2010. However, PNB has suffered with perfor- mance and stability issues with Flexcube, and Systematics was never switched off. Meanwhile, Allied Bank’s attempts to move to Temenos’ T24 were even less fruitful. It signed with the vendor in 2006, but the project never reached its conclusion with the bank reverting back to Systematics.
Brian Birt, managing director of ASE- AN, Japan & Korea at FIS, explains that at the conclusion of the merger, PNB had the choice of either persisting with Flexcube, or to standardise both banks on Systematics. ‘We were contacted by PNB to come in and do an assessment of what it would take to merge the two IT infrastructures into one,’ he says. ‘The assessment was finished in July 2014, after which PNB decided to go ahead and merge on Systematics, so we are into the project now.’ Birt explains that FIS asked the bank to
consider moving to Profile, its more mod- ern solution, but the bank was keen on minimising the risk involved in the project by staying with the older Systematics. ‘Sys- tematics is not our strategic product, we do have a large installed base around the world and in South East Asia, but I think what drove the merger decision was to have a bullet-proof application and plat- form,’ he states. The development work is being carried
out by FIS directly, with some coding done offshore in FIS’s centres in Bangalore. The vendor will use its Xpress integration mid- dleware to provide a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and connect other leg- acy systems in place at the two banks. FIS, incidentally, is working to thin out Xpress, with the functionality being reworked as business objects, in place of the legacy Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) func- tionality. The relationship between PNB and FIS
also extends to payments, as the bank has been running FIS’s Connex switching soft- ware for a couple of years. PNB has out- sourced the management of Connex to FIS, with dedicated staff on premise at the bank 24x7 to support hardware, application man- agement, and operations. Birt suggests that this is now a more common approach for FIS in the region (it has a similar set-up with ING Vysya in India for its Profile core sys- tem), and FIS will also be offering this ser- vice to PNB once it is live with Systematics.
WHO? Spar Nord Bank WHAT? Credoc from Micro Informatique & Technologies
Denmark-based Spar Nord Bank is replacing its front and back office trade finance software with the Windows-based Credoc system from Swiss trade finance specialist, Micro Informatique & Technologies (MIT). On the way out is Misys’ Trade Innova- tion (now under the vendor’s Fusionbanking suite of products), which was taken by the bank in 2005. The software will be deliv- ered on an outsourced basis by local data centre provider, BEC. The project was driven by Spar Nord’s decision to shift
its IT architecture to BEC at the end of last year, says Paul Cohen-Dumani, general manager at MIT. Spar Nord has com- mitted KRO55 million ($8.3 million) to transition to the new hosting facility, and anticipates an annual cost saving of KRO40 million from 2016 ($6.1 million). MIT has a long-standing part- nership with BEC (dating back to the 1990s), with the latter pro- viding a similar outsourcing arrangement for two other Credoc customers, Handelsbanken and Nykredit. Spar Nord’s move to BEC coincided with the bank also looking at potential alterna- tives for its trade finance software, says Dumani. It conducted site visits of MIT’s other local customers, as well as looking at what else was on the market, but ‘they knew that if our system fitted it made sense to go with us’, states Dumani. The agreement for the installation of Credoc was signed
at the end of last year, and Dumani says that the objective is to have the system live by this April. ‘It is a very ambitious project,’
he remarks. The roll-out is a tri-party effort, with representatives from BEC, end-users from the bank and specialists from MIT working to set up the platform. Integration with Spar Nord’s core banking system will also be built, but Dumani says that it is possible that the bank will shift this as part of the move to BEC, so MIT will potentially have to integrate with a new system prior to Spar Nord’s full migration to BEC (scheduled for 2016). ‘BEC will do all of the application management, such as hosting the application and taking care of the server database, whilst we carry out the maintenance of the software,’ adds Dumani. Credoc will support all trade finance instruments at Spar
Nord, including letters of credit, guarantees and collections. The vendor will also provide its web front-end to allow the bank’s customers to initiate trade finance transactions via a user inter- face.
Elsewhere, MIT has now signed up five users of its com-
modity trade finance offering, Trac, which it launched in 2010. The latest is the Swiss operations of a Russian bank which has signed for Credoc and Trac to support its commodity finance business. Dumani adds that one of MIT’s major Trac takers, UBS, completed its roll-out of the system at the end of last year. UBS replaced a spreadsheet-based environment after an earli- er attempt to develop its own custom built platform failed to materialise.
© IBS Intelligence 2015
www.ibsintelligence.com
43
recent orders
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
