IBS Journal May 2015


market does open up in light of the recent Iran Accord, it will bring its own complex- ities for any would-be system providers, including the Solar Hijri calendar (the offi- cial calendar of Iran and Afghanistan) for day-to-day calculations, the application of ratified profit rates to credit or savings periods, the need for right-to-left screens, and support for the Persian language. The banks have also suffered through years of sanctions and high inflation, so are mostly loss-making, with high rates of bad loans. Nevertheless, ITS is optimistic about


the prospects here. The improvement in the relations between the US and Iran is ‘a confidence boost’, says Mohamed. ‘Lifting of sanctions on Iran could pave a new era of Islamic banking possibilities.’ In Africa, Path’s Kateeb feels the mar-


ket will continue to evolve but without the amount of activity of past years. The vendor’s Gambian win, its first in the coun- try, came at Arab Gambian Islamic Bank. It is the only Islamic bank in the country, has five branches plus internet banking, and has been around since the mid-1990s. It offers murabaha, mudaraba, mushara- ka (joint venture funds), istisna, and real estate development. In Europe, there have recently been


reports of an imminent launch of Kuveyt Turk Bank AG, which would be Germany’s first fully-fledged Islamic bank. The bank hopes to attract the country’s four million


Muslims (the largest Muslim community in Europe). Local vendor, Pass Consulting, is supplying the bank with the German core banking part, including accounting, SEPA payments, regulatory reporting and AML, and will also provide the complete data centre services. In the UK, where Islamic banking is


well-established, Al Rayan Bank (former- ly Islamic Bank of Britain), reported a 55 per cent increase in applications for its savings accounts by non-Muslims during 2014 in the wake of the Barclays rate fixing scandal. The bank is a long-standing user of Misys’ Equation core system, and whilst there are no plans at present to replace it, there is a lot of focus on modernisation around the core (e.g. channel banking). Central Asia has proved very slow,


says Kateeb, for reasons that he finds hard to pinpoint. Path had expected a lot more activity and, while there are a couple of interesting deals in the offing in Indonesia, the region has so far failed to live up to the supplier’s expectations. Indonesia has the world’s largest


Muslim population, but its Islamic bank- ing segment comprises just 5.5 per cent of the country’s overall banking market, according to Ernst & Young’s World Islamic Banking Competitiveness Report 2014/15. Indonesian authorities are mooting the creation of an Islamic ‘mega bank’. This would be via the merger of the Islamic


‘With increasing competition, a lot of Islamic banks are focusing


on their customer experience.’ Fadi Yazbeck, Temenos


Fadi Yazbeck, Temenos


34 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


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