Systems to roll out the system across the bank’s 14 national
branches (plus another five gained with Egyptian Workers Bank). The vendor has built up a base of Islamic banking clients (complementing the 50+ conventional system users). Qatar-based Doha Bank signed with ICS in 2006 and has implemented Banks for Murabaha, Tawaruq and Ijara. In 2007 ICS announced a core system deal, covering all modules, with Elaf Islamic Bank in Iraq. Subsequent signings include Palestine Islamic Bank, Islamic Yemen Kuwait Bank in Yemen, and two further signings for Iraq, Iraqi Islamic Bank and Al Baraka Turk Participation Bank (see below). On the conventional front, July 2007 proved to be a period of activity for ICS Banks, with start-up, Syria Gulf Bank, and merged Nigerian entity, Unity Bank, both going live. Syria Gulf Bank did a ‘soft’ launch in April and had an official opening in mid-June. It looked at around eight systems during the selection and was influenced by ICS’s track- record in the country, where it had Arab Bank and International Bank for Trade & Finance as users. The bank took the full system including core, retail, investment banking, full channel support and MIS. The bank started with five branches but planned to have 40 within a few years.
A win at an investment company, Derayah, saw the vendor back in Saudi Arabia, with an office opening here in early 2008. Derayah took the core banking functionality as well as investment and asset management modules, the project being finished towards the end of 2008. Its position was also strengthened in the familiar territories of
User experience
The Banks system seems to span a wide range of activities and would appear to have a cost advantage over most competitors, offering upgrades to all customers free of charge. In addition, the users seem to be happy and the system appears to have trouble- free implementations. A couple more go-lives in 2010 appeared to bear this out: Arab Jordan Investment Bank went live on Banks in early 2010. Its subsidiaries in Qatar and Cyprus were to follow in a second phase. Cyprus was successfully live by early 2011 and Qatar was due to follow by May that year. Meanwhile, ICS continued to pick up business from existing customers, this time in Palestine due
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Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, where Gulf Commercial Bank was signed. A global deal with Arab Jordan Investment Bank gave ICS a chance to implement Banks in Cyprus as well. ICS continued to work on its offering. An asset management module was launched in 2008, the first taker for which was United Gulf Bank in Bahrain. A data warehouse solution was taken for the first time by existing customer, Lebanese Canadian Bank (since acquired by Société Générale). Other areas of advance were an e-brokerage platform and business intelligence tools. The vendor’s plan for the future was to try to expand its presence in Africa, particularly Francophone areas, and to increase its footprint in the Islamic banking sphere – potential here was demonstrated by the win at Palestine Islamic Bank. However, of ICS’s eight new name customers in 2009, none of these were for Islamic banking. Notable in terms of its ambitions in French-speaking Africa was a contract with Sofibanque, which became the vendor’s second customer in the Democratic Republic of Congo mid-way through the year, with Banks selected ahead of Oracle FSS and Delta Informatique. According to Wail Malkawi, ICS’s VP of business development, this win was due to the completion of the customisation of the system for Francophone countries. Sofibanque, a start-up institution, was to implement most of the Banks system, and would offer both corporate and retail banking. However, the bank did not appear to have launched by late 2011.
to Palestine Islamic Bank’s merger with Al-Aqsa Islamic Bank. The latter, a user of the Banxware core system from another Jordanian vendor, Future Applied Computer Technology (FACT), decided to standardise its systems with the former, and move onto Banks. The conversion of the first two branches, in which FACT resources were involved, was completed at the end of May 2010. New wins, nonetheless, were harder to come by in the geographies where ICS operates in 2010, though the vendor claimed five overall. Two of these were in Iraq, the subsidiary of Turkey-based Vakifbank and Iraqi Islamic Bank, the latter for Islamic banking software. GM of Iraqi Islamic Bank, Basim Kamal Mahdi, told IBS at the time that the vendor’s Banks solution was chosen partly because of its use at five other banks in Iraq ‘where we feel ICS succeeded’. Iraqi Islamic
Islamic Report
www.ibsintelligence.com
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