User experience
By the end of 2004, Infopro claimed around 70 client institutions in at least 24 countries, spanning Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Africa, with over 2000 modules in more than 1000 branches. Of these clients, around 50 were said to be conventional system users, with around 20 deploying the Islamic system. The first client was Affin ACF Finance in Malaysia which took both Islamic and conventional products in 1990. Loyalty appeared to be a mark of Infopro’s clients. For example, ICB Financial Group started implementing the conventional system in 1996 in Ghana and Guinea. It subsequently moved on to a further six countries. In 2004, ICB signed a global agreement to upgrade all these countries, plus a number of others, to the latest release of the system, enabling the group to link up all branches in each country. ICB also signed a 13-country deal for the vendor’s e-Banking solution in late 2006. As with ICBA, the roll-out was scheduled to be tackled one country at a time.
Another client is RHB Bank in Malaysia. It offers consumer, corporate, commercial and treasury banking across a number of regions. It first implemented ICBA in Thailand in 1996 and the following year it went live in Brunei. In 2002, RHB Bank in Singapore replaced its in-house system with the complete suite of conventional products, enabling it for the first time to link up all branches in the region. The system duly went live and, as a vote of confidence, RHB signed a 200-branch deal for the Islamic banking product from Infopro for the home market towards the end of 2004.
New customers and setbacks
An off-the-record win later in 2007, at a bank in Iran, looked like consolidating Infopro’s credentials as a truly international supplier. Even so, the majority of Infopro’s clients are still based in its hotly contested home market where Silverlake Axis has traditionally represented Infopro’s main domestic rival, although the latter would probably point to the age of its competitor’s offering and
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The company has been growing steadily since it started, only briefly diverted by the crisis that hit the Asian market in 1998 – even then the company claimed it was investing actively in R&D. Perhaps as a result of the Asian market collapse, Infopro sought to move further afield and started to establish partnerships, with results starting to appear from the end of 2003. New contracts were won at that time at RCE Capital in Malaysia and
Toyota Financial Services in China for the conventional product, with the Islamic product sold to KFH Ijarah in Malaysia, and both sold to Toyota Capital, also in Malaysia. 2005 saw ABN Amro in Malaysia (which became RBS) take the supplier’s lending module and Bank Rakyat sign for the Islamic treasury support. A further win came at Trust Bank in Ghana, where Infopro beat a number of international suppliers to replace the bank’s existing system, I-flex’s Microbanker. The fact that Infopro already had two customers in the area was considered to be a factor. Other successes during that period involved Financial Corporation, Papua New Guinea; MIDF Finance, Malaysia; and the aforementioned RHB Islamic Bank, also Malaysia. In February 2007, the supplier and its implementation partner at that time, Dubai-based Futech Systems, scored a notable, if not Islamic, win in Afghanistan. The vendor’s conventional Oracle-based ICBA system was to be installed (and is now live) as the core system for the 18-branch Kabul-based Azizi Bank. Given the problems of the region, the system was to be hosted initially by Futech in Dubai. A win in UAE, at Mawarid Finance, followed. This time the bank took the core system with all modules including internet banking.
the advantage that this gives ICBA. 2009 also saw Path begin to successfully encroach on this duo’s home territory, with wins in Malaysia at FEE Bank and Bank Muamalat. It is not clear what happened to the 2007 Iranian deal but a win was secured in this country in late 2008/early 2009. This was at Ghavamin Finance & Credit Institution, Infopro’s third in the wider Middle East region, following Azizi Bank and Mawarid, reflecting Infopro’s strategy of expanding away from its native market. The project in Iran started in early 2009. Modules to be implemented included
Islamic Report
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