g
Islamic financing, Islamic deposits, remittances, MIS, general ledger and internet banking. UAT was to start at the end of February. The implementation had been split into two phases, with deposits, remittances and GL coming first. ‘The first phase we targeted to go live in six months,’ said Wan Hui. This would be in June, for a pilot branch. ‘We can then roll out to all the branches in a very short time.’ He explained that there are some difficulties for core vendors which are unique to Iran. ‘In Iran there are always issues of communication, as people don’t speak much English.’ And while all banks in Iran are Islamic, they follow different Shari’ah rulings to elsewhere in the Middle East or Asia. ‘They consider it Islamic but other countries consider it conventional,’ Wan Hui said, one example being that interest is paid on current accounts. ‘In Malaysia, we practice a lot of what is considered haram [unlawful] in the Middle East, but the Islamic engine and the design architecture we have allows banks to select which concepts they want to follow.’ At Ghavamin, ICBA was to replace a local system which Wan Hui described as ‘messy’. Because of this, data migration would be limited. Customers would be asked to close accounts with the old system and open new ones with ICBA. Thanks to the Azizi and Ghavamin projects, Wan Hui claimed that ICBA was the only international core system which was ‘fully translated and running in Farsi’. A second win in Afghanistan followed in mid-2009, at Bakhtar Bank, a start-up which gained its licence in March. There was also a win at Bank Rakyat in early 2009. Rakyat was
already a client of Infopro, making use of its treasury functionality for Islamic money markets. However, it issued an RFP in 2008 for a system for its Islamic commercial and corporate finance, where it wanted to expand its operations, said Wan Hui. ‘Major vendors were invited to participate, including Microlink, 3i Infotech and Oracle FSS.’ He did not believe that Infopro won the deal because of its prior relationship with the bank, not least because the bank is a client of other vendors, including Microlink: ‘It currently uses Microlink, but this vendor couldn’t provide the requirements the bank wants,’ he stated. On the technology side, Infopro planned by 2010 to have completed
the three year project to incorporate SOA principles and J2EE. An effort was also being made to decrease dependence on Oracle, and
Islamic Report
www.ibsintelligence.com 125
move towards IBM. This was a response to Oracle’s acquisition of I-flex in 2008, which Infopro competes with – Flexcube from Oracle FSS, I-flex’s successor, was one offering considered by Bank Rakyat in Malaysia before it selected ICBA.
The vendor was considering two other things which it believed would help it compete with larger, international rivals. While it receives enquiries from banks further afield, Wan Hui believed that Infopro needed to tackle its perception as a Malaysian company, even though ‘we can beat big names on merit’. He listed Infosys and Misys as competitors at Mawarid Finance. ‘The size of our company is a weakness,’ he said (Infopro had around 200 staff and he valued it at around $40 million). Therefore an option was to look for investors, probably from a larger company. Finally, Infopro was considering opening an R&D centre, possibly in China. This, Wan Hui believed, would ‘help our image’. Nonetheless, new name wins have become even more scarce
in recent years with no new additions in either 2010 or 2011. Its domestic Malaysian market has witnessed an upsurge in core banking activity of late but Infopro has, to date, made losses rather than gains as a result of this. In early 2012, Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) in the country opted to replace ICBA with the ICBS offering from Lebanon-based BML. Then just a couple of months later came the news that Malaysia Building Society Berhad (MBSB) had opted for Silverlake’s SIBS to replace ICBA. Around the same time, it was revealed that CIMB (which used ICBA in Singapore) had decided to standardise on SIBS for deposits and lending. However, 2012 did see a recovery of some sort, with two new deals at Banko Kebayan in the Philippines, and at Krung Thai Bank’s Chinese operations. The former selected the system in June to cover deposits, loans, CIF and general ledger across its 18-branch network, and cut over to the system in February 2013. There were no new-name wins since 2013, but Maybank extended its use of ICBA to its UK and Hong Kong subsidiaries in 2013 and Brunei, Myanmar & New York subsidiaries a year later. Philippine National Bank signed for Infopro’s loan origination system in 2013.
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 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242 |
Page 243 |
Page 244 |
Page 245 |
Page 246 |
Page 247 |
Page 248 |
Page 249 |
Page 250 |
Page 251 |
Page 252 |
Page 253 |
Page 254 |
Page 255 |
Page 256 |
Page 257 |
Page 258 |
Page 259 |
Page 260 |
Page 261 |
Page 262 |
Page 263 |
Page 264 |
Page 265 |
Page 266
