the system to support the country’s regulations, taxation and products. By March 2006, Misys’ 20-plus years of operation in the Middle East region had seen it accumulate more than 70 banking clients, including a clutch of six or so dedicated Islamic banks. Recognising its efforts, the vendor duly received the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Islamic Finance Award for Global Contribution to Islamic Finance in IT. Awards were presented at the 9th International Islamic Finance Forum gala dinner in Dubai. Although by now Misys had four Islamicised systems in Midas, Equation, Trade Innovation and Opics, it was Equation that attracted the bulk of Shari’ah users. In addition to its full Islamic banking user community, the product has around


Midas


Midas also has some Islamic banking functionality, as mentioned. As with Equation, it has its roots in the 1970s and 1980s and retains the iSeries at its heart, albeit with some Java components then added (this included enhanced centralised processing support). It was essentially a corporate banking back office system at the outset, with wide functionality and product coverage added down the years. Also added was limited support for retail banking. Today, it is positioned as a tried, tested and broad corporate banking back office system, again with Bankfusion as a wrapper within the latest version, Bankfusion Midas. Nearly all activity of late has been on upgrades rather than new sales.


Trade Innovation


With a Shari’ah version available from 2006, Trade Innovation was unveiled by Kapiti in 1994. It was originally written using a Kapiti- derived object-oriented tool called Enigma that produced C++ code. Between about 2004 and 2006 it was migrated to Java. For some time it still required Equation at the back-end, but it became a standalone solution and interfaces were added to Midas and Opics over the next few years. The first release supported DB2 and Sybase; Oracle is now an option. Uptake has mainly been among smaller banks, albeit with a few notable exceptions (including a decision by National Australia Bank to take Trade Innovation for a worldwide roll-out, with the project reaching the final stages in the first half of 2014). March 2006 saw the acquisition of Paris-based Neomalogic, which brought with it an electronic banking trade finance front-end, Global Trade Portal. This was rebranded as Misys Trade Portal and positioned as an integrated solution with Trade Innovation. Personal Finance Portal, a version of Trade Portal for retail banking, was unveiled in 2010. Trade Innovation continues to hold its own in the trade finance sector. Clearly, here the requirements of Shari’ah banking are less onerous than in most other areas of banking.


Opics


The Frustum-derived Opics is a pure wholesale system. It was built by a group of developers who had originally worked on the development of the IMMS back office system, some ten years earlier. They set up an independent, New York-based


164


company, The Frustum Group, and launched Opics in 1993. The first taker was Barclays Bank in Miami. The system was considerably broadened in the next few years, largely through joint developments with users. It was mainly written in Visual Basic and runs on Windows or Unix servers, with Sybase, Oracle or SQL Server. Frustum was acquired by Misys in late 1996.


Islamic Report www.ibsintelligence.com


twelve users in the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia to support Islamic windows/subsidiaries as well as their conventional operations. These banks include the aforementioned United Arab Bank, Arab Bangladesh Bank and United Bank in Egypt. In 2008, Cairo-based Islamic bank, Egyptian Saudi Finance Bank, signed for Equation. Misys was helped by the fact that it was able to use United Bank as a reference. The latter, formed from the merger of three banks, had an Islamic window supported by Equation. By 2009 a clutch of Islamic Equation users had chosen to upgrade to Bankfusion Equation. Those now cited included Ahli United Bank in Bahrain, Habib Bank in Pakistan, Islamic Bank of Britain, Saudi Investment Bank in Saudi Arabia, and Bank Jabar in Indonesia.


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