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Head office: 36 boulevard de Vincennes, 94120 Fontenay-sous-Bois, Paris, France Tel: +33 (0) 1 43 94 94 01 Email:
sales@sab2i.com Other offices: Lebanon, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Monaco, Tahiti, Tunisia, UAE, Vannes (Brittany) Website:
www.sab-tm.com Twitter: @sab_banking Contacts: Frederic Durand Cazelles (SVP, private banking and custody); Bernard Lesueur (SVP, French market) Founded: SAB 1989. Samic 1981 Ownership: Privately owned Number of staff: 670
An Islamic variant
Like its fellow French vendor Delta, SAB also completed an Islamic variant to its solution in 2008. This is designed to be an add-on for existing clients or a standalone solution. SAB had received some interest from banks in France for such a product, but had supposedly lined up an existing client in East Africa and a new site in North Africa. The latter is now believed to be a bank in Algeria which subsequently failed to gain central bank approval. ‘We started last year with user specifications. We tried to work with
different experts in this area to see how we could design this new solution based on existing modules, and how we could propose a new solution off the shelf,’ said Philippe Schintowski, senior vice president of SAB, at the time of the launch. The product’s functionality was meant to cover most of the usual Islamic financial transactions. This included, on the deposits side, mudarabah and qard hasan. The functionality would also provide for murabaha, ijara, istisna and bai al-ina.
Any new Islamic solution would need to be passed as halal by qualified Islamic scholars. ‘We worked with an expert in Islamic banking from the Middle East. We do not yet have certification but
An Islamic client
SAB’s first Islamic banking client arrived in 2009 in the complex Iranian market. This came in the form of Karsazan Ayandeh and was, indeed, the only known Iranian core banking win of the year for a non- domestic supplier. Karsazan Ayandeh was a credit institution with around 300,000 customers and 140 branches, which was moving to become a fully-fledged bank. The deal was gained in the middle of the year through a local partner, with the addition of Farsi language support one part of the project. The overall project started in October and was due for completion around the end of 2010. The project at the bank has, predictably, moved at a slower pace
we have worked with people closely involved in this matter. I do not think certification will be hard to obtain,’ said Schintowski. According to Schintowski, SAB planned to target Middle Eastern banks from its office in Beirut, but he was also hopeful the solution would attract interest in North and East Africa and Europe. Schintowski also hoped the product would gain traction in France. ‘We didn’t target this market first, but we have some contacts.’ When considering the possibility of an Islamic solution in this country, he reported that SAB had already had, ‘some requests for Islamic financing modules’. He believed the potential for a Shari’ah-compliant solution in France should be ‘huge’, because of the country’s large Muslim population, estimated as high as ten per cent of its 60 million people. However, France has lagged behind some countries, notably the UK, in embracing Islamic finance. Schintowski saw two reasons for this. One is economic: ‘Muslim people in France are on small wages. They cannot afford banking services’. The second is a cultural point. France’s integrationist social model deems every citizen to be French, so theoretically all should be content with the one banking model. Therefore, ‘I wonder if French banks are embarrassed with proposing such offer to a niche market’, he said.
than planned but there has been progress. Whilst the doors to the Iranian banking market might be shut for some suppliers, there is an opportunity for others. SAB views it as ‘strategic’, said Ryta El Khoury, regional sales executive at SAB, in March 2013. ‘Iranian banking is in major need of an international banking package. This need has been expressed throughout our contacts with the different banks and financial institutions in the country’. By this stage, Karsazan Ayandeh had around 300 branches, 800,000 accounts and 800 employees. El Khoury said the institution planned to increase its client base to one million within a few years. It had been a challenging project on many fronts, she admitted, including the lack of experience on the customer side in dealing with such
Islamic Report
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