to have bought into this. It has seen the company replace elements of Thaler with SAP components, around accounting and reporting (the latter being SAP’s Bank Analyzer). C&W has also added support for SAP’s Netweaver integration and business process platform, although it also supports the lower cost JBoss and IBM’s Websphere. It was stated that the partnership would allow C&W to focus on value-added areas. C&W was also a member of SAP’s finance sector Industry Value Network (IVN), a grouping of banks, services companies and software suppliers through which SAP was seeking to define generic web services. C&W then became a member in May 2008 of the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), an
First Shari’ah deal
In terms of Islamic banking, a first Shari’ah banking deal came in 2009 at Malaysia-based Sabah Credit Corporation. C&W’s Islamic banking module had been built over the preceding couple of years with a Malaysian IT consulting and outsourcing firm, IA Group. The two entities were introduced by SAP, with the resultant offering utilising C&W’s platform and methodology, as well as IA’s expertise in Islamic finance and large-scale implementations in the region. The solution was to be targeted at top-tier state and private banks in Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries in the area. It is not aimed at smaller banks, co-operatives and microfinance institutions, stated Anselm de Souza, the vendor’s managing director for Asia Pacific. Rather than tweaking conventional modules and customising some of the system’s pieces to make them Shari’ah-compliant, C&W invested heavily in R&D to develop a fully-fledged Islamic banking module, he said. Initially, the vendor attempted to complete this alone with some help from external consultants, but later felt this was not the right course of action. Hence, a partnership with an expert in the Islamic finance field was deemed a better route. Both parties worked on the project in Malaysia, with IA leading the implementation. De Souza stated at the time that the ultimate aim was to widen the
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independent version of IVN, albeit with SAP still heavily involved. The first taker of Thaler on SAP, signing in mid-2008, was Delta Lloyd Bank in Belgium. Thaler on SAP was also the focus for the project at existing client, Banque de la Poste, and at another postal-related recruit, signed in 2008, Entreprise des Postes et Télécommunications (EPT) in Luxembourg. By mid-2011, both EPT and Delta Lloyd were live on the solution.
Under its own steam, C&W has rewritten the front-end of Thaler, within a project called jThaler, with the resultant version now called Thaler NG (Next Generation). However, the core back-end is still in Cobol, with any change here still some way off.
geographical scope, to cover Europe and the Middle East. Thaler Islamic Banking Solution went live at Sabah Credit in January 2010. According to C&W, the scope for the initial live date was to deliver the bank’s then current functional requirements (conventional banking). The Islamic banking modules were subsequently delivered in Q3 2010 as part of the next phase. By mid-2011, Sabah Credit’s i-Executive personal financing facility was live on the system. C&W’s spokesperson told IBS that ‘Sabah Credit’s intention is to continue to develop its portfolio of products and services in Islamic banking’. For the time being, it remains C&W’s sole Islamic banking client. C&W enjoyed a solid few years at a time when many others struggled. This was in terms of both new name deals and new engagements with existing customers. Headcount was steady through the 2008 recession onwards, at around 500. C&W CEO, Marc De Groote, told IBS that C&W had lost about 30 per cent of its professional services activity, the result of banks halting ongoing projects. As such, C&W employees found themselves returning from projects at banks. Rather than shedding those staff, C&W invested them in the development of Thaler, De Groote claimed. This meant that 200 staff were working on Thaler rather than about 100-120 before the financial crisis, and saw Thaler move away from the client- server architecture towards SOA, as well as improvements to web interfaces and other facets. C&W remained profitable throughout
Islamic Report
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