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first win in South-East Asia. BSN has over nine million accounts and around 400 branches. This project was part of a large-scale IT modernisation worth$32 million to replace its’ core banking platform. The project was Islamic in focus and was to cover conventional interest calculation and Islamic profit calculation, loans management, Islamic financing, transfers and payments, branch operations, integration and delivery channels, with a local software house to supply a loan origination application. The deal was won versus local vendors, Infopro and Silverlake, although a number of large international vendors, including FIS, Oracle FSS and Temenos, also bid for the project at an earlier stage. This would be the bank’s second attempt to replace its legacy software, following a failed effort to implement the SIB2000 core system from Italian vendor, Elsag. The selection process included a proof of concept, reference site visits to Commercial Bank of Kuwait and Bank of Jordan, and a visit to BML’s development site in Beirut. The official signing ceremony took place on 17th January 2012 and the project was planned for completion within two years.
In late 2013, a deal with International Bank of Somalia was announced. This Islamic bank, which had also considered Temenos’ T24, was targeting a launch of February 2014 with ICBS. The other Islamic deal of 2013 came, less predictably, from Sweden, where a start-up, Aman Bank, took the full range of the ICBS modules. It was planning to open for business in July 2014. Temenos was understood to be evaluated for this project as well as Path Solutions. BML’s non- Islamic deal in 2013 was with Sharjah-based Investbank, one of the oldest banks in the UAE, which chose ICBS to be installed at its new subsidiary in Beirut. For its domestic operations, Investbank was a long-standing user of Oracle FSS’s Flexcube. It offers a range of retail banking services, with a focus on commercial banking (particularly project and trade finance). Go-live was provisioned for September the same year. Progress has been steady for BML over the years as it has overcome early obstacles and moved its product forward in terms of functionality and technology. There have been issues of perception to be tackled and the mainstream international suppliers have sought to encroach on BML’s traditional territory. These vendors have tended to win the larger deals, albeit not always resulting in successful projects, leaving the likes of BML to work in the small to mid-tier, where its lower cost and local market knowledge are important. However, the downturn in the Middle East market meant the likes of BML were pushed to focus their efforts further afield. The win at BSN in Malaysia was therefore an important one for the vendor, with the project extending into 2013. At the end of 2013, the bank was heading for project
completion in July 2014. Cortas Islamic Bank selected BML Istisharat’s ICBS core banking system in 2016, with the implementation predicted to be completed by Q3 2017. Cortas is the tenth bank in Iraq to have selected ICBS as a core banking system. ICBS will provide the bank is accounts, batch processing, deposits and branh management, as well as consumer and corporate Murabaha, Ijarah, Istinaa, Tawarruq and Al Qard Al Hassan. In addition to the ICBS core banking module, it has also got Credit Facilities and Import Letters of Credit. BML Istisharat has deepened its relationship with Union Bank of Iraq, a client since 2008, by selling the acquired ICBS ATM/ POS Interface module. BML installed the ICBS - Bloomberg interface module for interest rate and instrument to Central Bank in Beirut, an existing client since 1997. BLOM Bank- France, an ICBS user since 1993, ordered m-ICBS, the mobility functions of ICBS on both Android and iPhone for its subsidiaries in UK, France, Romania, Dubai, Sharjah and Qatar.
Since 2016 BML Istisharat claims that it has won two new deals at
Peterhouse Securities in UK and Liberty International Bank at Abu Dhabi in UAE with two prospects lined up in Malaysia and Malta and its intension is to consolidate its position in these two new geography. It also wants to increase its market share in its traditional markets of Middle east, Europe and Africa. In 2017, BML was seen to be procuring significant number of customer wins from Africa and the Middle East. Three Iraqi banks chose ICBS, two start-ups namely Al Qurtas Islamic Bank and International Islamic Bank went live with the system. Al Qurtas Islamic Bank, a start up bank in Iraq implemented the core, branch, Islamic financing and international banking modules. The third, National Bank of Iraq – Baghdad (NBI), an existing customer of ICBS, upgraded its system with Safe Watch (Anti-Money Laundering) and Sigcap (Signature recognition) modules. Other customer wins were Excillis Finance - Lebanon, and Bank of Jordan (Amman). BML Istisharat had a win at existing client BLC bank in Lebanon where it replaced legacy system Ambit Treasury Management (Quantun) from FIS with treasury system of ICBS. The new system’s modules support placement/deposits with corresponding banks, interbank transfers, fixed income and Swift integration. A country extension was with Bank of Jordan, which choose the solution for its newly established subsidiary in Bahrain. An interesting aspect of this implementation was that the core platform was hosted on the Oracle cloud, in process becoming the first financial institution in the Middle East to do so. The cutover happened in April 2018.
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