looked at the likes of Fermat and FRS, said the supplier’s VP, regional development, Frédéric Simons. FinArch’s ability to demonstrate a working solution and its business and regulation knowledge were cited by the bank as reasons for its choice.
2006 also found FinArch in the midst of a large project at
Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe (see earlier sections). This organisation was a joint venture between Daiwa Securities Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Following the first phase of a project that saw the implementation of a single static data layer, a second was for a single sub-ledger layer, with FinStudio selected for this. This would ultimately streamline accounting and financial reporting. Planning started in late 2004 and Daiwa looked at a number of systems. It came up with a shortlist of four, then two, with the finalists set a couple of proof of concept tests. It opted for FinArch because of the relative maturity of the product and the knowledge of the staff, with the latter particularly coming through during the proof of concept stage. ‘They were generally very knowledgeable about what we were trying to achieve,’ said technology division managing director at the time, Graeme Muirhead. The new infrastructure would support not only London but also the rest of Daiwa Securities’ international operations, across Paris, Milan, Geneva, Frankfurt, Madrid and Bahrain. Another signing came from the Dutch Friesland Bank
which opted for FinStudio to replace its compliance solution to answer its capital management regulatory
reporting
requirements. Bank of India’s Belgian office also selected the FinArch solution, with the decision being based on the recommendations of a number of other Indian banks operating in Belgium. The vendor was to provide the greenfield site with an integrated regulatory reporting solution. In late 2010, HSBC selected FinStudio to support liquidity risk calculation and reporting, initially for the UK and US. The solution was to provide HSBC with a common data architecture in which to store, manage and enrich data from all parts of the business. This is an important customer, with FinStudio becoming one of the bank’s ‘Clear Choice’ solutions within its One HSBC strategy, whereby the bank is seeking to standardise on a small number of applications around the world. HSBC has been extending the breadth of functionality it uses, for IFRS and Federal Reserve reporting, linking it to its HUB core banking system that is used around the world. It has also been increasing its number of sites, with roll-out in Asia, to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and, in the first half of 2012, India.
rFrame
The rFrame product had a chequered few years within Logica (something that might appear hard to achieve with a regulatory reporting offering). First, a rewrite under way at the original developer, CMG, at the time of the takeover, was canned (it would have produced a multi-jurisdictional, Java version). Then Logica embarked on a new rewrite, went public
on the plans, launched the replacement, but then quietly withdrew this and sought to revive rFrame. Logica’s intended new regulatory reporting solution,
Insurance and Banking Reporting Architecture (IBRA), was launched in March 2011. The vendor had been working on the product for about 18 months ahead of the launch. It was described as a brand new development, although the team had utilised some parts of CMG’s previous similar rewrite attempt. The result was meant to be a Java and Oracle-based solution with n-tier application architecture. The vendor intended to target its existing user base to begin with, which comprised financial institutions in the UK, Ireland and Germany. For the latter market, Logica offered a product called Samba and, indeed, the bulk of its reporting customers – 550 – were in Germany. In Ireland and the UK, Société Générale and Lloyds were named among 100 or so users of rFrame. Logica said at the time of the IBRA launch that it would continue to maintain and develop rFrame and Samba in response to certain regulatory reporting changes that may come into effect in the next two years. However, in other cases, such as with CRD4, the plan was to deliver the reporting capability only in IBRA. Around 18 months after the launch of IBRA, it was clear
that Logica had quietly dropped this new regulatory reporting solution, at least for the time-being. Instead, it has reverted to rFrame and Samba Plus. IBRA had been delayed and was being reviewed, confirmed Logica, in late September 2012. Feedback from the existing clients was apparently that the regulatory changes that were on the way were too many and too large to contemplate replacing platforms. As a result, the new requirements were being done in the old platforms. There had been no decision about whether IBRA would be revived. All in all, rFrame had proved fairly resilient, given it had
already survived the 2002 CMG attempt to rewrite it. With IBRA, one key aim was to provide regulatory reporting for a much wider number of countries, thereby competing with the likes of FRSGlobal and Sopra but, for the time-being at least, the focus was back on the regulatory offerings for UK/Ireland and Germany.
The sale of the rFrame business to Wolters & Kluwer happened in November 2013, this merely marked by a two paragraph announcement from the new owner. It has slotted into OneSumX, where there was already the competing system derived from Spring, and added another clutch of customers to the ever expanding Wolters & Kluwer set.
User experiences – OneSumX
In terms of progress with the combined OneSumX, Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB), the Dutch subsidiary of Russia’s financial services group, Alfa Bank, took this in early 2014. There was an official selection process that included an RFP, said Kris Van Bavel, VP of sales, EMEA, at Wolters Kluwer. ‘This is a good example of integration of various components,’
Risk Management Systems & Suppliers Report |
www.ibsintelligence.com 157
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
