Fabrizio


Romano,


Fernbach


manager


for the Benelux


region, said the bank was looking to modernise its whole accounting system landscape and to deploy a central financial repository. In particular, he said deploying FlexFinance was Mizuho’s response to the introduction of the new European COREP (Common Reporting) and FINREP regulations. These introduced for the first time the need for complex pre- calculation to generate the necessary reports. The Fernbach solution, said Romano, would offer Mizuho automated calculation and report filing. This was expected to reduce processing times, project risks and costs. Mizuho would also take Fernbach’s FlexFinance Basel II functionality. Prior to signing with Fernbach, Mizuho also called in FRS and Financial Architects.


In 2009, Fernbach bagged contracts with Austria-based


Volksbank AG (one of the country’s largest banking groups), five private banks and four mortgage banks. All of these selected the FlexFinance Lending credit system to cover their end-to-end lending operations. The solution was to be used on


A broader base


Fernbach has been focusing on gaining a broader geographical footprint. It has made inroads into the UK with its liquidity risk management solution, Liquidity Risk Appliance, which is aimed at the mid-tier banking sector. Combining FlexFinance liquidity software with an HP and Intel server platform (HP’s Proliant and Integrity blade systems), the solution was involved in a number of proofs of concept with UK banks, said Mike Hamm, the company’s MD, in 2010. With the introduction of new liquidity risk management rules by the UK regulator, the FSA, it was hoped that there would be plenty of business opportunities for Fernbach in the UK. A London office had been opened in 2006. There were also plans to take the Liquidity Risk Appliance


to other markets in Europe and further afield to Asia and Australasia, where the regulators’ focus was also now on liquidity risk management (Hamm cited Japan and Australia as examples). Fernbach is also proactive with its IFRS accounting and


reporting software. The markets of Latin America, Asia, the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe were the main targets in 2010. This was spurred on by the adoption of IFRS in these regions. In Russia, Hamm was participating in a joint briefing with PwC and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for Russian banks, ‘focusing on the adoption of the IFRS principles in parallel with the local accounting rules’. Fernbach had also hired a specialist to help it make inroads in the Chinese market and, for Latin America, the company had recently recruited two people – a Spanish speaking ex- KPMG specialist and a Portuguese speaker from Brazil. Also,


a hosted basis and deployed at the data centre of Fernbach’s partner, ARZ Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH. Interestingly, ARZ originally competed against Fernbach in the early stages of Volksbank’s tender, ‘going head to head’, according to Thomas Platt, managing director, FlexFinance Lending, at Fernbach. ARZ was also a supplier of the previous lending system at Volksbank. ‘It was a surreal situation sometimes, because on some occasions ARZ actually came along with Volksbank to our customer reference sites.’ In his view, it was ‘the strength of Fernbach’s reference sites’


that ensured the deal with Volksbank. The vendor organised visits to Deutsche Bank and Raiffeisen. The latter was of particular interest, Platt pointed out, as the project there was ongoing during Volksbank’s selection period, and Volksbank visited the site every month to monitor the progress. ‘These were very similar projects,’ explained Platt. ‘The software also covered the lending business, was also deployed on the hosted basis [another IT centre, R-Solution, was used instead of ARZ] and covered all members and subsidiaries of the group.’


Fernbach was now ‘in the final stages of finalising an exclusive reseller for Brazil’, added Hamm. Also in 2010, together with a local partner, Egabi Solutions, FlexFinance IFRS was launched in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East in time for compliance with the IFRS deadline in this region. In 2009, Fernbach was in the process of setting up the


aforementoned Korean subsidiary and was recruiting and training local staff. KT FDS’s role would continue to be marketing and selling Fernbach’s products. Since then, there appears to have been a degree of


rationalisation of the product set, in part reflected in the partnership with SAP, and a concerted attempt to build up the partner network.


In terms of customer base too, Fernbach gradually expanded to other geographical regions. In August 2015, FERNBACH expanded its customer base in Eastern Europe through one of the largest banks in Romania, that selected its impairment solution, the FlexFinance Impairment Workbench. 2016 witnessed Fernbach wining customers in the MEA


region. In February 2016, one of ten subsidiaries of a banking conglomerate in Central Africa, chose the IFRS solution to upgrade its existing corporate reporting standards. FERNBACH worked with KPMG who was in charge of all IFRS- relevant consulting services in relation to the workflows, as well as the development of the customer’s ETL. In July 2016, FERNBACH was selected by a leading bank in the UAE, to deploy its IFRS 9, Liquidity, FTP (Fund Transfer Pricing) and stress testing solutions. FERNBACH was the preferred choice for the bank, as it had been using FERNBACH`s Basel 2 and ALM (Asset Liability Management) solutions since 2010. In September, FERNBACH won a contract from a leading banking group in West Africa. The bank, which operates in 36


Risk Management Systems & Suppliers Report | www.ibsintelligence.com 39


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