Finastra (D + H Corporation) Lake Mary, USA
Phoenix, Ultradata » Phoenix is designed for US community banks and credit unions » Ultradata is designed for small and mid-sized credit unions » Object-oriented design, runs on Unix and Windows » Covers deposits, loans, CRM, data warehouse and card management » XML-based middleware for integration with branches and e-channels
Phoenix, Ultradata Finastra (D+H Corporation)
D+H Corporation’s core banking systems activities largely stem from its $1.2 billion acquisition in 2013 of Florida-based Harland Financial Solutions. This vendor brought a range of systems for its domestic US market, including the Phoenix system. The company structure and management is broadly the same. Derived from the US community bank market, Harland with Phoenix had been activity outside the US, mainly via two distributors, International Turnkey Systems (ITS) in the Middle East and Data Action in Australia, plus through a direct sales strategy in the Caribbean and some regions of Africa, where the company built a client base. ITS and Data Action had the system’s source code and developed their own versions, but also obtained new developments, functionality and additional features from Harland. Most of Harland’s 1300 core software clients were based in the US. In addition to Phoenix, Harland also brought the Ultradata, Intrieve Advantage and Sparak core systems which are purely domestic, with these now residing with D+H. The product set had been built up by John H. Harland Company, which was, arguably, best known in the US as a provider of
checks and other printed products. In 2000, the company began a period of acquisition of financial software companies. It began with Concentrex in that year, followed by Easy Systems, Sparak Financial Systems and Interlinq Software Corporation in 2002, Premier Systems Inc (that ran Harland’s acquired Ultradata system on behalf of credit union clients) in 2003, and certain assets of Greatland Corporation and Mitek Systems in 2004. Also in 2004, it acquired Fair Isaac Corporation’s core system business unit and its Phoenix system. Fair Isaac had acquired this earlier in the year via its purchase of London Bridge Software. In 2015, D+H acquired Fundtech, for $1.25 billion, from Chicago based private equity firm GTCR. The acquisition of Fundtech is
deemed complementary, expanding D+H’s presence to the EMEA and APAC regions and providing it with a broad set of payments solutions. The combined company will boast a base of 8000 clients (including eight of the top ten and 32 of the world’s top 50 banks). Financially, the combination of D+H and Fundtech would result in pro forma 2014 adjusted revenues of around $1.45 billion.
In June 2017, Vista Equity Partners acquired D+H and subsequently merged with Misys, to form a new financial technology company called ‘Finastra’. The new company is touted to be one of the largest banking technology companies in the world with more than 10,000 employees, 9000 customers across 130 countries.
Origins and evolution of Phoenix
The Phoenix banking system was launched in late 1993 by Phoenix International, a company set up specifically for the purpose by Bahram Yusefzadeh, formerly of Nu-Comp and Kirchman. It started with a consortium of 26 American banks taking a 40 per cent stake and $1 million of capital. Additional development funding, including technical help and free computers, was provided by Hewlett-Packard. The offering started as a pure retail banking system written in C++ and Centura Team Developer. It has an object-oriented design, runs on Unix and Windows, and supports a range of relational databases. Though it has a reasonably impressive list of clients, none can be termed high volume.
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The early years were marked by healthy sales. Along with other partners, HP was pushing the system in the US and also around the world and Unisys was recruited to market it in Central and South America and the Caribbean. A relationship was also forged with UK-based AFA International, with its Musketeer front-to-back treasury system, which Phoenix rebranded as ‘Phoenix Treasury’, interfaced to Phoenix’s retail, trade finance and payments systems. The two companies introduced the combined offering as the ‘Universal Banking Solution’, albeit with only one tangible sales success. By 1996, the company was beginning to show a profit and had a healthy order book so it sought an IPO that, on completion, raised $6.4 million. In mid-1997, the company went on the acquisition trail. It bought New Zealand-based
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