its tie-up with Ernst & Young in early 2013. The new procedure was deemed too lengthy and costly, according to Haitham Abdou, group director of corporate marketing at ITS. Also, he felt that previously ‘the certification was more to do with the output of the system’. There were seven users of Ethix by early 2011, according to the vendor. At this time, ITS was upgrading other Phoenix users outside the US to Ethix. By 2010, ADIB had opted for an upgrade both in its home territory as well as Egypt, and EastWest Bank in the Philippines completed an upgrade in 2010. Another customer outside the Middle East was Zenith Bank in Nigeria. Zenith had attempted to move away from Phoenix and onto Temenos’ T24 but, by 2009, had abandoned the attempt. It re-signed with ITS and moved to Ethix. Cooperative Agricultural and Credit Bank in Yemen contracted to upgrade to Ethix in early 2011. A new win was also registered in Libya in 2010. This was at Gumhouria Bank, the largest bank in the country. It chose Ethix for both core banking and branch automation for its 142 branch network, with the first branch live by mid-2012 and a further seven by the end of the year. Gumhouria previously used Flexcube at its 140 or so branches (equating to more than a quarter of all bank branches in the country), and the Ethix solution replaced Flexcube at a pilot branch in mid-2012, interfacing to Flexcube at the bank’s head office. Another eight branches converted to Islamic banking that year. This effort had been disrupted by the revolution in the country, with ITS’s manager for Africa, Mohamad Meneassy, noting that ‘we had to do the project twice’. In 2010 Warba Bank, a start-up Islamic bank in Kuwait,


rejected ITS at the shortlist stage and instead selected Oracle FSS’s Flexcube. However, there was something of an upturn in 2011 as three Islamic gains were made, coming in the UAE at Reem Finance and start-up Siraj Finance, as well as in Sudan at Al-Jazeera Bank. Further progress was made in Sudan the following year


as ITS rolled out the Islamic version of Ethix at the Sudanese subsidiary of ADIB. By this stage, Ethix was now used by the bank in the UAE, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and the UK, with Qatar also added in 2011. 2012 also saw Ethix selected for the National Bank of Egypt’s new operation in Sudan. In late 2011, the Central Bank of Sudan gave a licence to the National Bank of Egypt (NBE) to operate in a suburb of the country’s capital, Khartoum. The main objective behind launching a subsidiary in Sudan was to ‘promote the mutual business relationship between Sudan and Egypt’, according to Omar Sidahmed, deputy general manager of the bank. The start-up had a requirement to find a solution to provide all banking services in compliance with Shari’ah law.


NBE issued an RFP in Q1 2012, to which it received offers from regional suppliers, Path Solutions and ITS. NBE in Egypt, which took Oracle FSS’s Flexcube as its conventional system in 2009, had already installed ITS’s Ethix in Egypt in early 2012. The system was rolled out across the Islamic branches and was interfaced to Flexcube. Due to this existing partnership with the vendor, ITS and Ethix were highly recommended by NBE, said Sidahmed.


Meanwhile, when Path came to this site and demonstrated its systems, Sidahmed was not happy with the quality of the people and the level of support, which he described as ‘not good’. Because Path had an established presence in Sudan and the wider MENA region, providing for a significant portion of Islamic banks there, ‘it took us for granted’, he felt. ‘Path didn’t put in any effort to convince us that it was better than ITS.’ In ITS’s favour was its commitment to the region. It had more than 1000 developers in Egypt, plus a ‘well-equipped’ support centre, and an office in Sudan. NBE also visited Al-Jazeera Bank, the vendor’s existing customer in Sudan.


The contract was signed in May 2012, and the implementation process was initiated straight away. The project was divided into two phases. Phase one, the ‘vanilla’ deployment of Ethix, was expected to be completed within four months, but the core system went live with a big-bang after a two month instalment, in July 2012. Not long after, phase two began with the implementation of the remaining Islamic modules as well as virtual channels including internet and mobile banking. The second phase was scheduled to be completed by August that year. Ethix was brought in to cover all of the main activities of NBE in Sudan, specifically around retail banking products such as murabaha and musharakah. There were also opportunities for corporate financing, said Sidahmed. Ethix was interfaced to the Central Bank of Sudan’s electronic clearing system and the national switch for ATM functionality, and complied with all Sudanese banking system requirements. With regards to the training of users, a train-the-trainer approach was used by ITS for the bank’s IT department and staff. A ‘hands on’ method was provided onsite, with the vendor’s team showing the bank’s staff how to use the system. Two associates were also recruited from Al-Jazeera Bank to work alongside the bank’s staff and convey their previous experience of implementing Ethix. Prior to the go-live, the bank tested the system to make sure ‘it was running perfectly’. UAT and back-end testing were carried out to certify that all reports were accurate, and to ensure the system and its results were satisfying for the bank’s staff and customers. NBE in Sudan officially started operations in September 2012.


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com 247


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