Further expansion and plans


The KFHMB success was followed up in early 2009 with another notable Malaysian breakthrough. Bank Muamalat Malaysia signed for all modules of iMAL in late February for its 53 branches. The agreement followed a selection which lasted about two years and involved as many as ten vendors. These included Fiserv, Silverlake, SAP, Microlink and I-flex/Oracle FSS. The list was narrowed to four and then two, and apparently the bank actually chose Oracle FSS in March 2008. A letter of intent was issued but, according to Moukadam, ‘after three months the bank’s management realised that they needed to re-tender due to an unsatisfactory evaluation of the previously selected provider’. So the selection process restarted in September, and Path finally received a letter of intent at the end of 2008. Moukadam cited the AAOIFI accreditation as one reason


for the win. He also felt that Path was able to show considerable experience in implementation projects at fully-fledged Islamic banks, and offered a quicker time to market than its rivals. RHB Islamic Bank was visited by Bank Muamalat as a reference. The project was expected to take 17 months. ‘The project is based on a turnkey approach,’ he said. It covered hardware and software, as well as the bank’s data centres and disaster recovery sites. ‘We’ll be providing managed services encompassing both applications and infrastructure for a period of ten years subsequent to the go-live,’ he added. In fact, neither the RHB nor Muamalat projects appeared to go to plan (see below). In Path’s traditional region, Abu Dhabi-based start-up, Noor Islamic Finance Co., selected iMAL in the first quarter of 2009, thus bringing the number of Path’s customers in Abu Dhabi to three. Out of nine evaluated vendors, three made it to the shortlist – Path, Temenos and Oracle FSS. Baligh Bedewi, vice president, technology and treasury at Noor Islamic, said the fact that iMAL was built as an Islamic system from the ground up played a crucial role in the selection. He cited after-sale support as another important factor. ‘I talked to four or five of Path’s existing clients and one common thing they all praised was the vendor’s customer service track-record.’ Also, although not the cheapest option of the three, Path seemed to be ‘the most accommodating in terms of contract’. The selection lasted about two and a half months, and the implementation was scheduled to finish in early June. Noor Islamic purchased eight modules to support its operations across the board, including Islamic investment, customer service management, credit management, personnel and payroll, financial and regulatory reporting. Another new country was ticked off in mid-2009 with a win at First East Export Bank (Fee Bank) for a recently opened operation in Malaysia and an established one in South Korea


(the latter being the new territory for Path). The bank is a subsidiary of Bank Mellat and this was Path’s first success with an Iranian bank. The supplier’s Abdul Munim said work was under way to explore a wider use of iMAL within other Fee Bank operations as well as within Bank Mellat itself. Fee Bank had a strong focus on trade finance and had


recently gained its banking licence in Malaysia, locating in the offshore centre of Labuan. It looked at a range of suppliers, including international and local; one of the latter was a supplier in Korea. The project in Malaysia would include core banking, accounting, lending, trade finance and branch delivery. This was for both Islamic and conventional banking. The first phase was likely to go live in three months, said Abdul Munim. Planning was also starting for South Korea, where iMAL would replace a local system. Before the end of the year there were two deals in Sudan. United Capital Bank (UCB) and Bank of Khartoum (BOK) opted to replace MIBS, the core system from Malaysian vendor, Microlink. These were Microlink’s only clients in Sudan. BOK is a universal financial institution, while UCB focuses on corporate banking. UCB looked at four international vendors, according to Abdelrazag Mustafa Abdelrazag, the bank’s IT manager. About ten modules were taken by UCB, which would be deployed in phases towards the project completion date of March 2010. He declined to reveal which other systems were considered, but described iMAL as a ‘pure Islamic system’, adding that ‘Path has good knowledge of Islamic banking itself, which is reflected in the solution’. Path was also able to provide strong references in the Middle East and Sudan – its customers in the country included Albaraka Bank, Arab Sudanese Bank and National Bank of Abu Dhabi. While Abdelrazag believed that perhaps 15 per cent of iMAL would need to be customised for Sudan, Path’s existing experience in the country was expected to aid this process. iMAL was intended to ease the task of expanding UCB’s


branch network. ‘The system is designed in a way that when we open a new branch we can do that with minimum effort, with the core system centralised in the head office,’ explained Abdelrazag. He expected other banks in the country to make equivalent decisions soon, saying that ‘most of them are looking at changing their core’. Shamil Bank of Yemen and Bahrain, a Yemeni subsidiary


of Bahrain-based Shamil Bank, also set about implementing iMAL to support its retail, corporate and investment activities. The new system was taken to centralise the bank’s operations on a single, multi-channel platform.


And Cihan Bank, the first privately owned bank in the Iraqi province of Kurdistan, was another new client for Path. iMAL


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