banking solution providers,’ she added. ‘We might say that, at the end of the day, banking is banking, and that every country and every bank has its specifics, but Islamic banking in Iran is different from Islamic banking or banking elsewhere. Iranian Islamic banking has lots of requirements that are specific to the country, the culture and the current political situation. These are not elementary and cannot be catered for at product packaging or product parameterisation levels, regardless of whether the core banking product can strongly and easily adapt to country specifics or not.’


In addition to the language and calendar intricacies,


there are ‘huge differences and huge gaps’ when it comes to processes, products, pricing, fiscal implication, documentation and so on, she said. ‘Core banking solution providers cannot implement an Islamic banking platform developed for other countries and markets in Iran. Therefore, an Iranian proven solution would be the best fit here, unless a complete and big investment in the product, the documentation and the team has already been made by the vendor. A long-term vision and strategy is a must, and Iran cannot be addressed opportunistically.’


El Khoury claimed that SAB had made such an investment: ‘Some of our consultants have already learned the language and converse in Farsi with the user, understand the products and their behaviour’. She emphasised that SAB worked and communicated directly with Karsazan Ayandeh, rather than via any third parties. She believed that ‘communication and team spirit’ had been instrumental in a successful roll-out of SAB’s platform. ‘The compatibility of both teams is playing an important role as well, our consultants succeeded in integrating with Iranian culture not only to accomplish their assignments but also to build new horizons of mixed culture.’ On the product front, SAB was preparing a new Java-based


branch solution. This was due to go into a first site in June 2010 at Fransabank in Beirut. It is meant to have simplified workflow for ease of use and flexibility. A credit application module was also under development. Again, usability was a key aim, said Schintowski. It had been validated with a number of users and Océor was cited as a possible first taker. These new components included the W4 Business Process Management (BPM) tool. SAB had been increasingly embedding this within its solutions to support task-based workflows, in areas such as anti-money laundering and sales support. SAB has the source code to the tool and can also distribute it as a product in its own right. A new version of the core system, renamed at this point


as SAB AT rather than SAB2i, was announced in mid-2010. Linux was added as an option, alongside Unix and iSeries.


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com 365


There was a new presentation layer, using Java and XML. As a backdrop to all of this activity, there has been upheaval in the French core systems market. In December 2009, Viveo was acquired by Temenos for $81 million. Apparently, Temenos had held talks with SAB and had approached Delta, although it sounds as though the founders of the latter had little or no interest. As well as being wooed by Temenos, SAB apparently had its sights on Viveo. However, Viveo’s founder, Raimondo Ascer, was not willing to sell out to his long-term rival. It was thought the demise of Viveo might throw up opportunities for both SAB and Delta, unlocking this supplier’s customer bases if Temenos was too pushy in trying to move them to its own T24. Either way, the integration of Viveo did not go smoothly. Temenos laid off more than one-third of the staff and this was one reason for a series of strikes and protests by the Viveo team, as well as the abrupt departure of Ascer and his co-founder of Viveo. Delta Informatique itself succumbed as well, bought by French group, Sopra, in 2011 and subsequently slotted in with it was also Callataÿ & Wouters, with its Thaler system. SAB itself was apparently eyeing acquisitions, with a couple of potential ones lined up by February 2010. At least one of these was intended to help the supplier’s African efforts. It was also looking for additional partners, including one for Russia. It had also set up an operation in Tunisia in April 2009, with this reaching ten staff by the end of the year, with the expectation that this would reach 25 during 2010. It was contributing to development work but was also meant to be a route for targeting the Tunisian and Algerian markets. In the latter country a partner, AEBS, was signed in late 2010. There were also fairly significant changes of personnel


at SAB around this time as Schintowski departed for Avaloq and Naji Moukadam, a long-standing senior executive at Path, was recruited as managing director of newly launched Dubai subsidiary, SAB International. This was to cover the Middle East, English-speaking parts of Africa, Asia and Asia Pacific.


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