already Thaler sites.


One customer in the Netherlands was ASR Bank, a start- up which took Thaler to support savings products. Thaler was preferred to Oracle’s Flexcube at the shortlist stage, and would be hosted by Schuberg Philis. Barto Nieuwenhuijzen, sourcing manager at the bank, stated that the implementation was completed on time and on budget but raised some points about the interfacing of Thaler to other systems. ‘The functional design phase could have been done better, with better and more detailed design especially for the interfaces to the other ASR systems,’ he stated. Argenta, also in the Netherlands, started a Thaler implementation in 2010 and went live in June 2011 after a seven month project. Argenta was an existing customer of C&W in Belgium. 2011 witnessed a fairly sharp downturn in terms of new- name signings for C&W, with only two wins gained. However, an additional deal won towards the end of the year at BNP Paribas was sizeable. Thaler was selected for customer account management and position-keeping for its worldwide banking business, in a selection process in which it was pitted against Infosys and Temenos.


Also notable was the addition of Dutch start-up, Knab. The bank focuses on payments, trading, investments and savings, and financial advice in the domestic market. It is wholly owned by Aegon and started its implementation of Thaler in early 2011, with cutover in September 2012. ‘We are a small bank, so we needed a core banking system that would be affordable, suitable for our size – thus, very large systems for top-tier banks were excluded – and achievable to implement,’ said Artie Debidien, director of ICT and operations at Knab. A second phase followed, focusing on the expansion of the product range, particularly investments. The bank also uses a middle and front office layer from Dutch company, Five Degrees. There was also noteworthy progress within what was


now Rabobank International Direct Banking (IDB), which set about upgrading to a new version of Thaler. The plan was to move all but one site (Poland) onto Thaler v3 by the end of 2013, said Meint Post, COO, Rabobank IDB. Conversions in Ireland and Australia had been completed by September 2012, and a new site in Germany (launched in June) also ran Thaler v3. The system in Germany was a copy of the Australian one, said Post. New Zealand and Belgium (the first Rabobank IDB site) were work in progress. Poland would be addressed at a later date, with the v2 version of Thaler to be


supported there until early 2014, according to the lifecycle management strategy of Rabobank IDB. By 2015, the Polish subsidiary would also move to v3. Rabobank IDB’s roll-out in Germany benefitted from the fact that C&W already had experience with Thaler in the country with the launch of Moneyou, ABN Amro’s direct banking subsidiary here, in 2011. The Rabobank project took six months and was a straightforward, stable deployment, said Post, a significant improvement on the preceding venture in Poland, which had experienced ‘quite a lot of stability issues’. The main problem with the Polish deployment was that the system was originally taken in 2008, but the project was put on hold due to the economic crisis and ‘revived’ only in late 2011. By then, the ‘mothballed’ solution (Thaler v2) was outdated in certain areas, so new functionality had to be bolted onto the old system, which caused instability. In December 2013, Evi, a new online savings bank owned


by Van Lanschot, launched in Belgium underpinned by Sopra Banking Platform (as Thaler had become – see below). The implementation of the core was carried out by Sopra in a five-month timespan and the supplier agreed a fixed-price support contract with the bank. Challenges during the project included the tight deadline and the aim of completion without any customisation, according to a note from Sopra. Evi offered two products at the outset, both of which were online-only savings accounts. Shortly afterwards, there was a notable go-live in Germany,


at Stuttgart-based universal bank, Mercedes Benz Bank. The project started in early 2012 and was focused on retail banking operations. Aside from Evi, Sopra’s other new-name win for Thaler in 2013 was at China Bank, the first taker in the Philippines. The bank was seeking to streamline information across its private bank, from the front office, where customer-facing relationship managers require real-time data and information with a complete view of the clients’ portfolios, to the back office, to improve automation. The new system was expected to enable the off-site centres of the bank’s Private Banking Group (PBG) to use the standardised platform for faster product launches and implementation of third party products. China Bank’s SVP and COO, Ricardo Chua, said: ‘We are confident that with Sopra Banking Software we can build a powerful, future- proof wealth management platform, and we look forward to a successful implementation’.


Sopra and Thaler as the Sopra Banking Platform


After almost three decades of avoiding the upheavals of industry consolidation, after growing rumours of a sale (the company had ‘for sale’ signs up for some time), it was revealed in February 2012 that France-based Sopra Group was to acquire C&W for an undisclosed sum. De Groote said the board of directors had been assessing options for the previous year and a half. ‘We have nice assets in a market that will grow, and the company is very healthy, so our thinking has been positive,’ he claimed. It was felt that


454


the main challenge for C&W in recent years had been to speed up its rate of growth. There was also a recognition that its size had prevented it from winning tier one deals. This was despite a feeling that Thaler was well-positioned as a system for ‘architecture-led transformations’, where limited components were involved, rather than rip and replace projects which were all too rare at large banks. C&W’s partnership strategy was one element of the attempt to grow faster ‘but if you really want to grow, loose partnerships are not necessarily the way’.


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com


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