right and adding more and more back office functionality into it, albeit now with the decision to leave Symbols as a booking engine. In other words, the full Java rewrite was now no longer planned. ‘The robustness of the back-end is key,’ said Loh, and System Access had decided that R&D would be better spent at the front-end. Customers didn’t see the Oracle technology as an issue, he said, and many of the Oracle Forms screens had been replaced by MCS. There were a number of notable successes soon after the arrival of Sungard. In the first quarter of 2007, a deal was gained from Ho Chi Minh Housing Development Bank in Vietnam. This followed on from System Access’ first win in the country, at VIB. That first project had seen the 30 branch bank go live in ten months, said Wilson. In a country where Temenos and I-flex had both made inroads in the last few years, the latest win reflected the success of that first roll- out, he said. The latest taker was smaller than VIB, with ten branches, and was focused on currency trading, credit agency banking and financing real estate development. The banks in Vietnam were under pressure from the central authorities to modernise and improve their core systems, and there was a fair amount of World Bank funding to support this. Most used in-house developed platforms that had grown up over time. Wilson predicted a wave of core system selections and, if the latest projects went well, he hoped that Sungard could gain eight to ten customers in the next couple of years. While the initial focus would be on the core platforms, he expected selections of risk management and other systems to follow. The opportunity to cross-sell such systems to Symbols users was ‘all part of the hypothesis’ when Sungard bought System Access, he said. Another taker in the country signed in May. This was Saigon Bank for Industry and Trade, a mixed retail and commercial player of similar size to Ho Chi Minh Housing Development. In a public bid, I-flex was the other contender at the shortlist stage.


At this time, System Access was in pole position at a large


bank in Pakistan (with 1100 branches) and had also kicked off a proof of concept pilot at a bank in Russia, Baltiyskiy Bank, ahead of what was hoped to be a full contract in September. Both the bank and System Access felt the ‘Russianisation’ of Symbols would need to be done from scratch, rather than reusing any of the Symbols-R work. The Russian bank took a long while but duly signed in late 2007. The deal in Pakistan also duly occurred, with signing in


late 2007. This was United Bank Limited (UBL) which, after a long-running selection process, took Symbols plus the front- end layer, NetSymbols as was, now dubbed Customer Service


480


Manager (CSM). The bank would replace primarily in-house solutions. It looked at most mainstream packages, ending with a shortlist of Sungard System Access and Fidelity, with Temenos knocked out just ahead of this. The live sites for Symbols in Pakistan were a key factor in the choice, said the supplier’s EMEA vice president for business development, Roy Williamson.


The system was taken for roll-out out to UBL’s 1400 or so


branches in Pakistan; Sungard System Access set to work on the implementation in head office and an initial five branches, after which it was expected that the bank would become more or less self-sufficient. In parallel, the bank signed to implement the solution in a number of overseas locations, including UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, New York and Zurich. At one point the bank considered taking a different solution for the Middle East, looking at International Turnkey Systems’ Harland- derived Phoenix. However, the bank was keen to have as close as possible a single corporate solution across the globe, said Williamson. As such, customisation would be kept to a minimum. The bulk of the implementation was meant to take 21 months.


UBL is a universal bank and signed for the complete set of modules. Symbols was a close fit with UBL’s business specification and technical strategy, said Williamson. ‘CSM was a key part of that.’ The CSM component was adopted for loan origination, internet banking, teller support (branch transformation was a major part of the project), customer relationship management, and sales and business support. Indeed, as the project started to move forward, the emphasis became CSM, with Symbols to follow. Around the same time came what looked to be a highly notable deal from the perspective of increasing the international coverage of Symbols. This was a multi-site win for Symbols from Bank of Taiwan. The success looked as though it would give the supplier long-awaited sites in the UK and US; I-flex Solutions was beaten at the shortlist stage. The bank took Symbols for seven locations comprising Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London, New York and Los Angeles. It was using a number of systems, including the old Winter Partners-derived Abraxsys in the US. Standardising on a single system for all of its overseas operations was one reason for the selection, said Loh. The branches are mainly wholesale banking in nature and the contract included treasury, trade finance, internet banking, lending and deposits. The plan was for Symbols to be implemented in Taiwan, with the international operations supported from here. There would be one version of Symbols, said Loh; ABC already used


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com


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