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N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, president of TCS Financial Solutions, talks about projects at Saudi Arabia's National Commercial Bank (NCB) and the technology needs of regional financial institutions.

What solutions have you implemented at NCB in Saudi Arabia?

NCB went live with TCS BaNCS in 1992 after a 12 month implementation and has been using it continually since. Over this time NCB has taken several upgrades to the product including an upgrade to migrate from the proprietary NCR operating platform to HP Unix in 1996, an upgrade to enable 24/7 processing in 1999, and most recently an upgrade to offer Islamic banking products.

Our most recent upgrade from NCB also includes implementing our new TCS BaNCS Payments solution which combines the best of breed of our Retail and Wholesale Payments products combined into a common core platform with full SOA (service oriented architecture) enablement.

The following TCS BaNCS solutions have been implemented: Common Core including CIF, Fees & Charges, Workflows, STP, Correspondence etc; Deposits - Islamic and non-Islamic; Loans - Islamic and non-Islamic; Payments; Branch G/L; Finance Interface; Signatures and Securities; Financial Accounting (GL).

What challenges were involved with your projects at NCB?

Major challenges that were faced in the initial implementation in 1991 were the preparation of the TCS BaNCS core banking solution to support the Arabic language and as this was our first entry into the Saudi and Middle East market we faced the usual challenges of conforming to the local regulatory framework.

Today, TCS FS can draw upon 17 years of experience of working in the Middle East market, giving us a maturity of product and skills second to none in that market.

What new products and services can we expect to see from you in the near future?

TCS FS offers Islamic Insurance (Takaful) and Islamic Banking solutions from its TCS BaNCS solution portfolio. We are now finalising our Product Roadmap plans for offering Islamic Treasury and Islamic Payments solutions. We expect to be taking these solutions to market early 2009.

Wealth Management is an area where we predict a lot of demand in the Middle East market and our Wealth Management solution becomes available in the first quarter of this year. Branch renovation and automation is also a growth area, as is mobile banking, and we anticipate a good demand for these solutions in the coming year.

Essentially, we are creating a Universal Banking platform that encompasses Core Banking, Payments, Treasury, Wealth Management, Securities Trading and Insurance which institutions in the region can leverage.

Where do you see the greatest need for new technology and solutions in the region's financial institutions?

More than need, we would like to see what solutions can offer breakthrough growth in terms of volumes for financial institutions. In the banking space, this will come from bringing more and more people into the banking fold, often referred to as Microfinancing' or 'Financial inclusion'.

We are committed to continuous innovation to help more people have access to our core solution. In addition, TCS FS anticipates increased demand for Origination Solutions to keep pace with the continual change in the Compliance landscape.

TCS FS has recently launched its own TCS BaNCS Origination solution, our TCS BaNCS Common Core comes with STP, Workflow and Rules engines to support automation and we also have a TCS BaNCS Compliance offering incorporating AML.

In the Capital Market space, the Middle East is one of the regions which has strong retail participation. The challenge is in bringing in higher institutional participation and liquidity without losing the depth of retail participation.

TCS has been a leader in providing our Market Infrastructure solution in the region, facilitating both Global standards and CCP-based Clearing, and localised practices like pre-validation.

We are now leveraging our presence in the Market Infrastructure space to deliver solutions to Participants (Institutions, Brokers, and Traders) in the large markets in the region.

We have been providing investment solutions in the region for a decade now and are well positioned to be a key enabler in driving Internet trading in the region.

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Clarification
Posted by Shrek, Mumbai, India on Wednesday 16 April 2008 at 13:44 UAE time

It was not TCS which implemented B@NCS in NCB, it was FNS -Financial Network Services, a company based in Sydney. TCS acquired FNS in 2006 - thats when the upgradation of B@NCS started in NCB. So, TCS has played a role only in the upgradation of B@NCS - not the initial implementation and that stuff.

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