Zafin, the Canada-headquartered leading SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company in the banking sector, is looking to set up its third global operational centre in Dubai, as the company is zeroing in on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as its new focus market for its next round of growth plans globally.
It is also in talks with Microsoft, its global partner for cloud operations, to explore the tech giant’s data centre spread out in the region for tie-ups for housing data-related activities of prospective banking clients in their respective countries.
“We currently have two global operational centres – one in Canada and the second one in India, and now we are in the process of finalising the location for our third centre for offering our services 24×7 to all our client banks. The UAE, particularly Dubai, is a strong contender for it as it fits several of the requirements, including time zone advantages and availability of multilingual talents,” Anugopal Venugopalan, Global COO of Zafin, told Arabian Business.
“We also have plans to elevate our existing office in Dubai to become our regional headquarter for MENA, as we will be focusing more on the region for our next round of global growth plans,” Venugopalan disclosed.
He said as part of it, the company intends to double its employee strength in the Dubai office on a near-term basis.
The move comes as Zafin, which emerged as a leading fintech player in the Americas, Western Europe and Australia-New Zealand in the last 20-year period, thinks Middle East region is now ripe for embracing advanced digital infrastructure systems to upgrade their product and customer-related functions, having shed their inhibitions about cloud-based operations during the pandemic period.
Venugopalan said Zafin can help banks in the region to achieve faster system up-gradation as the company’s platform takes product and pricing out of core banking to help customers to innovate faster, with less complexity, lesser risk and without relying on expensive and time-consuming infrastructure.
Zafin eyes MENA as next growth market
Venugopalan said banks in the Middle East are now increasingly open and eager to innovate on several aspects of their operations and “this is where we can step in to assist them, as we have already proved our capabilities and credentials having worked with the best and leading banks in the West”.
He said the Zafin platform enables users to work collaboratively to design and manage pricing, products and packages, while the company technologists streamline core banking systems.
The Zafin senior executive said five of the top seven US banks are run on the Zafin platform, processing more than 500 million accounts daily.
Zafin’s client banks list also includes ING, HSBC, PNC and ANZ.
The MENA region has about 30 leading banks, including some of the leading Islamic banks, besides a host of other financial institutions.
“We are quite confident of roping in some of the leading banks in the region as our clients, as we are already in talks with many of them,” Venugopalan said.
“The region could open up a potential $30 million annual revenue market for us,” he added.
Eyeing Saudi market
Venugopalan disclosed that the company is simultaneously also in exploratory talks with authorities in Saudi Arabia for entry plans, as the country mandates companies to set up separate regional bases there to generate business in the country.
“We are in talks with 2-3 leading banks also there. Parallely, we are also talking to Microsoft to understand the details about their data centres in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
He said Saudi Arabia will figure significantly in the company’s expansion in the region, as the country is set for emerging as a major economic powerhouse – both regionally and globally.
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