It is a mark of the growing reliance on IT of financial institutions in the region that the Middle East Financial Technology exhibition (MEFTEC) reported a 25% increase in the number of exhibitors at this year’s event, held last month under the auspices of the Central Bank of Bahrain.
More than 100 exhibitors were in attendance, with financial services CIOs from more than 300 institutions, spread across 27 countries, in attendance.
Paul Stott, managing director of the UK-based Media Generation Group, the organisers of MEFTEC, said: “We are simply amazed by the quality and geographical diversity of this year’s delegates. The Hosted Delegate programme has met with huge success, having attracted participants from across the length and breadth of the MEASA (Middle East, Africa and South Asia) region, from Morocco to Bangladesh, Mauritius to Afghanistan.”
The Middle East financial services industry is currently in the middle of an IT spending boom, with research indicating that GCC banks alone spent almost US$1.4 bn on financial technology in 2006. Vendors seized on the opportunity to demonstrate new products to an audience of IT decision-makers.
ProgressSoft chose to showcase its developments in electronic cheque clearing and real time payment. Michael Wakileh, business development manager, ProgressSoft, said: “Our presence in MEFTEC this year is accentuated with the display of most-needed technological advancements in the financial domain, manifested in our range of intelligent solutions and sound achievements on the local, regional and international levels.”
Its cheque clearing solution has been successfully implemented in 76 banks and three Central Banks in countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, enabling a fully electronic same-day clearing cycle. During the exhibition, ProgressSoft showed off its branch capture solution alongside new offerings for remote deposit capture of cheques from the first point of presentation. The company offers a set of solutions that facilitate cheque collection and processing from point-of-sale, corporate offices or ATMs and cheque deposit machines.
ProgressSoft also presented PS-eTrade, its electronic gateway for securities trading settlement. Aiming to provide an online end-to-end solution for banks and brokers, the solution enables T+1 settlement times. Also on display was its automatic signature verification solution, PS-AVS, which uses artificial intelligence to compare signatures.
One of its clients is Cairo-Amman Bank (CAB), which recently signed a partnership agreement with ProgressSoft for electronic document management.
PS-EDMS, the enterprise document management solution, and PS-Daily Jacket, the archiving solution, will be implemented across all CAB branches in Jordan and Palestine.
The project will convert all existing, and continuously generated, paper-based documents at the bank to an electronic form to allow instant access and sharing across different branches, as well as reducing document storage expenses.
Solutions and services provider 3i Infotech used the event to launch its business process outsourcing (BPO) initiatives for the Middle East’s mutual fund industry. Its BPO services are fully integrated with its asset and mutual funds management solutions, which have up to 60% of the market in some countries. 3i Infotech will target the fund accounting service in the Middle East and Africa mutual funds industry, a sector with more than 600 funds in operation and is expected to triple its assets under management by 2010.
“To service the capacity requirement of this high growth industry, our BPO services will complement our powerful suite of solutions in the banking, insurance and capital markets sectors,” said Kalpesh Desai, CEO, 3i Infotech, Europe, Middle East & Africa.
“We aim to provide customers a unique proposition of using our own products that are tried and tested regionally, to dramatically cut down time to market and deliver on customer service.”
He added: “Regional funds and fund managers will now be able to focus more on their core business competencies while benefiting from our unique remote support services that enhance profits and lower cost per transaction.”
3i Infotech was also promoting its comprehensive range of banking and finance solutions including Kastle, AMLOCK, Mfund suite, Iboss and Premia. Its BPO offering includes services for shares, bonds and mutual funds; transaction processing services for managing depository and securitisation; and specialised process offerings covering the front office.
Traders were also catered for by the new solutions on display. Royalblue demonstrated its Fidessa solution for trading systems, market data and global connectivity, which is in use by over 200 financial institutions worldwide. The vendor claims that the key business benefit of its hosted solution is the seamless straight through processing (STP) available from order entry, trading across global markets to trade confirmation. It enables real-time position keeping, exposure & risk monitoring and programme & basket support.
Fidessa provides real-time coverage of global markets along with supporting information such as news, fundamentals and charts. The suite contains powerful display and analysis tools with fully integrated access to data. The whole infrastructure, connectivity and market services are hosted and maintained to provide a fully resilient solution.
Shortly after the show, royalblue launched BlueBox, its fully integrated, scalable algorithmic trading system. BlueBox is based on Fidessa’s technology, which is used by 85% of global tier one brokers. It combines low-latency market data and global exchange connectivity, providing an easy-to-deploy and cost-effective solution for brokers who want to move into algorithmic trading.
Philip Slavin, head of European product strategy, Fidessa, said: “With BlueBox we have redefined the algorithmic market by lowering the financial barriers and complexities of algorithmic solutions. BlueBox enables brokers to operate their own algorithmic trading system without the need to tackle complex system integration issues.”
Document management is an issue concerning all financial institutions, but there were plenty of solutions on display. 01 Systems offers products and services in imaging and enterprise content management, business workflow processes, authentication management and productivity management.
Docsafe, its enterprise content management solution, acts as a corporate repository for all kinds of company content, including images, electronic documents and computer-generated reports. The solution integrates with ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) portals, as well as groupware applications. It enables repetitive manual processes to be automated and allows businesses to link related documents and procedures across multiple environments.
It is currently attracting interest for its signature management system, SigCap, which takes care of the online capture, retrieval and verification of signatures against an account database. It allows financial institutions to better manage their signature databases across the business and enable better, faster customer service. 01 Systems has now launched SigCap Web, which enables online account and signature verification from anywhere across the enterprise.
Other areas of authentication and fraud prevention were demonstrated by Experian-Scorex, which offers a range of solutions to help organisations, especially financial institutions, access better customer data. The company provides solutions across areas including statistical modelling and fraud prevention to identify the risk associated with individual customers and small businesses.
ASSIST//ck, its anti-money laundering solution, enables institutions to effectively track, detect, investigate, report and manage suspicious activity.
Its fraud solution, Hunter, integrates within an organisation to look for anomalies and discrepancies in client applications, against previous applications, suspect information, credit bureau information and known fraud data.
Hunter can be used with Experian-Scorex’s application processing solutions, including Transact SM and Connect+, while Secana Card Protector helps identify anomalies in card transactions – with major banks reporting success rates of 50% for fraud detection and 82% for counterfeit detection. If any unusual transaction is identified, the company can be alerted immediately and the card blocked.
By highlighting the most suspicious applications, time and manpower is saved on routine checks and can be concentrated on complex cases. Banks may even be able to prevent fraud before it starts.
Some of the systems on display at this year’s MEFTEC may have been expensive in cash terms, but many of them will prove to be well worth the cost. If technology can enhance the profitability of an institution, either by identifying the customers that could drive revenue or those who present a high risk, then few financial heads could make a business case for ignoring them.
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