Wednesday, Sep 18, 2013
Dubai: Indian software company Infosys globally launched its universal banking solution Finacle 11E in Dubai on Wednesday as business in the region grows amid what is a complex evolving banking landscape worldwide.
The latest product, the company said, is aimed at simplifying banking, which globally is passing through “a wave of complexity”, according to N. R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder and executive chairman of the Infosys Board during an address to the local media on the occasion of the launch. Murthy was reappointed to his new post in June to put the company back on high growth path.
The complexity, he said, arises from increasing banking regulation, uncertainty of economic environment, demanding customers, technology disruption and fierce competition.
In view of this, banks across the world are faced with the need to simplify banking and that can be achieved through innovation in technology and innovation in business modelling along with the simplification of the banking process, according to Murthy.
“The good thing about Finacle 11E is that it helps in some ways [to] re-engineer and reduce the number of processes that are needed,” the executive chairman said.
Murthy added that with this solution, banks don’t have to take “big bang” approach and instead implement component by component. Besides, there is no need to deploy a large number of people in making this happen. Also, the bank can reduce time to market and reduce complexity with cost.
One of Infosys Finacle’s biggest customers in the region, UAE’s Emirates NBD is not immediately upgrading the system. “What we are doing is to look at certain areas where we have some sort of a need to implement certain business functionality, where we go and acquire that specific module and implement it and move on to the next one,” said Ali Sajwani, chief information officer at Emirates NBD.
In the geographic segment of Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Infosys has had a “fabulous growth, particularly driven by Middle East and North Africa, in the past 10 years which has pushed our business to a high level, said Haragopal M., global head-Finacle.
Today the company has presence in seven countries with 20 customers in the Middle East. “All our solution offerings are deployed and running in these markets, whether in the core banking, internet, retail, mobile banking, treasury and Islamic banking,” he said.
So, this is an interesting and important market for us. We have seen good growth, though I cannot give separate figures for the region, but suffice to say it is a very key market for us,” said Haragopal.
By Gaurav Ghose Financial Features Editor
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
