Finacle from Infosys spent last year powering up new solutions catering to Islamic financial institutions. Isla MacFarlane reviews the fruits of their labour...
Finacle from Infosys partners with banks to power-up their innovation agenda, enabling them to differentiate their products and service, enhance customer experience and achieve greater operational efficiency. As well as Islamic banking Finacle solutions address the core banking, wealth management, CRM and treasury requirements of retail, corporate and universal banks worldwide. Finacle is the chosen solution in over 116 banks across 62 countries.
Last year, Finacle unveiled its standalone Islamic Banking Solution as part of the global launch of version 10 of the Finacle Universal Banking Solution. Finacle Islamic Banking Solution addresses the complexities of Shari'ah-compliant banking in today's environment by offering banks a greater amount of flexibility and quicker innovation.
A single solution built on the standard technology infrastructure available for conventional banking; Finacle Islamic banking solution addresses both Islamic banking and international needs. The team claim to have developed an incisive insight into the Middle East, Far East and European markets, and said that the solution is truly geared to address region-specific Islamic banking requirements.
Finacle Islamic banking solution offers an integrated and comprehensive approach for banks to define and present Shari'ah-compliant products to customers. According to Finacle, strong product definition features, support for Islamic accounting and complete traceability for audit differentiate the solution. Completely self-contained, it is replete with the accounting backbone to support back office functionalities and provides straight through processing (STP) capabilities on a SOA platform.
Finacle Islamic Banking Solution follows accounting standards recommended by the Audit and Accounting Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). The solution promises banks in the region a flexible and varied feature repertoire to design and deploy products for varying market segments, based on different Islamic concepts including Mudarabah, Murabaha, Ijarah, Istisna'a and Tawarruq.
The solution allows banks to define an organisation structure conducive to current requirements while factoring in the flexibility to change the structure with scaling business needs. This means Islamic banking can be initiated as an add-on product offering in a branch of choice, and eventually converted to an independent Islamic banking unit, if required. It also offers a wide range of possibilities for business users at the bank to create products and embellish them with innovative features.
Haragopal M, Business Head for Finacle said, "As we continue to rapidly increase our customer base across the world, and specifically in the Middle East, the launch of our Islamic Banking Solution is a testimony of our commitment to the region. Two of the largest banks in the region have already put their trust in Finacle Islamic Banking Solution."
Finacle Islamic Banking Solution is powered by the BPEL and BPML compliant workflow engine. This, coupled with high parameterisation capabilities, results in greater process efficiency, better risk mitigation, significantly lowered TCO and supports rapid roll out of Shari'ah-compliant products.
Finacle said that the Islamic banking industry is being redefined and reinvented as banks, the world over, respond to the opportunities presented by this rapidly growing new customer segment. Besides traditional markets such as the Middle East, Indonesia and Malaysia, Islamic banking is seeing growth in markets such as the UK, Singapore, and many global conventional banks have started offering Islamic banking.
Finacle describes itself as a leader in banking transformation; Finacle has a global footprint across 60 countries and has been acknowledged by top analysts including Gartner, Forrester and Celent among the leaders in the core banking solution space.
© Islamic Business and Finance 2009
