Khaleej Times

Infosys offers Finacle to Shariah-compliant banks
 

3 December 2007

Dubai — Infosys, the Indian multinational IT services company headquartered in Bangalore, is marketing its universal online banking platform Finacle for Shariah-compliant financial products and services in the Middle East and Europe.

"There will be a tremendous amount of action in Islamic banking in Europe and the Middle East for the next one and a half years," according to Haragopal Mangipudi, vice-president and business head for Finacle at Infosys. He said the company will also make a foray into the Islamic banking for its Finacle platform in the Southeast Asian countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the Philippines.

He and other Infosys officials were in Dubai recently to meet prospective customers from the UAE who, like other major regional players, will make an important decision over the next three years on the transformation of their banking legacy systems.

Already, Infosys has UAE's Emirates Islamic Bank and Arab National Bank, in Saudi Arabia, as clients using its Islamic banking-dedicated Finacle platform, which was fully developed last year. The platform enables financial institutions to provide a wider range of products and more integrated solutions to clients through Web-based cash management systems.

The $4-billion Infosys, which registered an annual revenue of Dh438.7 million ($120 million) as at end-March for its non-Islamic Finacle, has 14 major banks as clients in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) including Emirates Bank and National Bank of Dubai, in the UAE, and the Bank of Alexandria in Egypt.

Mangipudi said that over 40 per cent of revenue derived from Finacle comes from Europe, Middle East and Africa - which are homes to 42 per cent of Infosys customers.

He stressed that banks in the Gulf Cooperation Council member states and the neighbouring countries of Lebanon and Egypt, and those in Europe are Infosys' main focus for Finacle, which suits areas where there is a lot of interests in wealth management.

He said that Finacle's three-segment market includes enabling financial institutions to undertake banking online systems transformation, ease of international operations, and allowing small- and medium-sized banks to start operations faster.

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