The rapid growth of Pakistan’s United Bank Limited has created a complex IT infrastructure. Michelle Price talks to head of core banking Adnan Masood about UBL’s innovative refit of its technology systems.

If United Bank Limited (UBL), one of Pakistan’s largest private commercial banks, is short of anything, it is surely not ambition. “We want to be the best in every field,” says Adnan Masood, the bank’s head of core banking. During the past seven years, this over-riding ambition has driven the bank to launch new services and product innovations at a staggering pace.

The turn of the century, in particular, represented a step change for the bank. In 2001, it determined to embark on an ambitious project to roll out a wide-ranging portfolio of consumer products, including credit cards, personal loans, car loans and running finance, with an aggressive timeline of just 18 months.

“It was a hectic time for everyone in the bank, especially in IT,” says Mr Masood. “But to the great credit of everyone involved, we did launch all of these products within a year and a half.” The bank has built out further delivery channels since that time, including telephone and online banking. In all areas, says Mr Masood, the bank has been able to achieve high levels of automation.

But the bank’s aggressive development has brought its own problems. “Right now, for instance, we have 60 to 70 IT systems operating. To manage and change them – many of which are outsourced and many of which are operated in house – is a huge challenge,” says Mr Masood.

Restrictive infrastructure

The growing complexity of the bank’s IT infrastructure has to some extent, he says, restricted the bank’s agility. In particular, the bank is still striving to reach that much-sought-after banking nirvana: a single view of the customer from the bank’s perspective, and a single view of the bank from the customer’s perspective.

“If we have a liability customer who is also taking a credit card loan, for example, we should know exactly how many deposited accounts and lending facilities they are availing,” says Mr Masood. “We are not able to do that in a seamless manner. Yes, we can get the reports through to the back end, but we’re not able to get a consistent view of the customer and all of the delivery channels.”

To realise this vision of a leading, ‘customer-centric’ organisation, UBL needed to undergo a technology refit. “The challenge was to revamp the IT architecture to be able to automate all of the processes end-to-end and to achieve straight-through processing,” he says. This would require the bank to re-engineer its business processes in a core-banking overhaul to centralise and integrate its numerous IT systems. When Mr Masood’s team went to market, SunGard was one of the few providers able to offer the bank a core banking system with a front end, SunGard Customer Service Manager (CSM), which operates independently from the back-end function, SunGard System Access.

Dual approach

This feature has allowed the team to take a two-pronged approach to project implementation. With this model, the front-office renewal programme will progress ahead of the back-end transformation, meaning that the bank will be able to “reap the rewards of SunGard’s CSM without waiting for the back end”, says Mr Masood. But doing so has required the team to create a layer of middleware, which effectively acts as the translation service, allowing the newly installed CSM to ‘talk’ to the back end throughout the entire process. For this part of the project, Mr Masood opted for Microsoft’s business process management product, BizTalk Server.

Process smoothing

Using software ‘adaptors’, which are customised in order to communicate with the bank’s multiple standalone software systems, BizTalk will smooth the integration process. Once the CSM has been implemented at the front end, it will be able to ‘talk’ to the back end through BizTalk. Mr Masood says that moving the legacy applications on to BizTalk will deliver strategic, if not competitive, value to the core banking transformation.

“We feel it is crucial if we are to have a seamless core banking strategy. We feel that this is something we are doing differently from other banks. They have simply tried to roll out the core banking system without paying much attention to the code scenarios. That is often why you see the success of core banking being limited. They haven’t thought about using enterprise middleware,” he says. “A core banking implementation is like open-heart surgery: you have to keep the old heart pumping while you put the new one in.”

Importantly, this approach has not caused the bank to delay on any product innovations. “I know other banks that have had to delay product launches because of core banking implementations. We cannot do that: our business is far, far too aggressive,” says Mr Masood.

Once UBL has achieved end-to-end automation for each lifecycle of each product, Mr Masood says that the bank’s customer service levels will improve dramatically. “This will allow us to give the customer a service level that they are not currently getting in the local market and will allow us to capture even more of the market than we have now.

“Once we’ve achieved this level then we can start launching other products and bring about innovative products and assets,” he says. “If you haven’t achieved end-to-end automation, it makes it very hard to achieve this.”

CAREER HISTORY

2007: Currently project director and divisional head for the team responsible for implementation of the new core banking system at UBL.

2001: Joined UBL in June 2001 as head of software services. During his tenure, the bank has launched a wide spectrum of automated consumer banking products. He has also overseen the automation of other areas including the bank’s contact centre, treasury, cash management and online banking.

Prior to his time at UBL, he gained a degree in computer science at Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine. He has more than 15 years of diversified IT experience.

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