RETAIL BANKING AWARDS

Parveen Bansal, business analyst, Tower Group

Wijnand de Kruijff, deputy CIO, ING Direct NV

Clive Whincup, CIO, Banca Popolare di Milano

CORE BANKING

Winner – State Bank of India

The Core Banking Solutions (CBS) project from the State Bank of India (SBI) involved moving 14,000 domestic branches of the SBI Group from the current distributed structure to a centralised database, with 1091 branches converted so far. In addition, the bank’s foreign offices (comprising 50 business units spread across 19 countries) were migrated to a uniform, integrated system. Financial Network Services’ core banking solutions were used for domestic branch operations and Infosys for foreign office operations. The initial phase of the latter project was completed in just four months, with 19 offices in 11 countries converted since November 2004 and the remainder to be converted by June/July 2005. The judges were impressed by the turnaround of 12 months, given the geographical areas covered, data centres for these areas and the customer channels being used. The domestic project required integration of a broad range of third-party technologies plus customisation of the FNS BANCS application, and enabled the generation of new products with a rapid turnaround while centralising data for improved compliance and reporting. For the scale, speed and complexity of the programme, judges awarded this the winning place.

Highly commended – Attentiv Systems

As part of a UK building society’s change programme, Attentiv Systems provided the core banking element for a team also comprising Fineos, LogicaCMG and KPMG as well as the building society’s own information systems division. The replacement of all core back-office and front-office systems was aimed at cutting costs and providing a platform for a new CRM system to be integrated, thus improving customer value. The integration of the core system with the CRM system is fairly unique for a bank of any size so creating a single workflow system across all points of customer contact is worthy of merit, as our panel acknowledged.

CRM

Winner – Infosys

The Infosys CRM solution was notable first for its range – the system is designed to cover both consumer and corporate banking customers. At its core is a strong workflow engine, which gives the bank visibility of its processes so that service requests can be seen and any time-outs or problems dealt with. System analysis can be carried out to find and correct any bottlenecks or inefficiencies. One major Indian bank that uses the system has an aggressive growth strategy, and needs strong customer service to expand its client base. The bank is already quite large so the solution, which replaced a combined in-house/third-party system, had to be easily deployed across many front-office locations using thin client (network computers without hard drives) and other distribution channels. Major cost reductions were found through this method compared with the incumbent systems. The system also had to integrate with many third-party systems and platforms – a task that was achieved in just seven months.

FRAUD PREVENTION

Winner – NCR

The development of improved capacitive sensing by NCR for its Intelligent Fraud Detection was widely judged to be the most advanced technology submitted to The Banker Technology Awards 2005. The company’s product, which detects any illegal devices connected to ATMs, is helping to re-establish trust in both banks and technology, with real-time alerts contributing to the potential arrest of criminals. It will help banks to realise the benefits of adopting the EMV chip and assist the programme in preventing criminal activity. (Also ‘Innovation of the year – winner’)

ONLINE SERVICES

Winner – Sampo Bank

The business of supporting SMEs can require costly integration of systems so the provision of a web-enabled payments and accounting service struck the judging panel as a commonsense approach to gaining ground in the market. Netvisor eAccounting allows SMEs to deal with payments, invoicing and accounting online using Sampo’s web ID service to ensure security. The timeliness of the Finvoice banking standard adoption allows increased business-to-business invoicing for the Finnish marketplace that has combined with Sampo’s Netvisor eAccounting to offer ROI of up to 30%. Having a clear target audience and a simple but effective product with clear ROI made the bank overall winner in this category.

PAYMENTS RETAIL

Winner – Nordea

Electronic invoicing is providing massive cost savings for large corporates in supply chain management, where costs can reach up to E60 per received invoice. Nordea’s e-invoice solution was seen as a direct customer value-add, particularly as it reduced the need for large investment in an enterprise resource planning system – a common route to automation. By using an electronic system, further cost savings and efficiencies can be found in automated processing of electronic documents internally, facilitating STP and strengthening communications with customers. This adds further payback to what is often a 50% cost saving for corporates. The judges felt this was a strong winner for the bank and its customers.