Azentio Software (“Azentio”), a Singapore-headquartered technology firm owned by funds advised by Apax Partners, today announced that Banque Populaire de Mauritanie (BPM), one of the largest financial institutions (FIs) in Mauritania, has gone live with the R14.5 version of iMAL, Azentio’s Core Banking Platform, to meet the multiple technology requirements imperative for its planned business growth.

iMAL is the industry-leading digital Islamic core banking platform, and the first and only suite certified by the Accounting & Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI). Its new version will provide BPM with the ability to quickly respond to the changing market conditions and regulations, along with the efficiency to align with its future business plans.

The go-live makes BPM the first bank to use the R14.5 version in Mauritania. But most importantly, the solution is expected to help meet BPM’s objective to offer the local market a broad range of interest-free products and services with faster time-to-market to deliver value to their customers, especially those firmly committed to Sharia and ethical values.

The bank has been running on iMAL since it began operations in 2012. Lately, the bank decided to upgrade to the latest release to meet its digital transformation’s vision to ensure better performance and scalability and fulfill its customers’ expectations of improved experiences across multiple channels.

With the R14.5 version, BPM gets a new multi-threading solution at different levels, delivering high volume processing capabilities with a profound level of parallel processing of records; an advanced solution burden-free, regardless of multiple connected channels or heavy processes; and the implementation of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)/web services to maximize agility, interoperability, and scalability of the system. With this step, the bank has progressed to SOA, facilitating the integration of channels and third-party systems, while getting the benefits of an advanced customization engine that will facilitate faster time-to-market of new products.

Limam Ebnou, CEO of BPM, commented, “Our bank has been using iMAL since we began operations in 2012, primarily because it is the only software built from the ground up in compliance with the Sharia law. Aware of the digital transformation challenges and the solution’s new advanced positioning in the sector, we are certain of taking our partnership with Azentio to even higher levels of success and innovations in Islamic financial services.”

Tony Kinnear, CEO of Azentio, said, “After being a strategic partner of Banque Populaire de Mauritanie for over a decade, we are helping them today to launch trendsetting products and improve their customer service. We are excited to take this relationship further with the go-live of iMAL R14.5. iMAL’s latest version comes with a number of market-driven innovative features which fit perfectly with the core principles and moral values of Islamic banking.”