The Banking sector is renowned for the volume and velocity of Data it generates, transmits and stores. Given the recent financial crises and the subsequent regulatory pressures, the cost of IT has grown exponentially for not just the banking organisation on the whole but even at a divisional level. 

Banks are now faced with drastically cutting IT costs, but not at the cost of compromising data security and integrity, which could lead to reputational, legal, monetary damages. The need therefore to explore unconventional and innovative options which shrink IT costs while safeguarding data integrity. However, with limited resources and even limited budgets, a conventional IT implementation methodology is neither an efficient nor an advisable solution.

Cloud as a technology option for Data and business processes has gained a credible foothold in recent times across several industry sectors including financial services. This article details the ‘must knows’ for implementing an efficient and secure information management framework in a Cloud environment. Let’s first take a quick look at the various Cloud delivery and deployment models available for a bank.

Zurich is one of the world’s leading insurance groups, and one of the few to operate on a global basis. Its General Insurance and Global Life business in Australia and New Zealand works through agents, banks and brokers to deliver a wide range of insurance and savings solutions to its 21 million individual, commercial and corporate customers in Australia and New Zealand.

The company has had a presence in Australia since 1961, and its Australian life business continues to receive accolades for delivering market leading service, innovative products and outstanding value. Because of the countries’ young professionals and high net-worth customers, the Australian and New Zealand life market offers a significant potential for growth, and more than 1,200 employees are now servicing those customers in Australia and New Zealand.

Diasoft, a global provider of innovative core banking solutions, is ranked the second in the IBS Russian Sales League Table 2014. With 10 new-name deals signed in 2013, Diasoft does not only demonstrate a significant result, but also goes ahead numerous of its competitors operating in the Russian market. Additionally this year Diasoft is included into the Global IBS Sales League Table.

The IBS Sales League Table is universally acknowledged as the barometer for international core banking systems sales activity. The table is compiled annually from submissions from each supplier detailing the names of the banks that have bought their systems in the year. IBS verifies each submission; license renewals and extensions to the systems within a bank are excluded.

Below are the new 2014 results and further down an archive of previous Tables from 2003 onwards (IBS Journal subscribers only):

Russian vendors Sales League Table 2014 (results Jan-Dec 2013) >> (subscription required).

Global Sales League Table 2014 (results Jan-Dec 2013) >> (subscription required).

IBS analyses ups and downs of the Russian market throughout 2013, highlighting notable trends, and compares the new-name core banking software wins of major domestic players in Russia. For more information and to access selected feature articles, please register free on the website http://www.ibsintelligence.com.

Diasoft, a global provider of cutting-edge core banking solutions, announced that its innovative FLEXTERA has been selected by microfinance organization Bistrodengi to automate loans accounting business processes of the company and to support its development strategy.

Following the extensive business development strategy and its course for the market transparency, Federal MFO “Bistrodengi”, the leader of “loan till payday” segment, and Diasoft have signed an agreement for the back-office automation of loans accounting business processes of the company on the basis of Diasoft cutting-edge JavaEE Framework.

“The solution of choice should to be flexible enough in order to quickly adapt our business to ever-changing market conditions and requirements, - says Yuri Provkin, CEO at Bistrodengi. – The key reasons behind our choice of FLEXTERA were the ability of the system to support increasing legislation and changes introduced by Regulator, as well as a high level of integration into IT-infrastructure of our company. FLEXTERA Loans appeared to be the only solution fully incorporating all of the above requirements.”

FLEXTERA Loans ensures automated maintenance of lending contracts with individuals, legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, and supports operations with various types of loans. The functional scope of the solution includes automated interest accrual, payment plan generation, automated loan repayments, credit limit control, and product performance analysis. FLEXTERA can flexibly support the retail business of large multi-branch bank.

FLEXTERA Loans is a new generation of core banking solution, built on scalable high performance Diasoft Framework that allows it to support the rapid business growth of financial institution and easily increase performance depending on current business volumes of financial institution. By results of the project Bistrodengi will obtain high performance solution able to ensure successful business development for large microfinance organization.

“Our project with Bistrodengi appeared to be one of the first FLEXTERA implementations in microfinance sector, - says Dmitry Zubarev, CEO, Diasoft. – The main goal of our cooperation – to develop an innovative solution that can support an ever-changing legislation, be user-friendly, allow saving the time and ensure the most favorable conditions for our clients servicing. We hope for a fruitful collaboration and will go the extra mile in order to achieve all project plans.”

EMIR requires CCPs who wish to continue to trade in the European Union to arrange for accreditation based on new regulatory requirements. Accreditation is accompanied by identification of the financial instruments or type of contracts that each CCP is authorized to clear.

On March19, NASDAQ OMX was the first CCP to be awarded ESMA accreditation. The others are expected to follow fairly rapidly.

This accreditation is one of the prerequisites for implementation of the clearing obligation which will be imposed on a number of standard contracts. Nevertheless, this can only actually enter into effect once ESMA has published the list of asset classes which will be subject to it. And it will take at least 6 months before this list is published, at which time the clearing obligation for the products ESMA deems eligible will be retroactive for ongoing contracts.

Diasoft , a global provider of financial software solutions, is named among Top 5 Global Leaders of Celent Big Leagues Table 2013 for the gross number of deals won in 2012-2013. The results were introduced by Celent in its annual The Big Leagues 2013: Core Platform Sales Ranking issued in February 2014. The report provides a detailed look at core banking deals and measures the number of new banking deals that vendors won in the 12 months between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013.

In this report, Celent uses a weighted score designed to assess the value of deals won, rather than merely the number of deals. Celent believes that a sales ranking should include both the size of the deals and an adjustment for the geographical location of the implementation. With that view, Celent introduced the Big Leagues Table to compare how various core banking vendors performed across the world. The report provides a geographical analysis of North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, together with a detailed vendor analysis.

“We are proud to be ranked among Top 5 Leaders globally this year”, said Mikhail Kryuchkov, Director, Global Markets, Diasoft. “This recognition indicates that our customers recognize the value of Diasoft component-based SOA-compliant financial solutions incorporating the most advanced architectural principles and standards.  As we remain to provide our customers with necessary business and technological agility, we expect our position as a world`s leading software solutions provider will continue to rise.”

“Celent is bullish about the core market,” says Dan Latimore, Senior Vice President with Celent’s Banking Group and coauthor of the report. “Standardization initiatives are gaining momentum, and as IT development evolves toward simplicity and modularity, core adoption will become easier to justify.”

“The cycle time for new channels and products will continue to shorten,” adds Stephen Greer, Analyst with Celent’s Banking Group and coauthor of the report. “As complexity grows, vendors will undoubtedly be at the forefront of innovation, with core banking deals not far behind.”