Leading financial institution, The Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) announced the selection of iCreate’s Biz$core Fintellix Decision Enablement Solution as a comprehensive platform to enable the bank’s DW/BI strategy. On the threshold of the next level of growth, SAIB required an enterprise-grade innovation that could address its tactical business and compliance challenges as well as augment their strategic decision making capability.

The engagement will involve the deployment of iCreate’s Banking DW/BI platform in line with SAIB’s requirements, data extraction, a web-based portal with necessary infrastructure to access the reports, deployment of Self-service BI layer and will cover business-critical areas such as Islamic Retail Banking and Corporate Banking.

Speaking on the occasion, SAIB's GM – IT and Shared Services, Mr. Al-Obaid said, “SAIB has always made investments in proven Analytics/BI platforms as part of our overarching Information Management strategy. We chose Biz$core Fintellix for its ability to function as a backbone for our enterprise-wide BI requirements. iCreate will help us lay the foundation for enabling a strong decision support system and improve current discipline of information governance at SAIB”.

Amit Agarwal, iCreate’s Global Head for Business Development, said, “I am delighted to partner with a specialised bank like SAIB in their DW/BI journey. I am confident that Biz$core Fintellix will establish a holistic information management platform for  SAIB. This is a significant win for us in a region that has high potential for a solution like Biz$core Fintellix”.

Diasoft, a global provider of cutting-edge software solutions for front-to-back automation of financial services, introduces its new offering - Diasoft Balance, “Procurement Management”.

Diasoft Balance – is a fully-functional and multi-component solution, developed in accordance with the business-processes based approach. It ensures automation of supplier contract accounting processes of financial institution.

Diasoft specialists have developed and introduced to the market “Procurement Management” component in order to provide its customers with extended functionality of  Diasoft Balance solution.

With “Procurement Management” all the processes, including initialization, approval and realization of procurement procedures, holding of the tender and evaluation of existing suppliers become structured and optimized in terms of time. It allows forming procurement plan basing on existing as well as on potential contracts. New component appears to be a logical extension of Diasoft Balance supplier contract accounting functionality.

Diasoft Balance “Procurement Management” supports the following business-processes:

• Procurement composition
• Generation of Tender documentation
• Organization of Tender committee meetings
• Forming of procurement plan
• Periodic assessment of suppliers

IBM PureFlex – is a complete, flexible cloud infrastructure system that integrates and optimizes all compute, storage and networking resources to deliver infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) out of the box. This innovative solution can be configured for any specific business needs and may be complemented by a package of support services.

With PureFlex Diasoft customers obtain balanced solution, complementing computing resources, data storage and network infrastructure, optimized for FLEXTERA and other solutions of the company. Moreover, IBM system ensures increased speed of Diasoft`s solutions installation, requires fewer efforts and simplifies maintenance of IT-infrastructure.

Diasoft has successfully implemented IBM PureFlex in Capital Moscow Bank. With PureFlex system Diasoft was able to prepare and implement working and testing environment for FLEXTERA solution in a record time. Moreover, the experts from Diasoft’s Competency center together with IBM’s specialists deployed an integrated hardware and software platform PureFlex in BANK just within 5 days, after which they proceeded to configuring FLEXTERA applications. As a result the whole process of FLEXTERA implementation was performed in terms, exceeding all expectations of žBANK.

The responsibilities of the treasurer are expanding and commodity management is increasingly moving from procurement to treasury. In this paper, Reval demonstrates how technology can help treasurers better understand commodity exposures and more effectively implement hedging programs. 

Treasury is in different stages of transformation around the world, and what is included in treasury’s remit is different too. There is a notable increase amongst multinational corporates for treasury to manage commodity risk. We have seen this at Reval, and a recent gtnews risk survey indicates that 44% of treasurers are already responsible for commodity risk management. 
 
This is the case for a few reasons: 

• Greater need for global visibility of all financial risks 
• Understanding the correlations amongst different asset classes 
• Optimizing hedging strategies for significant cost savings 
• Growing volatility of commodity prices around the world 

Previously, many companies – commodity consumers – were reluctant to hedge commodity price risk as they believed their shareholders expected them to be fluctuating according to the market prices. However, the volatility and subsequent impact on the bottom line is no longer sustainable, and hence needs to be actively managed and hedged. Similarly, the banks that are financing those companies are not in favour of this volatility and are looking for more secure profit margins. 
 
This is relevant not only for consumers and producers of commodities, but also for many organisations that have some exposures to non-financial items. For example, airlines are exposed to jet fuel and diesel, but also to emissions as they look to reduce their carbon foot print. Retailers are exposed to fuel costs for deliveries as well as many soft exposures – wheat in the cereal, in the biscuits, and in the beer they sell, for example. Beverage companies not only are exposed to the ingredients to make the beverage, but also the paper, aluminium and plastic costs. 
 
Commodity exposure management is a complex area, but getting on top of commodity risks can have a significant financial impact. The following guide helps treasurers better understand what they need to determine the Return on Investment of commodity risk management: 

• Making exposures across the company visible 
• Monitoring and assessing risk correlations 
• Considering the impact of IFRS 9, IFRS 13, EMIR and Dodd Frank 
• Leveraging SaaS technology 

We can truly say that, for European projects, the year 2014 started with a bang, obviously under the pressure of the electoral calendar.

As expected, the Trilogue came to an agreement on the Directive on Criminal Sanctions for Market Abuse (CSMAD), put to the vote at the plenary meeting of 4 February. However, the most striking development has been the Trilogue's agreement in principle on the text of the new Markets in Financial Instruments Directive known as MiFID II.

This agreement had been eagerly awaited especially following the long and turbulent discussions surrounding the MiFID revision since the launch of the Commission's consultation in 2010. Sensitive issues like the regulation of high-frequency trading and dark pools, the defining of OTFs (Organised Trading Facilities) and the extension of the scope of the Directive on commodities, greatly disrupted the initial calendar.

ElectraCard Services (ECS), provider of software and processing solutions for electronic payment systems, today announced that Nepal Electronic Payment Systems (NEPS) has selected ECS’s electra iTx platform to setup a shared switch infrastructure to enable electronic payment transactions. NEPS is a company that is promoted by a group of seven Nepali Banks with the mandate to setup a shared e-payments switch and card infrastructure. 

NEPS has undertaken the shared switch initiative with the aim of achieving robustness, security and cost effectiveness in electronic retail payment systems. The shared switch is a milestone in the Nepal banking industry which was in the making for the last few years and now, a reality under the direction and leadership of NEPS. Currently this is a joint consortium between seven banks in Nepal with more banks expected to join.

With the NEPS shared infrastructure solution, the banks will be able to meet the growing regulatory requirements as well as provide their customers with secure transactions. Banks can offer customers additional products and services and meet all PCI-DSS and EMV compliance requirements.

“We are very excited to partner with NEPS and be a part of this revolutionary project in Nepal. With the large growth in banking needs and the need for stronger security, it is essential for banks to move to a newer platform and offer new services faster,” said  Mr. Ramesh Mengawade, CEO, ElectraCard Services. 

Mr. Anish Tamrakar, CEO, NEPS, said, “There is an imminent need for the banks to upgrade their platforms to meet regulatory requirements as well as ensure safety of their customers, hence the banks of Nepal have come together to set up a common platform to address the needs in a cost effective manner. ElectraCard Services brings with them the guarantee of over 200 successful implementations globally and expertise in Nepalese electronic payments.”

After a careful process of selection and evaluation of various global players, ECS was selected because of its products’ modern architecture and excellent references from its existing customers. The electra iTx suite with its proven scalability and support for 24x7 multi-channel payments will provide the bank with a unified customer view and seamless integration across channels. ECS has a strong partner in Imark Pvt. Ltd., which is one of the largest IT systems integrator in Nepal.