UK banking group, Co-operative Financial Services is to rip out and replace some of its key legacy retail and corporate banking systems with packaged applications from Infosys Technologies Limited.
Clive Elliott, Director of Enterprise Platform at CFS told us the application modernisation plan had come about after a strategic review of retail banking operations identified its legacy programmes had become “a significant obstacle.”
Some of the programmes have been running for 40 years, Elliott said, noting that although multiple legacy applications had been running and running well, there was a considerable amount of spaghetti to contend with when maintenance or updates were needed.
He said that at the same time as the overhauling the legacy portfolio, the bank wanted to review its entire estate of financial services applications across retail banking, investment and insurance services.
“A key aspect is to deliver an holistic customer experience and drive a single customer view to the business” he said.
Deployment of Finacle Universal Banking Solution from Infosys would modernise CFS core-banking and channels platforms and transform the customer experience, the companies claimed.
“It ticked all the boxes, is proven in the market and delivers out-of-the-box capabilities” Elliott said about some of the criteria used in the product selection process. Ten core banking applications had been considered and three products made a short-list, he was able to confirm.
Over the past couple of years, the Infosys suite has been fleshed out through acquisitions in the CRM and treasury space, and additions made for corporate e-banking, web-based cash management and mobile banking. Elliott said CFS would be using the retail banking, corporate banking, and customer relationship management elements of the system, but that Finacle Treasury “was not yet in scope.”
Sanat Rao, VP for Finacle at Infosys said no decision had been made over the systems integration contract that is associated with the application deployment.
Finacle is said to be leading the core banking solutions market in India with almost 65% market share. Elsewhere, Spanish bank BBV and Emirates NBD are recent converts.
