After 1986 results showing turnover in excess of UKP60m, ICL’s Financial Services arm is confidently predicting it will break the UKP100m barrier by the year end. According to ICL 75% of all UK equity trades are settled on its computers with installations at NMW Computers, Morgan Grenfell, Chase Manhattan and Barclays de Zoete Wedd. Building on this base, ICL is soon expected to announce a settlement system running on the Series 39 mainframe range. Typically Fiancial Services sees its 400 plus client base being made up of 30% building societies, 15% insurance brokers and 15% banking and City institutions. It sees this changing due to deregulation, legislation, competition and the diminishing role of the middleman. It reckons only people like retail bankers, conglomerates, Japanese banks and information technology suppliers who are willing to adapt will survive. In the future providers of a wide range of services will be connected to retail outlets via a network. ICL puts itself in the role of provider offering core systems, systems and the services of the ICL Business Intelligence Systems division. These will be connected via private, managed and value added networks to a branch point of service. To reach this goal Financial Services intends to recruit specialists and to enter into new developments with them if necessary. A recent venture with accountants Touche Ross to use ICL Indepol tools – including database manager, applications builder, query language and high security features – in the detection of multiple share applications during the Rolls Royce and British Gas flotations is just one example. A prestige office in the City of London is also in the plan for demonstrations and conferences. ICL, with interim profits up 29% at UKP53m on turnover that rose 13% to UKP627m, also looks to save UKP120m on costs over the next three years. This it plans to do by, it hopes, getting things right first time with its collaborative agreements, among which it counts the one which gives it first crack at Fujitsu’s chips.
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