Spotlight

Misys India prepares for new opportunities

The company is revamping its product line to address the core and compliance needs of banks, says Vinutha V

Since authorities are introducing new regulations such as BASEL II and Anti-Money Laundering, it is difficult for banks to keep pace using in-house IT solutions Vibhakar Bhushan Development Director (India) Retail Banking Misys International

UK-based Misys Plc focusses on developing and offering solutions to the international banking and security, healthcare and financial services sectors. The company also offers transaction-processing services to physicians in the United States and independent financial services in Britain. In 1991, Misys started marketing banking products such as Bankmaster RS, Bankmaster LAN and Equation in India. Misys then set up a subsidiary in Bangalore. It opened a development centre in 1998 for its banking and security products—Equation, Bankmaster and Risk Vision. In 2000, healthcare product development was set up, followed by a risk management development centre in 2004.

Today, Misys India provides end-to-end solutions including product designing, development, professional services and implementation around its banking products. For the banking and securities industry, Misys has an array of products that take care of retail, wholesale, risk and security.

Banking on flagship products

Misys India is now upgrading its banking and security products to incorporate the functionality required. At present, Bankmaster is more suited to small banks that are expanding with 1-10 branches. And though Equation is a retail banking product, it has been implemented by 200 banks (tier-1 and tier-2) for their core applications such as loan deposits, savings and current accounts, lending, mortgage, Internet banking and ATMs.

Says Vibhakar Bhushan, Development Director (India), Retail Banking, Misys International Financial Systems, “We have Equation and Bankmaster which have rich functionality, but we still use old technology based on RPG (an IBM mainframe language), Cobol and DB2. We are in the process of revamping Bankmaster and Equation to meet the growing demands of the banking industry—Equation Plus will be based on Java and J2EE, and Bankmaster on .NET and Java.”

Misys is using this opportunity to make its applications platform- and database-independent. The new versions will be called Equation Plus and Bankmaster Plus; the former will be out by end-2005, the latter by early 2006.

Indian clientele

Bankmaster and Equation have been quite popular in India; customers include the likes of Centurion Bank and IndusInd Bank for Equation, and Bank of Baroda and Standard Chartered for Bankmaster. IndusInd also uses Opics for its core-banking activities.

Misys has signed up 17 new customers for its wholesale banking product, MidasPlus. Among them, Bank of India (BOI), which has rolled it out with global processing across 19 branches and seven time zones. The implementation takes care of transaction processing across treasury and capital markets, commercial lending, trade finance, payments and retail services with straight-through processing capabilities. This gives BOI a common core banking system running on a centralised infrastructure on J2EE architecture across various geographies.

Shift towards packaged software

The Indian banking industry has been slow to adopt packaged software. That said, things are changing, with banks following the footsteps of manufacturing (the latter had adopted ERP packages) and deploying core banking packages. Most Indian banks had developed in-house software for core banking activities in the past. Now they are shifting the focus to packaged software solutions. “As the banking industry evolves, it looks for new ways to do business. Reaching out to customers through new channels, and getting a customer-centric view become important. At the same time, authorities are introducing new regulations such as BASEL II and Anti-Money-Laundering. It is difficult for banks to keep pace using in-house IT solutions,” adds Bhushan.

Overseas ambitions

With the 2006 deadline for banks to implement BASEL II (a set of worldwide banking regulations covering risk assessment and operational procedures), Misys expects to sign up European financial institutions as well as customers from other regions.

Misys has a presence in 30 countries, and has implemented solutions in 130 countries. About 15 percent of the company’s global workforce will be in India. Misys has 550 employees at present, and plans to add another 450 by 2005-end. For its retail banking solutions, the company faces competition from Teminos and i-flex, while for its risk management suite it has to compete with SunGard and Algorithmics. Misys Plc has other development centres in Manila and London.

vinutha@expresscomputeronline.com