Azizi Bank may be a young organisation. But with plans to grow rapidly from the current 19 branches to over 40 by Q2 2007, the $300 million Azizi Group is investing in technology to help it steamroll the transformation following its deal with Futech Systems for the implementation of the ICBA Core Banking Systems from Infopro.
“As a leading importer of petroleum products in Afghanistan, owner of petroleum / LPG tanks in the home country and CIS nations, distributor for Nissan vehicles, Swatch watches and Goodyear Tyres and patron of the American University in Afghanistan the Azizi Group recently launched Azizi Bank. This is a revolutionary organisation with a charter to bring best practices into the region and also ensure that 50% of its staff will be women,” says Mohamed Fouz, CEO of Futech.
“The ICBA system in particular will help the bank grow as the business scales and grows into new markets. The objective is to increase both the reach and the volume of the business,” remarks Mirwais Azizi, Chairman of the Azizi Group.
Malaysia-based InfoPro is among the players targeting the Middle East region for its banking solutions following strong business traction in mature banking markets in the Far East. The company’s solution has so far had close to 12 wins in the African region.
“The product is among the leading Sharia Based Islamic Banking software players and ICBA currently has over 72 banks as its customers. The clients range from financing vendors like Toyota Financial Services to pure bred Islamic Banks like Bank Syariah Mega in Indonesia,” adds Fouz. With Oracle as its underlying base, InfoPro is built to provide a complete end-to-end backbone with banking modules that can be implemented in a modular fashion.
Futech Software has been roped in as a strategic partner who will not only assist Azizi Bank to go live in a high velocity deployment, but will also run the application out of its hosted infrastructure out of Dubai.
“The modules to go live would be the entire retail and corporate banking groups followed by the trade finance and Internet banking capability in the first phase of operations. The ICBA system will offer Azizi Bank out-of-the box- functionality and a quick deployment cycle with relatively low maintenance,” chips in Anil Kumar, Director at Futech.
A start-up niche consulting and services firm, Futech has been promoted by banking and technology experts. “Such projects are testimony of the ability to use technology to deliver future proof IT solutions in environments where systems have to go beyond automation to provide the business edge,” says Fouz.