Software Strategy for Growing, Ambitious
Banks
Larger banks have traditionally benefited from large in-house IT
organisations and vast technology budgets to drive the
development of market-leading products and services. Smaller
banks were able to deliver superior customer services in market
niches, but were forced to avoid competing with the global
players.
Titan, from Central Software, now allows smaller banks to deploy
the same products and services, comply with the same regulatory
pressures and deliver the same management information as
multinational banks.
Titan was conceived specifically for the smaller financial
institutions for who keen cost control, simplicity and rapid
time to market count most. Because in retail banking, one size
definitely does not fit all. Smaller banks can now operate and
evolve without constraint of smaller IT budgets. They can
finally provide big bank services, without big bank
infrastructures.
The Issues Facing Smaller Banks
There are a number of issues facing the banking industry today
that are common to both multinational banks and smaller,
regional players:
• The need to provide a complete portfolio of retail services –
loans, mortgages, current (checking) accounts and savings
products.
• Compliance with common regulatory pressures.
• The risks and costs of poor technology implementation.
• Despite the fact that over 80% of the world’s banks have fewer
than 500,000 customer accounts, the needs of these smaller banks
are seldom recognised or served by the technology industry. The
specific issues facing these smaller banks include:
• They are usually in competition with larger competitors and
require fiercely competitive delivery costs to compensate for
their relative lack of economy of scale.
• They require rapid, accurate management of information in
order to capitalise on their ability to move faster than their
larger competitors.
They have to work harder to satisfy investors, regulators and
potential acquirers of the resilience and
stability of their infrastructure.
• They inevitably have smaller technology budgets that cannot
cover the cost of systems created to satisfy larger banks.
• They employ smaller IT departments resulting in less manpower
and less diversity of skills.
• They lack the support staff to help users and executives
capitalise on the strengths of the technology
• Deployed throughout the bank.
• They have little need for sophisticated architectures to
support massive data volumes or integration with multiple
vintages of legacy systems.
• Speed of return on investment is more important than endless
refinement of custom reports and service tweaks.
Industry averages suggest that many of the solutions available
today fail to meet the specific needs of this large number
smaller banks. IBS Publishing (UK) reports that the average cost
of a core banking system is between $2m and $5m, with
implementation times routinely reported to be between six months
and five years. The challenge is to provide not only technology
solutions that are designed to meet the specific needs of
smaller banks, but also fast technology implementation and
competitive pricing.
Introducing Titan
Titan has been a leading banking software for many years.
Leading Offshore financial institutions rely on it to run their
operations, service their customers and act as the bedrock upon
which their businesses are built. Rich in functionality, Titan
has been widely accepted as a strong platform upon which to
grow. Over time, however, technologies have emerged that enable
the delivery a more attractive user interface, better management
of information and more channels to market.
Titan is uniquely architected, specified and priced specifically
for smaller, growing and ambitious banks.
Meeting the Needs of Smaller Banks
This document outlines the nature of those specific
requirements, and how Titan delivers the
best-in-class technology solution designed specifically for
smaller banks.
1. Smaller banks must offer a portfolio of customer services
that can meet every customer expectation, both now and into the
future Today’s banks are expected to deliver an extraordinary
range of products and services and to report in more complex
ways that ever before. Any technology approach is therefore
required to be comprehensive - not just delivering the many
services required today, but also the capacity to expand to cope
with both the ambition of the bank and external factors (such as
legislation or major market shift) that can blind-side even the
most far-sighted of institutions. In developing Titan, Central
Software created architecture with the following design
criteria:
• Delivering the customer service portfolio to cover the needs
of the majority of banks.
• Allowing ready distribution through multiple channels.
• A modular approach that allows banks to purchase only the
elements required at each stage of
development, thereby keeping costs low and return on investment
fast.
• Structured enough to ensure the integration of existing and
future third-party systems.
• Organised to enable straightforward phased implementation,
thereby minimising risk and speeding
acceptance.
While every bank will tend to select its own sub-set of modules,
the full Central Software Suite includes:
Core system
• The infrastructure, general ledger and basic services. In
addition to traditional core information, can handle an
unlimited amount of customer-specific data (including details
from scanned documents).
• Financial Returns – for the easy production of year end
accounts, trial balances, profit and loss statements and balance
sheets
Products and Services
Titan delivers a very broad range of products and services,
including:
Payments
• International payments via SWIFT
• National payments via integration to BACS etc.
Lending
• A full range of commercial and retail lending products.
• Collateral recording facilities helping to minimise credit
risk.
• Limits Monitoring – the ability to manage credit limits by
customer or product and across a broad
• range of parameters.
Savings
• Demand and fixed deposits
• ISAs
• Current (checking) accounts
• Standing orders and direct debits – including sophisticated
sweeps to help priority customers to
• maintain minimum balances.
• Service charges and commissions – a sophisticated set of tools
to allow the arrangement of
• charging criteria each attributable by account type, customer
value or local market demand.
• Trade Finance – a suite of high margin services that can be
workflow driven and capitalise on sophisticated
• imaging and e-commerce capabilities.
Treasury
• Money Market
• Foreign Exchange
• Investment Management – a real-time system that tracks,
records and provides information on a client’s total portfolio
of stock, shares and investments.
Channels
Titan supports all the channels customers demand, including”
• Teller – a full suite of services to support branch-based and
customer service staff.
• Cheque / draft printing and monitoring
• Cash and till management
• Passbook – service and management of passbook-based retail
accounts.
• ATM/POS
• Standards based smooth integration with the leading specialist
technology
Providers.
• e-Channels – low cost, high image services to enable
differentiation in a crowded market and to drive down cost:
income ratios.
• Interactive voice recognition - telephone banking – an
extremely low cost way to provide 24/7 service to
• customers, however remote they may be.
Business information and compliance
Titan eases the increasing regulatory burden placed on banks:
• World Check integration – a system that checks against
industry recognised watch-lists, tracking addresses, names and
scanned images for maximum protection.
• CRM – tools for market and segment analysis to help drive up
revenue per customer, capitalise on new business opportunity and
help address Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations.
• Customer communications – a sophisticated correspondence
management system that provides automated customer communication
and a clear view of relationship history.
• Event log – underpinning customer services and AML compliance,
the event log tracks all customer
• transactions, engagements and letters.
• • Management information – including flexible report
generation to help drive smart decision-making.
• e-mail - management
Tools
A suite of tools, both for business process improvement and
operational security and efficiency.
2. Smaller banks require technology costs that are in line with
the scale of their business
The pricing of Titan is designed to recognise that smaller
banks, however ambitious, need to
keep infrastructure costs low. The Titan standard pricing
structure has been developed to help spread the costs, by
splitting fees between a low up-front cost and an annual
Renewable License Fee (covering upgrades, support and providing
the continued right to use). This ensures that the project
achieves a return on investment as early as possible, while also
ensuring that Central Software can sustain its investment in the
development and enhancement of its products and services.
Titan has been designed as a powerful core system, supported by
large suite of additional modules. Each bank purchases only the
functionality it needs, when it needs it. As needs change, new
modules can be purchased and integrated tightly with the
existing system. This modular approach means that a bank need
only buy what it needs, only implement as required and can keep
training and support costs to a minimum. By applying value-based
pricing, Central Software ensures that technology costs reflect
the value brought to the bank. Definitive pricing is built from
an outline scoping exercise, including such variables as
conversion approach and any unique requirements. These
considerations are then mapped to the budgetary requirements of
the bank to build the most appropriate cost model.
3. Smaller banks require rapid implementation time for fast
return on investment
Titan is typically implemented in just three to six months,
depending on the specifics of the
bank’s operating environment and the chosen conversion strategy.
With its modular design and the fact that it is delivered
largely pre-configured, Titan is rapidly installed, commissioned
and operational fast and immediately delivering a return on
investment.
4. Smaller banks require a solution that takes advantage of low
cost, commodity technology.
Despite its sophistication, Titan will run on a Windows™ or UNIX
systems (or a combination
or the two), depending on the technology skills and policies
that prevail in the bank.
5. Smaller banks require a solution that is reliant on only one
set of technical skills and can operate without dedicated IT
resources.
This open standards approach means that the bank can consolidate
its skills around standard technology, rather than having to
invest in proprietary knowledge on older platforms.
At the same time, the Central Software Project Team is focused
on ensuring that the bank is not only live as soon as possible,
but that it is also self-sufficient on an on-going basis. By
working alongside bank staff, the Central Software team will
ensure that knowledge is transferred throughout the process.
Training services can then be customised to ensure that the bank
is in a position to call on Central Software whenever is
required.
6. Smaller banks require the ability to bring the
Straight-Through-Processing characteristics of
investment banking systems into the world of retail banking.
Through its design as suite of tightly integrated modules, Titan
can bring Straight-Through- Processing to the retail service
portfolio. This drives up customer service quality and speed,
cuts the scope for
operational risk and keeps costs to a minimum. Retail banking
STP cuts to the heart of market leadership, delivering:
a. The best possible service levels
b. The lowest possible operating costs
c. The fastest time-to-market for new products
d. The tightest control over operational risk
7. Smaller banks require the ability to serve every customer
consistently, irrespective of their preferred channel.
Titan supports all the channels customers may demand, from ATM
and branch to Internet and call centre. By providing online,
real-time access to a central repository of customer
information, Titan ensures that customers never suffer from the
inconsistencies often brought about by information-lag.
8. Smaller banks require a solution that is built around
customers, rather than account numbers, so that both the
customer and the bank has a clear view of the relationship at
all times.
Early banking systems were designed around account numbers
rather than people, typically because each new bank product was
driven by a stand-alone system. Today, the limitations of this
approach manifest themselves in complex, difficult-to-maintain
systems, inconsistent customer service and expensive,
time-consuming problem management for the bank. Titan was
designed as a customer-centric solution, which allows that bank,
at all times, to have a single view of its relationship with the
customer (and vice versa).
In Summary
Titan, from Central Software, now allows smaller banks to deploy
the same products and services, comply with the same regulatory
pressures and deliver the same management information as
multinational banks. They can finally provide big bank services,
without big bank infrastructures
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