APS Bank in Malta live with new core banking system, BML Istisharat’s ICBS
Jonathan Caruana, APS Bank
APS Bank in Malta completes its major technology overhaul. The project has been successfully completed on time and on budget, states the bank’s management.
The new platform is the ICBS system supplied by a Lebanese banking software vendor BML Istisharat. The solution is delivered on a hosted basis.
This is the first project for BML in Malta.
ICBS ousted a legacy Profits system from Greece-based Intrasoft International that had been in place at APS Bank since 2002.
Banking Technology understands Intrasoft bid with a newer version of Profits at the system selection stage. Another bidder was Oracle FSS with its Flexcube core banking system. The selection took place in 2012-2014.
According to APS Bank’s head of IT, Jonathan Caruana, BML offered a “feasible proposal, a system that met the majority of the bank’s functionality requirements and a good number of reference sites”. Banking Technology understands the reference sites were BLOM Bank in Paris, IBL Bank in Beirut, BSN Bank in Kuala Lumpur and Commercial Bank of Kuwait.
As mentioned earlier, the bank opted for an outsourced delivery (it had a similar set-up with Intrasoft’s Profits). Caruana explains that the bank employs 270 people overall, among which there is only “a very limited pool of developers”.
BML took the responsibility for the implementation as well as business and integration consultancy. It also provided the training programme on the core system. Caruana is complimentary about the vendor’s delivery, saying it provided “experienced and patient trainers with extensive technical and banking knowledge”.
The bank’s team handled the setting up of the infrastructure, UAT, end-user training, security testing, project management and data migration development.
In terms of milestones, gap delivery and parameter setting was completed in June last year, followed by UAT (until February 2016), data migration and a mock run (April 2016). Go-live took place in June, as originally planned.
