Latin Finance - July 2008 - (Page 41)

corporate statement investment banking Universal Banking: A technological strategy for leaders By Ricardo Wagner, Chief Information Officer, Cobiscorp s new financial players leap into the Latin American market, and as the banking industry consolidates through mergers and acquisitions, the challenge of technological integration without a clear technological strategy becomes increasingly difficult. Until a few years ago, this challenge would have been almost impossible to overcome, primarily because of the lack of the right technology. Banks’ different business models went hand in hand with their internal processes and the consequent IT structure was such that integration with other businesses, including growth by acquisitions, presented complicated barriers. Technological integration is a complex process. When an organization tries to combine platforms, versions of basic software, communication schemes, modes of operations (distributed or centralized) and constant upgrades of these, it is only the precise use of the right tools with the right strategy that will achieve integration in a reasonable time-frame, securely, and without devouring financial resources. functionality that it was acquired by over half of the banks in Ecuador, not to mention institutions in other countries. With time, COBIS has evolved into a high performance, multiplatform solution, with rich functionality for almost all business models and sizes of financial institutions. The result of this evolution is COBIS UBS (Universal Banking System). Recent events have confirmed COBIS UBS to be a true technological champion; it has proven to be the right strategy for institutions in the following scenarios: • Citibank, while in the process of acquiring several banks in Central America (including Banco Cuscatlán, a COBIS user) decided to base their entire growth and integration strategy in the area on COBIS. • The BBVA Foundation partnered with the Woman’s World Bank in an effort to add momentum to microfinance in Latin America. Together the institutions created a new microfinance group called Bancamia, based on the universal functionality of COBIS UBS. • Recently, FINCA International, one of the largest microfinance coalitions in the world, adopted COBIS to be deployed in all their operations in Mexico, Central America, and South America. • When Banco General de Panamá purchased Banco Continental, it was running banking software from one of the largest providers in the world. When they recognized the excellence of the COBIS technology that Banco Continental was using, Banco General decided that integration of the two banks would be done with COBIS. With the work of Ecuadorian software experts, this integration was accomplished, 2008 LATINFINANCE 41 The Right Strategy Twenty years ago, an Ecuadorian company, already a leader in the financial technology sector of their country, began a visionary project intended to provide banks with exactly these tools. The result was a product named COBIS, an acronym for Cooperative Open Banking Information System. The first version of COBIS was created and immediately accepted by the market. The innovation in COBIS consisted in providing a flexible product that was robust, open to integration with other software, and easy to install and manage. To develop COBIS, Macosa now Cobiscorp, drew upon their experience of creating their previous flagship product, LABIS (Latin American Banking Information System). LABIS was a huge success in its time, operating on a proprietary platform, but with such excellent guide http://www.cobiscorp.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Latin Finance - July 2008

Latin Finance - July 2008 Contents Investment Banking Outlook Compensation Survey Colombia Investment Banking Borrowers vs. Investors Banorte Profile Braskem Financing Strategy Brazil Hydro Finance Peru Port Privatization Panama Money Flows Argentina Local Markets Guide to Banking Technology Who Said That?

Latin Finance - July 2008

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