The Banking Executive Magazine - March 2021

Banque Saudi Fransi Banque Saudi Fransi GOES LIVE WITH FINASTRA Banque Saudi Fransi, a bank based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has gone live with the latest version of Fusion Kondor, Finastra’s treasury management solution. The move will enhance, automate and standardise the bank’s treasury and trading operations, including the possibility of introducing new pricing models, trader activity monitoring and risk management features. This will enable the bank to strengthen its product offering, and improve its user experience, all while keeping pace with market changes. Zuhair Mardam, Head of Treasury at Banque Saudi Fransi said: “As banks focus on improving returns on capi- tal and meeting new regulatory obli- gations, the treasury occupies a unique position at the very centre of a bank’s operations and its revenue stream. Automating this part of the business means that we can manage global treasury trading operations with high levels of efficiency and compliance, yet still manage risk ef- fectively and avoid expensive system costs. Ultimately, this will help us provide an excellent customer expe- rience and help us grow our market share.” Thamer Yousef, Chief Operations Officer at Banque Saudi Fransi said: “We are on a journey towards trans- forming and digitising our business by bringing in more innovative nim- ble services that have a competitive advantage, to make sure that we ex- tend our business capabilities to pro- vide the best experience for all our customers, whether retail or corpo- rate. Treasury is at the heart of this key initiative.” Fusion Kondor will enable Banque Saudi Fransi to trade high volumes of treasury while offering the flexibility to support more complex derivatives, options, and structured trades. The solution comes with functionality that can easily be integrated with ex- isting systems and applications and, as it is designed as an open platform, it is also easily customisable. Serge Tohme, Managing Director MEA and Turkey at Finastra said: “Fi- nastra has invested significantly in its solutions to introduce new trading and regulatory features, which have resulted in tangible business benefits for customers who have chosen to upgrade. With the latest version of Fusion Kondor in place, Banque Saudi Fransi will have a comprehen- sive trading, risk management and regulatory compliance solution that will help it to meet today’s chal- lenges head on. Further down the line, the bank can explore opportu- nities to enhance its products and services by using the solution’s open APIs and connecting to Finastra’s platform for open innovation, Fu- sionFabric.cloud - which is in line with SAMA’s Open Banking initia- tive.” Since 2018, Finastra has been strengthening its activities in the Mid- dle East through the growth of its Saudi Arabia office, in Riyadh, which contributes to supporting technolog- ical and financial innovation in line with the kingdom’s Vision 2030 ISSUE 147 MARCH 2021 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 15