Core Banking
Ovations started advisory and implementation consulting in the local banking sector in 2003 and the current Banking practice was established in 2011.
The practice focuses primarily on the commercial banking sector and has experience with three of the top six local banks, including their regional footprint.
Our approach, bringing together specialists in other practices like architecture, integration, business process- and enterprise content management, help us provide a holistic service to our clients. Across all practices, Ovations currently provide services to five of the top six local banks.
Our Approach
As sustainable business improvement is our primary objective at Ovations, we ensure that any core banking transformation journey is aligned with your business strategy, provides real business value, minimises the disruption to your business and provides you with the flexibility and support you need going forward.
We see people, process and technology as key to a successful core banking initiative and continuously optimise and align these through a governance process to drive operational efficiencies as part of an integrated solution.
We take an incremental approach to core banking transformation, and provide different journeys to achieve your strategic objectives; including core system replacements, a revitalisation of legacy systems, or an expansion to support new products or services.
Our engagements are guided by a proven methodology, adapted to provide guidance in critical areas such as benefits tracking, governance and people change management.
Our Offerings
Our advisory services include:
- Capability and environment assessments
- Assessment of IT environment and gap analysis against reference architectures and business capability models.
- Legacy reuse assessment and application modernisation plan
- Assessment of legacy systems against appropriate industry market clocks and definition of application modernisation plan.
- Strategy and business case
- Creation of high-level business case that includes financial benefits, costs, business issues and opportunities and delivery strategy.
- Transformation roadmap definition
- Definition of transformation roadmap aligned to the business strategy and identified initiatives.
- Operating and technology model design
- Design and monitoring of target state operating and technology models to support each increment of the transformation roadmap, describing how the bank will operate to deliver the strategy from a people, process and technology perspective.
- Reference architectures
- Creation of domain reference architectures and gap analysis against industry reference architectures.
- System specification and selection support
- Support with the design, management and evaluation of RFx processes related to core banking and product systems, ensuring alignment to business and technology requirements and constraints.
- Implementation roadmap definition
- Development of implementation plan and critical path, balancing customer needs, regulatory requirements, business/technology priorities and constraints and resource requirements.
Benefits
The benefits of a successful core banking transformation journey could include:
- Rationalised application portfolio
- Ability to involve business users in core development
- Ability to change business processes quickly
- Faster time-to-market for new products
- Improved real-time capabilities
- Improved cross-selling capabilities
- Improved operational efficiency
- Reduced IT development and maintenance costs
- Increased profit performance
Experience and Value
Some of our engagements in the regional banking sector:
- Establishment of enterprise architecture and governance function
- Design of functional reference architectures and business models, gap analysis and roadmap definition
- Operational process assessment and definition of target operating model
- Various business, application and solution architecture designs
- Various architectural and application portfolio assessments
- Various system specifications – functional and non-functional
- Various core platform and product system evaluation and selection processes
- Full lifecycle delivery of infrastructure, security, interfaces and internet channel for a core banking platform
- Full lifecycle delivery of a multi-country regulatory compliance solution
- Full lifecycle delivery of a multi-country customer sanctioning solution
- Design and delivery of multi-country core banking interfaces
- Design of training strategies, development of training material and user training
- Provision of business analysis, systems analysis and project management skills to various projects
Our value proposition:
- We provide an end-to-end system integration offering, that includes advisory, implementation and support services.
- Our enterprise architecture and business modelling skills provide the foundation for any transformation initiative.
- Our people, process and technology approach is supported by strong change management, process optimisation and systems integration skills in other practices.
- Our process-centric and service-oriented thinking is supported by a solid track record of BPM and SOA engagements; and is closely aligned to the future direction of core banking platforms.
- Our team of qualified and certified consultants has gained extensive industry and hands-on implementation experience within the banking sector, both locally and in Africa.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a core banking system?
A core banking system is the main source of customer and account information for both deposits and loans held with retail and commercial banks. It is a back-end transaction engine that processes daily banking transactions and posts updates to accounts with an interface to the bank’s general ledger.
What is a treasury and trade core system?
A treasury and trade core system is the main transactional system for treasury and trading market operations. It manages a company’s position in one or more asset classes. It is also the source of record for financial transactions from trade to settlement.
Source: Gartner
Contact
Jacques Fouche: Practice Lead for Core Banking
Jacques is a TOGAF certified IT professional with 13 years’ experience in consulting. He has a technical background, starting out as an analyst programmer and moving into solution- and enterprise architecture, and has both advisory and implementation experience in the regional banking sector. He joined Ovations in 2004 from IBM and was appointed Banking practice lead in 2011. Jacques holds a B.Sc. Honours (IT) from the University of Johannesburg.
