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I've known for a few weeks, but I had to wait until it was on the Central Banker website to blog it. My client Polaris Financial Technology and its software solutions subsidiary Intellect Design have won the 2015 Central Banker Award for Technology Provider of the Year. I'm delighted for everyone who has been working so hard to make the Quantum Central Bank Solution and the Quantum Collateral Management Solution the best practice standards for central bank technology modernisations.
This award is recognition that we've got the right solutions at the right time to bring central banks into the 21st century - with real time operations, risk management, transparency and interaction with market infrastructure. For more than two years now I've been working with the team there to enrich the QCBS solution as the Strategic Advisor for Central Banks and Market Infrastructure, having approached them after seeing a presentation on the scope and effectiveness of the transformation at Reserve Bank of India.
RBI was an enormously complicated central bank, with over 30,000 staff in 28 branches, each of which had its own inconsistent data centres, applications and IT processes before the modernisation. Besides the normal core banking challenges and financial infrastructure services of central banks, RBI also manages all government accounts in India for all departments, agencies, and everything else, meaning it had a huge clientele and a huge complexity challenge interfaced to real economy. Nothing happened in real time. There were many manual processes and end-of-day handovers between systems. It took three weeks to compile the general ledger at year end.
Now everything is on a single integrated platform that provides real time visibility of operations, exceptions management, risk management and produces an up to the minute enterprise general ledger that can be prepared for management and government scrutiny on demand. The modernisation of the systems has enabled the central bank to meet the challenges of a rapidly growing and evolving Indian economy in times of global financial instability. For example, payments volumes processed by the central bank have risen from 2,589 million transactions annually before the modernisation to 1,499,269 million translactions annually in 2014, demonstrating the effectiveness of new collateralisation and credit facilities to support better financial infrastructure. The Quantum Central Bank Solution platform is benchmarked to handle more than 105 million transactions per day, providing plenty of scope for growing the real time services more bank and government clients are demanding.
One of my favourite things about the solution is that there is an integrated real time data store enriched with events as they are processed so that all applications see up to date data for better operations and risk management. That means there is no longer any complicated middleware servicing multiple inconsistent applications and generating reconciliation errors and end of day headaches for staff. It also means integration with external parties such as payment systems, clearing houses, peer central banks, correspondent central banks, custodians and central securities depositories is better managed and better serviced. That makes a big difference in this globalised world of ours.
The solution also uses native XML and is future-proofed to ISO 20022, making the Reserve Bank of India the most modern central bank in one giant step forward for technology migration.
Better yet, the system has low total cost of ownership. The internal IT department owns the workflow configuration and application parameters, so that they can maintain and adapt solutions over time to meet changing requirements without going back to the vendor for change control. Change control for inconsistent, customised applications is an expensive head ache most central banks and financial infrastructure operators know too well. Having a future proof system that your own IT team controls and services is a major advantage in meeting evolving challenges without stress.
And did I mention the entire modernisation at Reserve Bank of India was accomplished in less than 20 months from contract signing to delivery of the last module, the now very popular Public Debt Management System? The first module, the Enterprise General Ledger was delivered in just 6 weeks, providing real time visibility of all government revenues and expenditure as well as central bank core banking operations. Besides have great solutions, Polaris/Intellect have a great integration support team and disciplined and effective methodologies for project management and technology migration.
Last year we won the tender to modernise Riksbank and enrich its risk management with the Quantum Collateral Management System. The solution will provide a flexible, configurable virtual collateral pool that links to all regional CSDs, Euroclear, Clearstream and payments platforms in real time. It is a step change in collateral management that will benefit everyone reliant on the central bank for liquidity and efficient collateral services. They are our first central bank in Europe, but I am sure many others will want to join them when the advantages of the new platform are fully understood.
Well done Polaris! I had planned to be on holiday the week of the award ceremony, but have already booked my flights to come back to London on 12th March for the awards ceremony and dinner. I want to be there with my team to enjoy their well deserved moment in the spot light.
