National Bank of Oman sees growth in trade finance and expands business by deploying Misys solution

Misys plc (FTSE: MSY.L), the global application software and services company, today announces that the National Bank of Oman (NBO) has selected the Misys trade finance solution to allow NBO to expand its business coverage, meeting customer demands and support its growing trade volumes.

The integrated solution combines the power of the back-office processing system, Misys TI Plus with the award-winning Misys Trade Portal, the e-business console. This will enable customers to connect seamlessly to NBO to conduct their international trade business at the same time as accessing a wide range of financial supply chain services.

Founded in 1973, NBO is one of the largest banks in Oman and the first local bank in the Sultanate. It has a paid-up capital of Omani Rials (OMR) 108.1 million and a regulatory capital of OMR 278 million as of December 31, 2009. The bank serves its customers through 64 domestic branches and 170 ATMs as well as 5 branches in Egypt and 1 in the UAE.

The bank recently conducted a comprehensive evaluation to find a provider to replace its legacy trade finance processing system. This move was part of NBO's plan to expand its trade finance business via innovative trade products and to grow volumes in traditional business areas.

"We were very impressed by the fully integrated front-to-back trade finance solution offered by Misys," stated Humayun Kabir ,General Manager Wholesale Banking, National Bank of Oman. The corporate Service Level Agreement–driven workflow and business dashboard incorporated into the system were important differentiating factors. We are confident that Misys TI Plus and Trade Portal will help us to meet our growth targets for our traditional products as well as newer ones, such as factoring."

"NBO has been using the Misys Equation core banking system for over a decade and after an in-depth evaluation period the management team confirmed that our trade finance solution would benefit the bank most," added Roy Froud, Director - Middle East & Africa, Misys. "With our integrated solution NBO will now be able to grow its volumes, boost efficiency and broaden its revenue options more effectively."

Misys TI Plus is a flexible back-office automation system that supports the complete front-to-back trade finance business of banks. The solution includes customizable workflows that provide visibility and control over the entire transaction lifecycle. TI Plus enables banks to define Service Level Agreements for each customer and apply either customer groupings or bilateral agreements for individual customers. It allows images of commercial documents to be scanned and retrieved later during processing, thus reducing paper use and making documents accessible to all parties involved in the processing.

Misys Trade Portal is an integrated online system that enables banks to provide a fully-featured console for connecting customers to the bank over the Internet. Bank customers can process and review their transactions and receive customized news feeds related to their particular industries. Trade Portal provides a multibank architecture that facilitates access to multiple banks and their consolidated transactions. It can handle traditional trade instruments such as Letters of Credit, Collections, Guarantees and Financing as well as the growing open account services based on Purchase Order and Invoice data. In addition to the traditional deployment model within a bank's infrastructure, Misys also offers Trade Portal as a hosted solution maintained in an enterprise-class data centre.

Misys has been delivering market-leading Transaction Banking solutions for over 20 years. Its integrated portfolio of trade finance and factoring solutions are used by more than 180 banks around the world to meet constantly changing market requirements.