JAKARTA: Syndicate Bank (India) and i-flex have won The Asian Banker IT Implementation Award 2006 for the best Core Banking Project Award for Large Banks.

The Asian Banker gave away the awards and letters of commendation to nine banks and their IT partners for their accomplishments in technological excellence in the financial services industry at The Asian Banker Summit 2007, held recently in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The inaugural Asian Banker IT Implementation Awards program was launched this year to discover the emerging best practices for IT in the financial services industry, and identify the benchmarks that senior operations as well as technology heads can use in their projects.

The event, in its eighth year, saw a huge gathering of financial services industry professionals from all around the region and featured high profile speakers such as Paul Keating, former prime minister of Australia, Jaime Caruana, former chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and former governor of the Bank of Spain, Rob Close OBE, president of CLS Bank International and Sir Brian Pitman, former chairman of Lloyds TSB.

The evaluation team recognized the successful implementation of a turnkey project that covers a breadth of applications by Syndicate Bank and i-Flex. According to the submission, the bank had covered considerable ground, managing to bring more than 1,200 of its branches under the technologically advanced new generation core banking system since the project began.

Over the last year, Syndicate Bank had brought more than 815 of these branches into this new generation system, which included 334 branches in rural areas with very limited infrastructure facilities. The project has also enabled the bank to double its number of ATM and Internet users.

The Asian Banker received a strong response from the financial services industry. Through the evaluation procedure, the program has been able to identify new best practices in IT for financial institutions.

Winners under different categories:

1. Best CRM/Applications Project - Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Microsoft Corporation

2. Best Multi-Channel Implementation - OCBC Bank (Singapore) and Microsoft Corporation

3. Best Core Banking Project Award for Large Banks:
    Letter of Commendation - SBI (India) (Implementation at Foreign Offices) and Infosys

4. Best Core Banking Project Award for Mid-sized Banks - Centurion Bank of Punjab (India) and Infosys
    Letter of Commendation - GE Money (Thailand) and i-flex

5. Best Trading Back Office Project Award :
    Letter of Commendation - CIMB (Malaysia) and Murex; Hong Leong Bank (Malaysia) and Murex

6. Best E-Banking Project Implementation:

     Letter of Commendation - HSBC Korea and Webcash Company Limited, South Korea

CIOL Bureau