Agile Financial Technologies launches India operations

MUMBAI, INDIA: Agile Financial Technologies (Agile FT), a global technology partner to key players in the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) sector in emerging markets, has launched its operations in India with its first offices in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai.

The new operations in India will not only provide resources for domestic on-shoring services for Indian BFSI institutions but will also provide Agile FT with a great hub, logistically and in terms of economic fundamentals, to enable the company to manage the needs of the BFSI industry in regions that include emerging countries in Europe, Central and South East Asia, Middle East & Africa.

Agile FT has already acquired and merged theinsurance software business division of India-based Access Information Systems, a niche player in the core insurance space. This has enabled Agile FT to position its core insurance and bancassurance software products in the domestic sector, where the company sees significant growth opportunities.

Said B. Rangarajan, founder of Access Information Systems, and now Executive Director with Agile FT, “The synergy between Agile FT’s proven go-to-market process, global reach, holistic outsourcing delivery approach and Access’s established products and domain skills allows the clients to leverage our insurance software platform as a service. We have been servicing the insurance sector for the past 20 years and it is this experience and understanding of the insurance sector that has enabled us demonstrate a marked difference in the build of our software products, delivery and support models. We have made successful strides already by acquiring and servicing clients in Africa and the Middle East over the past few months. We will work closely with alliance partners in India that we are identifying at present, to replicate our success.”

Kalpesh Desai, CEO at Agile FT said, “There are tremendous opportunities in the current context for holistic technology firms within the BFSI sector in India. The sector is facing challenges due to the economic impact of the liquidity crisis which will require the industry to relook at its IT strategy and current usage of software and technology. We have a strong go-to-market strategy with offerings that are flexible and will help the sector realise its full potential, from pure software solutions to full-fledged on-shore management services.”

With the insurance sector opening up and the investment management sectors reaching a high degree of maturity, Desai anticipates that industry players who focus on the conservation or growth of capital, such as insurance, bancassurance divisions and asset management firms, will relook at their IT strategy and technology deployment to significantly align the same with current business drivers.

“Although bancassurance as an insurance channel is a relatively new concept in India, it is undoubtedly becoming the fastest growing channel,” continued Desai. “The outlook for the channel is positive, as it has strong growth drivers. Indian banks have large networks with a significant depository base and the potential to tap into the emerging affluent, mass affluent, emerging wealthy and high net worth (HNW) segments leveraging technology such as ours.”

Banks would be able to build a cross-selling platform that can synergise traditional banking products and financial services. Traditionally, fund managers have focused on aggressively selling various investment management products, such as mutual funds, rather than managing a client’s portfolio based upon risk-based and investment goal-based profiling. The over-arching theme for asset management in India will be a marked movement towards an all-encompassing wealth management platform, even for the emerging affluent.

Over the course of 2009, Agile FT plans to expand its operations further into India and South Asia through channel partnerships in strategic markets.