Oromia Bank Goes Live with Upgraded Solution

Oromia International Bank, a decade-old private commercial bank, has gone live with an advanced core banking solution procured for one million dollars.

ICS Financial System (ICSFS), a company from the United Kingdom, developed the system that works for interest-free, corporate internet, retail and mobile banking services. The system was fully implemented last month after the duo signed the agreement two years ago.

ICSFS secured the project after vying with seven other companies. FLEX CUBC and ICSFS both passed the technical evaluation and demonstration stages.

After discussing the proposed systems by the two companies with foreign banks that have already implemented their systems, OIB decided to procure the solution developed by ICSFS, according to Wolde Bulto, vice president of Oromia International Bank, which has 32.1 billion Br in assets and 2.4 billion Br in paid-up capital.

To get training on how to use the system, 40 staff members of the bank traveled to Asia and Europe. The bank officials also traveled to Nigeria and Lebanon, where the same system is being used, checking on how those banks are managing the system.

The new system replaced Omni Enterprise CBS Solution, that was developed by Indian technology firm Infrasoft Technologies Ltd. The old system was developed five years ago.

"It was implemented when the Bank had a relatively low level of transactions compared to recent times," according to Wolde.

Currently, the Bank has around 1.5 million active customers and 267 branches across the country.

"Thus, our bank had to search for a new system that could speed up its operations,” Wolde told Fortune.

The old system took two to three hours to process end-of-day transactions, and the new system reduced this to less than 30 minutes. The monthly closing process, which required spending a night, is now done in 45 minutes using the new system.