The Hindu Business Line : Infosys bets big on Finacle in Europe, Africa, West Asian markets

INFOSYS expects Finacle, its banking solution, to grow in a big way in the EMEA (Europe-Middle East-Africa) region and particularly, in the European banks in 12-18 months.

"There are a lot of RFPs (request for proposals) and customers in an exploratory stage among European banks and growth will be significant from this region, according to our reading of the market as well as analyst reports," said Mr Merwin Fernandes, V-P and Business Head.

Infosys has seen about 90 per cent of business for its banking business unit coming from the EMEA and APAC regions, but growth pointers are very strong from Europe, though the Asia-Pacific region has been the larger piece of the pie so far.

A Forrester report identifies banking platform vendors, banking ISVs and IT services companies to expect business of $10 billion in the next couple of years.

Nearly 70 per cent of European banks have started to renew their application landscape or expect to do so, and project budgets for each average 100-250 million euros, according to the research firm.

Infosys has also made strategic investments of $10 million in the banking solution to make it a fast track product, apart from consulting with the likes of Tower Group, Celent and Peppers and Rogers to benchmark the product with global markets, especially for the Australian and Russian markets.

In the past couple of years, Infosys says it has imparted breadth to its product strategy through acquisitions in the CRM and treasury space while building in-house expertise and capabilities in corporate e-banking, Web-based cash management, alerts solutions and mobile solutions. It is currently building a wealth management solution, said Mr Sanat Rao, Group Head, Product Strategy and Management.

"The West Asian region is a large opportunity for us," said Mr Fernandes, adding that the company had five to 10 customers in Saudi Arabia and several in the UAE. "There are no Asian vendors of Internet banking products and we are competing and winning against some of the European vendors for standalone Internet banking contracts," he said.

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