Dubai
Millennium Information Solution FZ-LLC a well-reputed core banking solutions provider for the US$2.5 trillion (Dh9.1 trillion) global Islamic fi-nance sector, has recently launched its international operations at the Dubai Internet City.
Global Islamic financial assets reached US$2.5 trillion in 2018, of which Islamic banking assets represents 70 per cent, or US$1.72 trillion. Sukuk issuance is expected to grow to US$115 billion in 2020, despite the current crisis, according to credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s.
The move comes as the global Islamic banking sec-tor continues to defy the downward trend and ex-pands its global presence. According Thomson Reuters, Islamic finance assets is expected to reach $3.9 trillion by 2023, up from US$2.2 trillion in 2016, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
Islamic banks with strong Shariah compliance and real asset-backed lending, have emerged stronger after every financial crisis that have exposed the weaknesses of the conventional banking systems. That’s why, the number of Islamic banks have been and will continue to grow in the coming years. A solid core banking solution could help Islamic banks perform better.
The Islamic banks and financial institutions, how-ever, will need to migrate to a more advanced artifi-cial intelligence-powered core banking system that can cope with the financial technology-enabled products and solutions that are disrupting the bank-ing and payment systems globally.
“With the Fourth Industrial Revolution disrupting the financial sector, the Islamic banks need to mi-grate to the new-generation core banking solutions that could synchronise with the new fintech solu-tions without disrupting the overall banking sys-tem,” Mahmud Hossain, Chief Executive Officer of Millennium Information Solution FZ-LLC (MISL).
“That’s why, we have set up our international opera-tions at the Dubai International City to approach majority of the Islamic banks and help them migrate to our state-of-the-art core Islamic banking system – Ababil – a game-changing solution for the Shariah-compliant banking sector.
“We believe, most of the existing core banking sys-tems will become obsolete with increased fintech disruption and banks will have to migrate to the next-generation systems in the next 3-5 years. Those who fail to do so, will lose the race and lose busi-ness in the more competitive financial world.”
Ababil, which has been implemented in 500 branches of 14 banks and non-banking financial institutions, is an end-to-end advanced core-banking solution for Islamic banking that covers all areas of Shariah-compliant banking. The main engine of Ababil was ground up designed as an Islamic Shariah compliant solution, not a by-product of a conventional banking application. Today, Ababil, which is tested at IBM’s Bangalore Laboratory and backed by Oracle RDBMS and Open platforms, is used by some of the major Islamic banks and Is-lamic financial institutions.
Banks aiming for growth in the Islamic banking sector need dedicated Islamic core banking systems with sharia-compliant capabilities, according to Gartner. “Vendor offerings have now matured to the point that they offer true differentiation via adapta-tion to the sharia board, business functions and Is-lamic localization,” Gartner said in a report pub-lished earlier. Ababil, the flagship product of MISL, is one such product that also has upgraded its product suites to cater to the future needs of the Islamic banks using the state-of-the-art technology platforms such as Java micro services and Kafka, a distributed stream-ing platform.– Courtesy Zawy
