SunGard has signed its second Vietnamese bank this year to the Symbols core banking solution it added to its portfolio with last July's acquisition of Singapore's System Access.
The Saigon Bank for Industry and Trade (Saigonbank), is one of the largest joint-stock banks in Vietnam. It says it needed a new core banking system to help it modernise its banking operations, diversify its products and services, reduce management costs, raise labour productivity and increase profitability.
Saigonbank was looking for a system that could be deployed quickly so the bank could compete more effectively against domestic and foreign banks entering Vietnam. Symbols was customised for Vietnam by System Access, providing support for Vietnamese language and interfaces to local clearing systems such as VCBMS, IBPS, and SBP. The country was a key market for System Access before the acquisition by SunGard, and SunGard looks to be building on this, having signed the Ho Chi Minh City Housing Development Bank (HDB) in April.
"Our objective was to select top-of-the-line, best-of-breed technology that would serve as the backbone of our entire banking business," says Nguyen Van Uc, chairman of the board of directors of Saigonbank. "We needed a core banking solution that would cater to existing product development needs and was flexible enough to easily adapt to the future banking requirements of our customers. System Access SYMBOLS can help us better carry out our business operations, strengthen our internal control activities, and allow us to manage our banking activities in accordance with international banking best practices."