To enhance corporate banking and reduce costs, Capital Bank of Jordan set out to create a brand-new digital portal with Finastra that would enable customers to manage their accounts and submit transactions anytime, anywhere.
Established in 1995, Capital Bank of Jordan is a leading financial institution operating in Middle East and has a presence in Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. As well as offering a range of retail banking services, Capital Bank of Jordan also provides businesses and high net-worth individuals with corporate banking including investment banking, asset management, brokerage and financial advisory solutions.
Capital Bank of Jordan launched an ambitious growth strategy for its corporate banking business. As part of the plan, Capital Bank of Jordan would take majority shares in the National Bank of Iraq, acquire the ATMs and Jordanian branches of Bank Audi, and merge with Société Générale Bank in Jordan.
These acquisitions would offer new opportunities for Capital Bank of Jordan to boost market share and serve more customers. But they would also place additional pressure on the systems and processes supporting its corporate banking activities.
Business challenges
“Our existing treasury and trade management systems were not well placed for growth,” says Izzidin Abusalameh, Group COO at Capital Bank of Jordan.
The Bank received the vast majority of customer transaction requests via email and processed them manually. As a result, it could take up to 45 minutes for the teams to update customers on the status of their transactions. As well as impacting customer service, working in this way also increased the cost of our operations.
To enhance the corporate banking experience and reduce costs, Capital Bank of Jordan set out to create a brand-new digital portal for corporate banking that would enable customers to manage their accounts and submit transactions at any time, from anywhere.
“Customers want the same levels of service from their corporate banking accounts that they are used to with personal banking,” says Jihad Matar, Head of Cash Management, Treasury and Investment Operations at Capital Bank of Jordan.
The Bank realised that if they could integrate cash management, treasury, SWIFT messaging systems and archiving solution, it could deliver the frictionless and rapid service that customers expected. For this reason, the Bank made enhancing the user experience, speed and reliability of corporate operations the number one priority for its new portal.
Building the portal
To streamline front-to-back treasury and cash management workflows, Capital Bank of Jordan replaced its existing trade management system with Finastra’s Trade Innovation and Corporate Channels solutions, paving the way for a seamless corporate banking experience.
Finastra is a global provider of financial software applications and marketplaces, and launched the open platform for innovation, FusionFabric.cloud, in 2017.
Capital Bank of Jordan targeted treasury and trade management solutions that could automate transaction processing and integrate with a wide range of third-party solutions, including SWIFT messaging protocols and the bank’s archiving solution.
“We selected Trade Innovation as our end-to-end working capital management solution because it could meet our needs for greater system integration and automation,” continues Abusalameh.
“We were impressed with the intuitive user experience of Finastra’s Corporate Channels, both for employees and for our clients. It was clear that the Finastra solutions could help us build a scalable digital corporate banking platform.”
With SWIFT messaging and automatic commission calculation capabilities built into Trade Innovation, Capital Bank of Jordan could eliminate manual processes and achieve straight-through processing for almost all transactions.
“Trade Innovation and Corporate Channels made life so much easier for our employees,” explains Matar.
“Today, they can log into the system and gain instant visibility into all transactions. They can see clearly what additional actions they need to take to support customers – whether that is managing bulk payments or adding new services to their accounts.”
Trusted partner
Capital Bank of Jordan completed the transition to Finastra’s Corporate Channels and Trade Innovation in under 6 months. To achieve a rapid implementation and ensure best practices, Capital Bank of Jordan teamed up with Finastra’s business partner IBC Solutions to build a new digital corporate banking platform from the ground up.
Samar Hayek, Senior Project Manager at Capital Bank of Jordan, comments, “IBC Solutions was recommended by Finastra. Their team offered expert advice and helped us to deploy the Finastra solution at two entities in parallel.”
With Finastra providing quality assurance support through the Assure programme at key milestones, Capital Bank of Jordan and IBC Solutions were able to verify that the solutions were configured to deliver performance and reliability.
“We all worked together as a single team,” continues Hayek.
Business benefits
Since then, Capital Bank has onboarded 1,700+ new corporate banking customers in just one year and achieves a straight-through processing rate of 95% for all transactions, supporting rapid service.
Since launching the new digital banking platform for its corporate customers, Capital Bank of Jordan has increased the use of digital channels by 80%, demonstrating the popularity of digital banking among its customer base.
As well as streamlining back-end trade and cash management activities with automation, Finastra solutions have helped to deliver a simple, intuitive and powerful suite of digital banking capabilities for corporate customers.
Customers can service their accounts at any time and track their transactions in real-time. This helps to improve customer experience, increase market share, and enhance competitiveness.
By expanding its operations through acquisition and evolving its treasury operations with Finastra solutions, Capital Bank of Jordan is benefiting from its growth. Between 2021 and 2022, the bank increased its net assets by 61%, and boosted net operating income by 42%.
“We are pleased with the success we have achieved so far by growing our business and enhancing our treasury activities with Finastra,” summarizes Abusalameh.
