Millennium Information Solution Limited , a Gartner-awarded Islamic banking solution (IBS) software company, is now moving to Asian countries with its flagship product 'Ababil' to cope with the rising demand of Islamic Shariah-based banking.

Mahmud Hossain, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Co-Founder of the company in an interview with the FE also said some more banking entities are in the pipeline to launch shariah-based Islamic banking in Bangladesh and if allowed by the Central Bank, the business of Islamic software will take a new height.

He said with collaboration of two renowned global IT companies, Millennium has already started positioning 'Ababil' in Gulf countries.

Mentioning the growing presence of Islamic banking world-wide, he also said two of his company clients--Social Islami Bank Ltd and Al-Arafah Islami Bank-achieved the highest growth in operating profit in the first six months of 2011.

" Since every transaction in Islamic Banking and Finance requires real underlying asset, adoption of this principle in financial transactions could have avoided global economic meltdown of 2008 to great extent," Mr Mahmud said.

"So if the central bank patronises this sector here, Shariah banking can earn huge revenue and remittance through exporting of trained manpower as well as software solution in Islamic banking and this phenomenon have started at a very small scale here," he said, adding that some foreign software companies, even without having true Shariah compliant solution, are earning precious foreign currency through winning projects from local Islamic banks and conventional banks having Islamic branches/Windows.

"By the grace of Almighty, we are the first in Bangladesh in locally developing Centralised Online Solution software (Islamic Banking). The software was supplied to Al-Arafah Bank in 2007," he said."We have been working with only Shariah Banking solution in financial sector to develop deep rooted expertise in this niche sector in a focused manner. Many other foreign software companies also developed IB solution but those don't fully match to the IB because they don't have expertise in this sector, Mr Mahmud Hossain said.

There are huge opportunities of Islamic Banking and subsequently Islamic Banking Solution (IBS) software in countries including Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippine, Qatar, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt, the Millennium CEO said.

In Indonesia, where economic growth rate was the highest in the South-East Asian zone, Islamic banking marked a 55 per cent growth, he said, adding that Millennium started positioning its flagship product in that country keeping entire Asian region in perspective.

Millennium was launched in 2001 after merger of two separate companies started in 1996. At the earlier period, the IBS software company mostly received order of outsourcing works of mostly European countries and continued it till 2007.

The company has been designing, developing and deploying its product for the last 15 years. It firstly supplied IBS software to Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited (IBBL), which used it for 7-8 years (till 2005).

Currently five banks and a non-banking financial institution (NBFI) are using the flagship product of Millennium. They are: Al-Arafah Islami Bank (85 branches), largest 'Ababil' user, Social Islami Bank Limited-SIBL (73 branches), the City Bank (for Islamic banking operation 'Manaraah'-30 branches), AB Bank Limited (for Islamic banking operation-15 branches), Agrani Bank Limited (for Islamic banking operation- 5 branches and 100 more in progress) and Hajj Finance Company Limited (a non-banking joint venture financial institution between Bangladesh and Malaysia-3 branches and 3 more in progress).

'Ababil' includes different modules such as customer information system (CIS), general ledger, Al-Wadia and Mudaraba deposit (current and saving accounts management module), term deposit (fixed deposit) various scheme and products like deposit pension scheme, investment, inland remittance, inward or outward bill collection, trade financing and foreign exchange operations, vault management, Internet Banking and ATM interfacing.

SIBL replaced its earlier distributed system "PC Bank 2000" by 'Ababil', within a period of only 16 months in its all branches, with all required Islamic banking modules including trade finance, ATM, online CIB and integration with BACH.

Source: The Financial Express/ Bangladesh/ 12th Dec 2011