Financial Services

OVERVIEW

Cambridge believes that Banks and Financial Services institutions continue to redefine their strategies, processes and offerings in order to remain competitive. The key to enable this transformation is Technology.

The BFS vertical is growing at a rapid pace at Cambridge. This is fueled by banks and financial institutions increasingly adopting multi-product, multi-vendor, multi geographic strategies (call it multi-sourcing), conversions and upgrades from legacy platforms to modern technology options to gain competitive edge, and retail companies moving into the financial services domain.

Cambridge is strongly positioned to support these banks and financial institutions in their efforts. We have an excellent track record in strategic partnerships with existing customers in Capital Markets, and are aggressively moving into corporate and retail banking /lending domains, with a core banking offering*.

*"Orchid" is a constantly-evolving core-banking software architecture framework being developed by Cambridge for the small Banks, Co-operatives and Credit Unions.

Offering more to the customer base
Banks strive to constantly offer more to the existing customer base. To achieve this, they emphasize on more targeted technology investments and high-quality service.

Leveraging Human Capital to Increase Profitability
Financial institutions have to constantly adopt advanced analytical methods to monitor and measure the performance of their personnel to improve results.

Offshoring
Significant cost advantages provided by India and China are forcing financial institutions to consider moving back office operations to these locations. Although the move involves significant risk, the benefits are substantial.

Basel II Capital Accord
On July 16, 2008 The federal banking and thrift agencies ( The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and; the Office of Thrift Supervision) issued a final guidance outlining the supervisory review process for the banking institutions that are implementing the new advanced capital adequacy framework (known as Basel II). The final guidance, relating to the supervisory review, is aimed at helping banking institutions meet certain qualification requirements in the advanced approaches rule, which took effect on April 1, 2008. http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2008-81a.pdf

Cambridge is closely following the developments, and helping Banks with updates and support to meet compliance standards in a timely manner.

Regulatory Issue Changes
Banks are constantly confronted with regulatory changes including Basel II, International Financial Reporting Standards, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Patriot Act and anti-money laundering legislation. A focused and comprehensive approach is required to ensure compliance and achieve cost control at the same time.

Corporate Governance
The need to move towards stronger corporate governance is accelerating across the globe, with the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States. Banks need to seize this opportunity to strengthen their internal controls and enhance their disclosures to investors.

Implementing IAS 39 (Fair Value accounting)
Banks in Europe and many other parts of the world will need to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards in the coming year. The impacts will be widespread, affecting information systems, credit assessment, and business operations.

Keeping pace with technology
To remain competitive, financial institutions will have to renew their commitment to investing in new technology strategically -- to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and boost revenue-generating initiatives.

Maintaining a Strategic Focus
Delivering sustainable economic value will require continuous and consistent focus on performance standards by senior management.

Globalization and Consolidation:
Consolidation has led to increased complexity of managing operations as a wide range of financial services are now offered under the same roof.

To meet these challenges, the Financial Services Practice of Cambridge helps financial institutions improve enterprise performance, comply with regulatory mandates, boost operational efficiency, and better serve their customers through Cambridge's spectrum of solutions and services derived from proven track record of domain expertise. Cambridge provides integrated financial industry expertise under one roof, through its two competency practices - Banking and Capital Markets.

The Financial Services Practice offers retail, corporate and private/investment banking solutions, supported by a strong technology infrastructure offerings including data warehousing, master data management, security authentication and access control services, enterprise application integration and B2B services required to support .

Capabilities
Cambridge with its team of ace banking professionals is in a position to help financial institutions and banks with consultancy services that combine both domain and technology expertise in business operations.

The following are the key areas of Cambridge's Banking expertise:

Corporate Banking
Private/Investment Banking
Retail Banking

Corporate Banking
Cambridge's Corporate Banking team has the ability to automate business processes and build tailored solutions adhering to and compliant with shifting regulations such as Basel II, Sarbanes-Oxley and IAS.

In the areas of Corporate Banking, Cambridge's capabilities include:

Credit analysis using multiple parameters like balance sheet analysis, corporate risk, group risk and generation of score card, based on credit analysis
Loan pricing based on multiple parameters like credit score, past history, geography risk, corporate risk, group risk and such others
Management of facilities/ limits - corporate, group, product and currency.
Management of work flow for receipt, safe keeping and release of collaterals
Online pledging and revaluation of collaterals, adjustment of limits based on the collateral value
Monitoring of default loans and possible future defaults
Treasury applications - front office, middle office and back office
Credit derivates
Identification, measurement and management of credit risk
Cash management

Private/Investment Banking
The needs of High Net Worth individuals and institutional investors are multi-fold ranging from financial advisory services and portfolio management to overall wealth management which includes specialized areas like tax management, trust management and such others.

Cambridge's Private/Investment Banking division has long experience in working with organizations that are leaders in Investment Management, Fund Management and Wealth Management. In fact, Cambridge has developed its own Wealth Management framework, EDIFICE that helps financial institutions to offer financial advisory, financial planning and wealth management services.

In the areas of private/investment banking Cambridge's abilities include:

Investment fund order management
Pooled fund transaction management
Financial planning and financial advisory services
Account aggregation
Portfolio management
Portfolio performance - client reporting, performance attribution
Risk measurement
Deposits and placements
Repo processing
Currency swaps
Security lending
Limited partnership account management
Bond analytics

Retail Banking
Cambridge had proven experience in providing solutions in the following areas of Retail Banking:

Teller systems, savings accounts, deposits, fund transfers, remittances and consumer loans
Branch Banking, ATM, Telephone Banking, Internet Banking, and Mobile Banking
Core banking areas like general ledger, checks, and clearing
Credit cards, and Debit cards

Technology
Cambridge's Banking practice has experience in working with both legacy as well as current technologies. The team has extensively used object oriented and web technologies and is proficient with the diverse technology platforms and industry tools available in the market today.

Key technology focus areas of the Cambridge Financial Services Group include

Datawarehouse and reporting systems
Enterprise application integration and B2B integration services
Master data management
Security authentication, single sign-on and application access control manangement
Custom application design and development for both .NET and J2EE environments