Wipro completes Al Rajhi Bank migration to Oracle

Al Rajhi Bank (ARB) , one of the largest Islamic banks in the world and Wipro Arabia, a subsidiary of Wipro, an information technology, consulting and business process services company, yesterday announced the successful 'go live' of Oracle FAHGL Program in a two-year migration.

Wipro ensured a successful implementation of the Financial Accounting Hub (FAH) at the bank by integrating all banking systems through the FAH, building a single repository for all financial data and developing an effective reconciliation and errors handling mechanism.

The shift to Oracle FAHGL has brought in operational efficiency at the bank especially in the Treasury, Risk and Card business operations. The reconciliation time has fallen from three to four days to fifteen minutes and helped free up skilled banking experts for more analytical tasks. Implementation has also facilitated quality and timely management reporting and compliance with IFRS / IAS accounting principles.

Waleed Al-Mogbel, Chief Operating Officer, Al Rajhi Bank said, "The FAH engine is most important to ARB for its digital transformation journey, enabling new types of innovation and creativity, which commenced with replacing the legacy MCGL by a modern General Ledger (GL), integrating all banking operations systems to build a single repository for all needed financial data, and develop an effective reconciliation, errors handling mechanism required for financial reporting. This is a remarkable milestone as it is one of the largest implementations in which Oracle FAHGL has been integrated with banking operating systems."

Thomas George, General Manager and Head, Wipro Arabia said, "This project has been one of the most complex and largest Oracle FAH implementations executed by Wipro, integrating nine banking business applications having around forty eight subsystems with Oracle GL. The successful implementation clearly demonstrates the maturity of Wipro Oracle practice in handling complex projects that have fixed timelines and costs."

He further added, "Our mission is to support the growth of our clients in their overall business results. We will continue to provide Al Rajhi Bank our support and commitment in stabilising system continuity and improving the process and performance."

Al Rajhi Bank is one of the largest Islamic banks in the world with total assets of SR 288 billion (US$76.8 billion) and an employee base of over 8,400 associates. With an established base in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Al Rajhi Bank has a vast network of over 500 branches, over 120 dedicated ladies branches, more than 4,000 ATM's, 33,000 POS terminals installed with merchants and the largest customer base of any bank in KSA, in addition to 130 remittance centres across the kingdom.

Al Rajhi Bank launches Musafir Prepaid Card-i for withdrawals during Hajj and umrah

Source: Al Rajhi Bank website.

Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia has launched the Musafir Prepaid Card-i, the first and only Saudi rial-denominated cash card in the market. The launch was made during the Road2Haramain Festival 2014, which brings together members of the travel and tourism industry in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and China to increase Hajj and umrah business ties and develop Islamic tourism in the Asian region and across the world.

Sponsored by Al Rajhi Bank Malaysia, a subsidiary of world’s biggest Islamic banking service provider, Al Rajhi Bank of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the festival was held on 25 and 26 November in Kuala Lumpur and on 27 November at the Renaissance Johor Bahru Hotel. 

With 14 participating companies, Road2Haramain 2014 sets the stage for the first Asian Road2Haramain Mahrajan in 2015. The high point of this festival would be presentation of awards of appreciation to companies that have contributed immensely to Hajj and umrah services in Malaysia.

Both Al Rajhi and Road2Haramain are synonymous with strong Islamic values. “Al Rajhi aims to collaborate with the big players in the Muslim travel and tourism industry to intensively promote the benefits of the Musafir Prepaid Card as well as other Al Rajhi Bank shari'ah-compliant financial products and services to the Muslim ummah,” said Selamat Haji Sirat, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Al Rajhi Bank. 

“At the same time Al Rajhi strives to promote and advocate ‘purity’ in the aspects of ‘muamalat’ of the pilgirms while performing umrah and Hajj."

“Our relationship with Al Rajhi Bank started many years ago in Saudi Arabia and continued here in Kuala Lumpur. We are happy to work together with Al Rajhi Bank and to continue banking with the biggest Islamic bank in the world which shares noble values with us for the good of the ummah,” said Haji Rahim, the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Al Haramain Resource.

The Musafir Prepaid Card-i is the first Saudi rial Prepaid traveller’s card and provides access to cash at over 3,800 ATMs in the Al Rajhi network in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The card offers instant cash convenience and advantages to the pilgrims such as a low per-withdrawal fee, secure PIN-based activated transaction and competitive Saudi rial exchange rates.

Over 20 MOUs were signed between Al Rajhi Bank and travel agents at the Festival, for the Al Rajhi Musafir Prepaid Card-i. The Musafir card follows the launch of Al Rajhi Bank's Hijrah Priority Card in July 2013. 

At the time of the Hijrah Priority Card launch, the bank noted that withdrawal fees are waived for card-holders during the Hajj season at Al Rajhi ATMs in Saudi Arabia, and offers discounted ATM withdrawal fees at Al Rajhi ATMs in the kingdom during the off-Hajj season.