As Oracle's VP for the Financial Services Industry in EMEA I am pleased to introduce this new regular section of the ISV newsletter dedicated to companies working in this sector. The financial industry is an important market for Oracle and we are one of the leading software manufacturers in this sector in terms of databases and middleware, and we are working hard to achieve the same leadership position with our applications.

Oracle works with ISVs operating across all segments of the financial services industry. In developing solutions and creating integrated value propositions, we specifically focus on 3 areas which I would like to briefly introduce to you.

Enterprise Performance and Compliance

Risk Management represents a large challenge for banks and insurance companies. Legislation and regulatory concerns such as Basel II, Solvency II and Sarbanes Oxley clearly have a huge impact on the industry. Also, problems such as embargo breaking, money laundering and terrorism financing add further complexity.

All these factors create a requirement for IT to capture a massive amount of data and extract from it a wide range of information which needs to be presented to various audiences in a format which meets their individual requirements. Enterprises also need to be able to provide a complete information trail which can be internally and externally auditable.

Oracle offers ISVs all of the software components and processes needed to develop fully compliant reporting systems. We have a custom made offering for Basel II with special products such as Risk Capital Manager, which is a stand alone product that also fits into the overall Oracle architecture. We also offer solutions which are compliant with standards such as IAS/IFRS (International Accounting Standards and International Finance Reporting Standards) and we have a full suite of products for CPM. With the components we provide, our customers and ISVs are able to build compliant, end to end solutions for the banking and insurance sector.

Customer Insight and Management

We offer a complete range of products and solutions that can be used to build integrated systems that automate processes from the front office to the back office. An integrated view of your customers is the Alpha and Omega, and solutions for retail delivery or for the multi-channel strategy in the front-office are also important. We developed the Oracle Customer Data Hub to deliver better quality customer data, and with Oracle Financial Services applications can have access to all of the relevant data.

Oracle technology is extremely efficient at managing this data so that it can be analysed and integrated into the business processes in a way that delivers real value to the enterprise.

Operational Efficiency

This is still a key issue for the industry to focus on. Banks and insurers are exposed to ever increasing competition and decreasing margins, and in order to survive they must become more efficient. They have to ask themselves where they can create competitive advantage and which processes can be bought on the market. Core Banking and Core Insurance fall into this sector, and here we co-operate with our ISV partners to build complete solutions for the financial industry.

The subject of payment processing is important as well. Payments are the life-blood of a bank and are thus something which they need to execute flawlessly. We are about to develop a broad and integrated solution offering for this, and this is an area in which we expect Oracle to become very strong in the future.

Harry Stehrenberger
VP Financial Services Industry, Oracle EMEA