Originally incorporated in 1924 as Ka Wah Savings Bank Limited, a number of mergers and acquisitions over the past 10 years contributed to CITIC Bank International’s rapid expansion. In May 2010, the bank changed its name from CITIC Ka Wah Bank to CITIC Bank International, as the final stage of CITIC Group’s restructuring strategy to align its onshore and offshore commercial banking businesses.

CITIC Bank International’s financial department runs nightly batch reports, containing accounts payable and fixed asset information, such as account bookings, currency depreciations, bill payments, and achieved savings. Many of these batch reports are sent to the bank’s parent company or are used to create reports for banking regulatory bodies, such as the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. It is therefore important that they are produced in an accurate and timely manner.

Due to the bank’s expansion, the size of its database had increased by 40%, which lengthened the time taken to complete overnight batch reports.

“Previously, to get batch reports completed by 6.30 a.m., we had to start running them at 4.00 a.m.,” said Poon. “As our database grew, the batch processing window was getting longer and longer, which put extra pressure on the financial department and our enterprise resource planning system. By upgrading to Oracle Database 11g, we have reduced the processing window by 30% and can complete our batch reports in an hour, despite the continuous increase in data. It also means we can produce and submit business and regulatory reports on time.

CITIC Bank International’s finance department enters a significant amount of banking, accounting, and transaction information into the bank’s accounting journal every day. Some of this data has to be entered manually, and some is generated automatically. The data is often merged to generate batch or regulatory reports.

“Once the financial data is merged or uploaded to our general ledger, our staff can see any discrepancies in, for example, the ledger balance,” said Poon. “They then need to go back through the journal entries to look for errors. In the past, it took several minutes for the system to compare data entries and check for mistakes.”

Upgrading to Oracle Database 11g enabled CITIC Bank International to decrease system response times for checking accounting journal entry discrepancies. “Previously, it could take up to three minutes; now it only takes around five seconds,” said Poon. “By reducing the time taken to correct errors, financial staff has more time to focus on higher value accounting processes.”

Upgrading to Oracle Financials Release 12 has enabled CITIC Bank International to take advantage of new or improved functions and features.

“One of the advantages of Oracle Financials Release 12 is the ability to bring up multiple ledger books on one screen when comparing data,” said Poon. “Our finance team has commented on the improved efficiency, as they no longer have to log out from one ledger and log in to another book to review data such as banking processes, accounts payable, and subsidiary banks’ performances.”

CITIC Bank International has also used Oracle Financials to develop four new customized financial forms and update previously customized forms, such as those used by different departments for paying invoices.

CITIC Bank International was using in-house IT resources to maintain its database and financial system. The declining performance of the expanding database prompted the bank to consider an upgrade, and at that time it also decided to seek external maintenance assistance.

The bank had a three-person team working on development and supporting the business. It engaged Oracle ACS to provide backup support and service to this team during the upgrade to Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Financials Release 12.

“At the time of the upgrade, we wanted a helping hand on the maintenance as the financial system is highly important to our business, since it handles the bank’s ledgers and a significant portion of our business and regulatory reports is dependent on the system,” said Poon.

“Maintaining healthy systems requires a range of skill sets on the database and application layers,” he added. “Oracle ACS had the people with the right skill sets available when we needed them―it was very helpful to have people on board who were familiar with the database and the Oracle Financials application. We saw an immediate improvement in performance after we engaged Oracle ACS to retune our systems, which included indexing tables in the database.”

According to Poon, the Oracle team was very responsive when the bank encountered problems during the upgrade. “They looked up the Oracle knowledge base and helped our internal team when the workload became demanding,” he said. “Oracle ACS was also very attentive to our needs; they organized regular phone and face-to-face meetings to discuss the project’s progress. We really appreciated that.”

The positive experience during the upgrade led CITIC Bank International to engage Oracle ACS on a permanent basis to ensure the stability of the production application. The bank has subscribed to Oracle’s Advanced Support Assistance to ensure technical guidance and support is available when needed. “This service means we can access Oracle technicians who can complete customizations and other minor projects as our business grows, as well as provide maintenance,” said Poon.