The catch here was that AmEx had to set up operations in India without touching the source code to the worldwide mainframe system, which controls all its banking processes. Because firstly it is a very time consuming and tedious process and secondly because during that time, American Express Technologies, the technology division of the American Express group, had a more critical job of Y2K compliance at hand. AET was responsible for providing technical support to the other lines of business undertaken by AmEx.

Banking on the legacy system would mean another wait of three years. The banking system would have to be built around the legacy system with out interfering with it. What AmEx needed was a local vendor who would design and implement a sound banking system and facilitate a quick entry into the Indian market.

It was at this point that AmEx was introduced to Nucleus Software Exports, which designs products specifically to cater to the technological needs of the banking and financial services industry. Though AET exists to technically enable the other lines of business undertaken by AmEx, there are times when the priorities of the business strategy group do not match up with the priorities of the technology group. On evaluating the work Nucleus had done with other banking institutions especially Citibank, American Express shortlisted this Delhi-based company. When evaluated on a cost-benefit ladder, AmEx saw high return on investments. Initially, AmEx had planned an investment of about $1.5 million in the banking technology. Ask Gupta if the stakes are too high and pat comes the reply; "Higher the stakes higher the returns." The next phase is the business systems analysis and design report that maps the requirement of the business in to system specifications.

Built on the scalable Oracle platform, Finness is multi-branch, multi-currency and multi-product that also supports multilingual implementation. Moreover AmEx has also implemented other products like Requests, which captures, forward resolves and monitors customer requests and queries. Like Finness in India the bank has another system called Ovations in Hongkong and Globus at Jakarta.

Currently located in the four metros—Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai—AmEx is focusing highly on the retail business. Presently, all AmEx offices in India, work out of a central database at Delhi. "The idea is to provide a better banking experience for our customers," says Gupta.

The bank credits certain key products that allowed them to take on the Indian market smoothly. Finness Lending caters to the requirements of installment based loan system covering the areas of product definition, application processing, and settlement.

Benefits: Single system to support lease, hire purchase, and loans

Allows online and offline application processing with reduced turnaround time

Benefits: Finness Liquideposits covers the entire life cycle of the deposit business. It facilitates term deposits, recurring deposits, cash deposits, variable deposits, and other such features.

Benefits: Supports fixed and floating rate deposits Supports multiple maturity payment instructions.

Requests system enables AmEx to be more responsive and approachable to the customer’s complaints and queries. Tracks and monitors service requests Improves client satisfaction level by resolving request swiftly.

Meghna Sharma in New Delhi

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