European Software Firm Eyes PH's Banking Industry

"New regulations are coming out. The local central bank has started to pass new regulations," says Diederick Vanderlinden, Head of Global Business, Sopra Banking Software. "As a result of these regulations, banks are challenged to adopt new technologies, but their legacy systems simply are not capable for that change."

Philippines' banking industry shows a lot of potential, says Vanderlinden. However, for local banks to adapt to the new technology environment and address new segments of the market, banks need to be more customer-driven, says Venderlinden.

Sopra says that its core banking software and services allow banks to adopt emerging technologies such as mobile commerce. "People would like to bank anytime, anywhere," says Vanderlinden.

But as cost becomes the most pressing concern of banks in scaling up, Sopra assures its offering is infrastructure-agnostic. Banks can take a modular approach and acquire functionalities as they need it. "The idea of the implementation is to provide a standard solution," he says.

Aside from targeting top banks, Sopra is also looking at helping rural banks to be more competitive through cloud services.