Polaris, NEC implement system for Japanese bank

Chennai-based Polaris Software Lab and Japan's NEC, in a joint press statement announced the successful deployment of NEC's global banking system product for Yachiyo Bank in Japan.

NEC officials told Business Standard that the company would continue its association with Polaris for the next two to three years and would be deploying the GBS for eight more banks in Japan.

NEC holds around 30 per cent share in the Japan's open architecture banking system market for large scale banks and around 10 per cent market share in the OABS among regional banks.

Tadayoshi Murao, executive general manager, NEC Corporation, said, the value of annual outsourcing from India was close to $34 million and that Polaris held the largest share among the top five vendors from India.

NEC's vendors in India for the development of OABS include Wipro, HCL and Covansys.

Murao said, "India is one of the few countries that can handle OABS of this scale. Apart from India, we also outsource from China but that constitutes only 10 per cent of our total outsourcing."

NEC is one of Polaris premium clients that generate business worth $5 million annually over the last four year. Senior officials at PSL said, the relationship with NEC would continue into the next two to three years both in terms of solution deployment as well as value of business.

Govind Singhal, executive director, Polaris, said, "GBS has been developed to shift legacy banking systems to contemporary open architecture and aims primarily at cost reduction apart from financial application integration, risk management and increasing delivery channels."

Polaris had deployed around 800 man years of effort in the project that spanned over the last four years. "Peak deployment for this project was around 380 people," Singhal added.