This expansion will further accelerate the development of their range of international banking software and is in line with the company's strategic direction of growth overseas, adding to the company's already successful presence in Sydney, Australia.

Since the beginning of the year the company's market leading AML product MLTrac has been developed and supported by the technical staff in Ho Chi Minh City. More recently the first new modules of i-Financial's internet banking product iBank have been written in Vietnam and it is expected that work will commence on new modules for their core banking system BankWare.NET early in the New Year. Database design, UML specification, final QA and ongoing customer support will still remain at i-Financial's London offices.

Locally, the centre is directed by Chan Ly Nguyen who spent a number of years in a similar role in Australia before migrating back to Vietnam. Terry Day, Managing Director of i-Financial, says that it is Chan's multi-cultural background that has enabled i-Financial to easily bridge the gap between East and West.

For his part Ly Nguyen says "I am tremendously excited to be associated with a company such as i- Financial, and to be part of their worldwide growth. From our base here in Vietnam, we plan not only to continue to work together on the development of i-Financial's range of software products but also to extend i-Financial's presence into other parts of Australasia".

Day says that "i-Financial chose to invest in Vietnam because it has one of the world's fastest growing economies with information technology and high-tech industries forming a large part of that. In our experience the Vietnamese work force are generally highly skilled, having had the benefit of a sound education structure as well as English being widely spoken. Our office in Ho Chi Minh City is working extremely well in terms of expertise, efficiency and cost, and we are able to reflect that in the recent rreleases of our software, to the benefit of all our customers".