i-flex solutions (Reuters:IFLX.BO/IFLX.NS), a leading provider of information technology solutions to the global financial services industry, announced that Banco de Chile has successfully gone live on FLEXCUBE as part of its core banking technology modernization project christened 'Plan Neos', replacing its 20 year old legacy accounting system. This milestone concludes the first of three phases of the full conversion to the FLEXCUBE product suite.
Leveraging its experience from scores of successful implementations around the world, i-flex completed Phase I of the project on the date planned in the last week of September 2004. i-flex's multi-currency, multi-lingual FLEXCUBE Financial Accounting System will be used by all of the bank's 243 branches and 3 million accounts. The bank's old accounting system used two separate legacy general ledger systems - for local and foreign currency - and was both complex and costly to maintain. The new FLEXCUBE accounting system will significantly improve the bank's operational efficiency, reduce costs and be easier to operate.
Typically, migration of a legacy system to a new system is associated with complex reconciliation problems, and data errors that require a long time to correct. However, the migration to FLEXCUBE happened smoothly, with no hitches and uninterrupted bank operations. Attesting to the seamless integration with the bank's other systems, Banco de Chile decided to shut down its legacy general ledger systems just three days after going live, a remarkable feat for a complex project of this kind.
Speaking about the implementation, Pablo Granifo L, CEO, Banco de Chile said "The bank wanted to replace its legacy accounting systems for many years, since they were complex, hard to process and costly to maintain. This goal was accomplished with FLEXCUBE and we share our pride with i-flex, in having exceeded our expectation in having accomplished this true challenge on time."
"Banco de Chile is one of the most respected and highly regarded banks in Latin America," said R. Ravisankar, Chief Executive Officer, International Operations, i-flex solutions. "The bank needed a state-of-the-art core banking system that could be installed quickly and operate seamlessly with nearly 100 other systems throughout the financial institution. Our technological and business experience with financial institutions across the globe enabled us to complete this very complex phase of the project as per plan."
Arturo Tagle Q, Chief Planning & Administration Officer, Head of Plan Neos, commenting on the successful implementation said "We successfully completed the live cut-over of Phase I and the official 'kick-off' of the FLEXCUBE Financial Accounting system on schedule and according to the original plan.
This would not have been possible without the dedication of the combined team of both companies and particularly the commitment of the i-flex Santiago team, who have worked in synchrony with Banco de Chile since the start of the project.
We are positive that the development and implementation of Phase II and Phase III will be just as, if not, more successful; and look forward to strengthening our partnership with i-flex as we accomplish our goals."
As the bank moves into the next phases of replacing the assets & liabilities components, the FLEXCUBE suite will enable Banco de Chile to operate various business lines, define new products on a template format and utilize common services across FLEXCUBE modules. When all three phases are completed, the newly integrated system will allow the Bank to launch new products faster and more efficiently by eliminating previous requirements to make extensive code modifications to multiple fragmented systems.