The continued recovery in the retail banking sector has led to another successful year for leading European card payments vendor NOMAD Software, as banks turned their attention towards technology investments aimed at enhancing business efficiency whilst still maintaining a close focus on cost savings.
In order to support this growth, as well as aggressively target new markets and territories more effectively, NOMAD has undergone a company-wide re-organisation and recruited a team of industry experts to support the sales and product development drive.
The company has been re-organised into two divisions to support the two main business activities of the organisation, which are both under-pinned by the same flagship product - NOMAD CORTEX - a front end switch and card management solution.
The main business division, headed up by Kevin Kelson, chief operating officer, will continue to focus on the sales, implementation and support of retail banks across the EMEA region who are using NOMAD CORTEX to drive their card programmes.
Whilst the second division, managed by Max Balfour, will be dedicated to supporting the Debit Direct outsourced debit card service, which enables member organisations - typically financial institutions and organisations with electronic money licences in the UK, to cost-effectively issue debit cards, however large or small their customer base.
Both teams have been strengthened by the appointment of a number of experienced card payments specialists covering sales, development and implementation disciplines.
Recent joiners include Martin Golding as head of NOMAD CORTEX sales, who joined the company from CR2; Jason Tymms - NOMAD CORTEX new business sales, from PrePay Technologies and CardTech; Ian Cochrane - product development manager, from CR2; and Bryan Dreyer - project manager, from TNS.
In addition, the NOMAD board has been strengthened with the appointment of David Johnson as chief finance officer to handle all HR, financial, legal and administration functions.
David gained his early experience with Unilever and Grand Metropolitan before transferring into the SME sector where he has specialised in running the financial operations of small but fast expanding technology companies, including Monis Ltd, a British banking software company, and Be Free Inc, a NASDAQ listed internet marketing company.
John Yeomans, chief executive of NOMAD Software stated: "In 2004 we leveraged our position as the dominant front end switch and card management provider in Central and Eastern Europe to our advantage, as many of these countries in this region joined the European Union earlier in the year. This move, supported by the growing expansion of Western banking operations into this territory, has led to growing expectations of consumers for modern banking technologies - all of which has supported NOMAD Software's excellent year-on-year growth."
He added: "We're optimistic about the year ahead having created a strong platform of growth. This firm foundation includes adopting a flexible approach with NOMAD CORTEX to give our customers the option of either implementing it in-house or outsourcing their payments processing to us. In addition we have advanced the business functionality of our EMV compliant front end switch and card management solutions to enable us to meet the individual requirements of any issuing bank throughout EMEA."