The leading Benelux bank is in the process of harmonising its wealth management systems from Odyssey in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in order to offer the same superior service levels to its customers, irrespective of location. The bank also aims to reduce overall IT costs by merging its IT operations across the regional branches. In addition Fortis has decided to implement Odyssey's Portfolio Management and Relationship Management Workstations to support the Dryden Wealth Management organisation in the UK, and to extend the use in Asia of the current Odyssey Triple'A system to serve Dryden Wealth Management in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

In addition to extending the use of the existing portfolio management system, Fortis decided to implement Odyssey's relationship management component suite as the strategic CRM solution in Private Banking, and to use it in the roll-out of a new generation of its customer internet site. Implementation is planned to start early in 2006, and the rollout will take place in several incremental phases in 2006/2007.

This latest signing was made possible through a long lasting relationship of trust between Odyssey and Fortis, and results essentially from a long-standing joint team effort. From 1997 through to 2003 Fortis successfully implemented Odyssey's Triple A' system in several locations globally, providing the bank with measurable operational improvements and business benefits, and thus making Triple'A the bank's standard solution for private customers' portfolio management.

"Odyssey is fully focused and specialised in providing Private Banking applications, and their integrated solutions represent clear added-value for our business, especially in the CRM area in comparison with generic software solutions," says Ron Barends, Program Manager Global Private Banking Domain, Fortis.

"Based on our past experience, we count on Odyssey to timely deliver high quality software components and the associated professional services to support our ambitious implementation plan of an efficient information system for Private Banking, aligned with the key business processes and based on a coherent and modular architecture," says Michel Dauphin, General Manager Information Services Private Banking, Fortis.

Charlie Barrass, CEO at Odyssey Asset Management Systems says: "This latest contract represents the biggest license order within Odyssey's history, and is the result of a tremendous teamwork and many years of hard work and commitment by both parties. Fortis' investment system platform now includes almost all of the components from Odyssey's wealth management offering, providing added-value across the board to the Fortis off-shore sites, on-shore units, and head-offices. We are proud to be seen as a strategic partner to the Fortis Group globally."