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NBE Awards $3.4 Million Contract to Polaris

The National Bank of Ethiopia has signed a 3.4 million US dollar contract with Indian company Polaris Financial Technology ltd for the replacement of its CORE Banking technology.

Polaris, locally represented by Ernst and Young, won the contract over Mysis which had originally supplied the National bank with the software it has been using for the previous 15 year.

The new software purchased by the central bank is a solution known as Intellect which specialized in the management of banking specific operations such as the administration of national foreign currency reserves, gold reserves and the settlement and payment of the government accounts as well as the issue of currency and interfacing with the National Payment System.

The NBE made the decision to acquire new technology because the system it had in place has become obsolete and was no longer able to manage the operations of the bank explained Gizaw Tulu, Chief Officer of the Information Technology Directorate of the central bank.

The bank had updated its current solution in 2002 but the old system was unable to interface with the new NPS as well as having problems with managing national currency reserves, government accounts and processing reports according to Giza.

Polaris will install its solution from the ground up and will handle migrating previous data said Amha Bekele, Partner at Ernst & Young and head of IT for East Africa. The project is expected to take about ten months he said. The system once installed will interface with nine systems including intra bank systems and the Integrated Financial Management System and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

Source: Ethiopian Herald