International Private Banking Systems links three countries in a virtual private network
Jun 07th, 2001

The Nassau Guardian

NASSAU, BAHAMAS - International Private Banking Systems (IPBS) recently installed its first Internet based IPBS2000 banking solution’, linking three countries in a Virtual Private Network (VPN) over the World Wide Web. IPBS2000 is a fully integrated software application package that provides all of the functional and operational support services for front, middle and back office management required by international banks and trust companies.

Trend Bank Ltd., a St. Vincent and Grenadines bank, with Brazilian ownership, and a representative office in Sao Paolo, selected IPBS’s IPBS2000 private banking application after a lengthy search of available packages that was conducted for them by Amicorp do Brazil, an international financial services and technology consulting group.

Bruce Raine, founder and President of International Private Banking Systems said, “In the financial services world, requirements like those of Trend Bank, are becoming more and more typical. The global village is now a fact of business life, and geographical boarders, as we once knew them, have disappeared.” Although the bank’s office is in Kingston, St. Vincent, the bank decided to install its technology platform a little closer to home, and arrangements were made with KPMG in Montevideo, Uruguay, to host its servers there.

Mr. Raine and Sean Knowles, IT Development Manager at IPBS, traveled to Montevideo to set up the IPBS2000 Application and Internet Servers in KPMGs offices there. Upon their arrival in Montevideo, they were greeted with an astounding revelation, neither of them possessed a thorough knowledge of the foreign language. “We immediately realized that to the average company or technician, speaking only one language (English) in a situation like this, might have created a problem, especially since the Trend Bank technician only spoke Portuguese, the KPMG representative only spoke Spanish and both Mr. Raine and Mr. Knowles only spoke English. However, Mr. Raine saw the situation as just another challenge that IPBS would overcome. “Teamwork is an amazing tried and true concept, it proved itself and nonetheless we eventually learned enough of each others language to install the system together.”

Trend Bank is just one of four new Internet banking clients that IPBS have recently acquired. AlF Bank Ltd., a Dominica based bank, is scheduled for installation in July of this year and their system will operate with a similar infrastructure to that of Trend Bank. However, AlF Bank Ltd.’s business base is in Europe, and a VPN will be set up in Europe for administrative oversight of client’s investment assets and another VPN will be created for its accounting and audit oversight in Sacramento, California. IPBS’s IPBS2000 system will be installed in the bank’s office in Dominica and with an expected Internet client base of five thousand plus, consisting mainly Europeans, the bank will run multiple Internet Servers in its Dominica office, to handle the anticipated access volumes.

IPBSNET, IPBS’s Internet offering for remote client access, provides the bank’s clients with five options. A Reports Option allows clients to create any of the standard IPBS2000 client reports, and they are rendered to the client in HTML and may be printed by the client or saved to a local hard drive in a variety of different formats. There are four transaction options which allow clients to initiate order requests for:

(a) Payments to third parties;
(b) Currency Trading;
(c) Deposit Placements; and
(d) Securities Trading.

The efficient IPBS2000, also offers the client the option of having multi-currency capability. “After our experience in South America with Trend Bank, as well as discussions with the principals of AlF Bank, one from Sweden and the other from Germany, we realized that a monolingual Internet offering was not going to be very “user friendly”. We have already commenced the task of giving IPBSNET a multi-lingual capability. This means that a remote client of the bank in Germany, will be able to click on a “Deutsch” control button and all transaction input forms and reports, will be rendered to him or her in German. Also, Brazilians will be able to conduct transactions in Portuguese, and South Americans will be able to conduct transactions in Spanish,” said Mr. Raine. He also stated that having additional language offerings would be a matter of translation, and not programming.

IPBS is a major contender in the offshore financial software service sector, and their goal is to provide a top class product and top class service to all of their clients any where in the world.

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