Epic Lanka, Credence Analytics develop wealth and custodian management solution for Bank of Ceylon

From left: Bank of Ceylon AGM – IT (Delivery Channels) Haritha Rajapakse, Bank of Ceylon AGM (Investment Banking) Aruna Kumara, Bank of Ceylon Deputy General Manager (Support Services) S. Sivanjan, Bank of Ceylon Deputy General Manager (International, Treasury and Investment) R.M.N. Jeewantha, Epic Lanka Managing Director/CEO Viraj Mudalige, Epic Lanka Director/Group Chief Technology Officer Krishan Jayawardena, and Epic Lanka Senior Vice President Sanjeeva Perera

Sri Lanka’s premier fintech conglomerate Epic Lanka has partnered with Credence Analytics Ltd. to deploy a fully-fledged wealth and custodian management solution for Bank of Ceylon, Sri Lanka’s No. 1 bank.

The state-of-the-art solution will provide Bank of Ceylon with a single, unified system to support all investment banking needs of the bank including wealth management and custodian business. The solution is integrated with various other peripheral systems to help improve operational efficiency and support future business requirements to offer superior service for its customers across Sri Lanka.

In a pandemic-stricken business environment, the global investment banking industry is witnessing many changes due to more demands by clients, digital transformation, regulatory compliance, internationalisation, and growing competition. This is leading to an increase in overall costs of operations and affecting the bottom line. Investment bankers today need to have increased focus on innovation, efficiency, productivity, and client centricity. Hence, in line with the ‘new normal’, investment banking solutions must integrate various investment banking platforms such as wealth management and custody divisions that completely automate business needs of investment bankers.

In such a backdrop, Epic Lanka and Credence Analytics have offered Bank of Ceylon a comprehensive solution of the highest standards incorporating global best practices to meet the growing demands of its customers. The ‘iDEAL Wealth & Funds 6.0’ solution, an award-winning

software platform by Credence Analytics, has the capability of automating the entire suite of wealth and portfolio management supporting various client-facing business functions such as prospect management, client onboarding, document management, customer profiling and custodian management.

As a leading Sri Lankan bank, Bank of Ceylon offers a wide range of investment opportunities and financial services for Sri Lankans. The Group’s substantial and diversified client base includes the sovereign, retail, and corporate customers from both the public and private sector. The bank pursues a strategy of augmenting its investment banking business across a variety of sectors and geographies. Bank of Ceylon was looking for a comprehensive solution that had the capability to cover the front, mid and back-office operations of its Investment Banking Division from a single unified platform to support its long-term vision.

Commenting about their latest solution, Bank of Ceylon Deputy General Manager (International, Treasury and Investment) R.M.N. Jeewantha said, “We started a strategic initiative to implement an Investment Management Solution, across multiple functional areas such as wealth management, trustee and custodian services, structuring and managing of investment banking products and registrar functions. We were also identifying various technologies and automation requirements required for a fully-fledged system. 

“After evaluating several options, we decided to partner with Epic Lanka and Credence Analytics to implement ‘iDEAL Wealth & Funds 6.0’. We believe the state-of-the-art technology solution is capable of managing the activities across various functions and transaction value chain to enable Bank of Ceylon to meet the needs of its growing customer base across various segments, maximise return on investments, be ready for frequent regulatory changes and to improve operational efficiency.”

The solution supports management of subscription/redemption and customer reporting catering to private wealth management and collective investment schemes while the Investment Management functionality takes care of all fund management functions like portfolio construction and management, risk and compliance management, trade order management, accounting etc. for institutional portfolios and collective investment schemes.

Bank of Ceylon selected Epic Lanka as their preferred technology partner to implement the Wealth Management and Custodian Solution, in association with Credence Analytics. Epic Lanka Managing Director and CEO Viraj Mudalige said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the world into uncharted waters. We are now facing one of the greatest challenges of our time in an increasingly globalised world that needs to address the challenges of the ‘new normal’. With businesses being forced to adjust to this new change, financial institutions need to adopt disruptive technologies to address numerous challenges posed by the pandemic while gearing themselves to meet customers’ demands. We are honoured to be yet again chosen as Bank of Ceylon’s technology partner to implement ‘iDEAL Wealth & Funds 6.0’ partnering with Credence

Analytics, a global and specialised financial software product provider with a key focus on investment management functions for banking and financial institutions.”

Additionally, the system supports various security types across different asset classes ranging from marketable securities like Equity, ETF, and Convertible and Fixed Income to cash and cash equivalents like Cash in hand, Bank Deposits, Call and Time Deposits. Credence Analytics Global Head – Sales and Marketing Tejas Doshi said, “We are privileged to be associated with Bank of Ceylon to implement the Wealth Management and Custody solution. We are very excited to partner with Epic Lanka and seamlessly implement and transform Bank of Ceylon’s Wealth management and custody businesses and take it to the next level. We believe this is the beginning of a fruitful partnership with many great things to come.”