Saudi Arabia's Riyad Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East, has signed an agreement with Calypso Technology Inc for its treasury operations and structured product front-to-back-office support.
The Calypso system will be rolled out across all asset classes in the bank's operations to support structured products and hedge accounting.
"It was important for us to select a vendor that would deliver industry best practices and front-to-back-office support for structured products and cross-asset capabilities, as well as the Shari'ah-compliant support that is critical for our market and for growing the business regionally," said Riyad Al-Zahrani, executive vice president of operations at Riyad Bank. "We went through a robust selection process during which Calypso outperformed other solutions in areas of functionality, flexibility and technology."
Riyad Bank is looking to update front-to-back-office systems and operations, and will change from a process-based operating model to an exception-based system in a move to improve its straight-through processing rate.
Additionally, the bank will align its treasury operations with international and Islamic financial industry standards.
Calypso will support the cross-asset requirements of the bank's business covering its FX (cash and derivatives), money market, interest rate derivatives, fixed income and commodities (including precious metals and derivatives) operations.