Robinsons Bank Corporation, also known as RBank, is a commercial bank that provides banking services for retail and business customers in the Philippines. Founded in 1997, the bank is based in Quezon City with branches across the Philippines. Robinsons Bank is the financial services arm of the JG Summit Group of Companies. It is one of the fastest-growing commercial banks in the Philippines in terms of capitalisation and asset size. The bank is 60% owned by JG Summit Capital Services Corp. and 40% owned by Robinsons Retail Holdings, Inc. Robinsons Bank acquired its licence to operate as a commercial bank from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of The Philippines) on 1 March 2002. On 21 March 2013, the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission granted a licence extending the bank’s corporate life for another 50 years.

Founded in 1990, EbixCash Financial Technologies (ECFT) is an integral part of the EbixCash, a payment solution provider emerging as one of the Financial Exchanges in India. ECFT offers a specialised suite of scalable solutions that enable digital clients to grow relationships, offer personalised service and increase revenues and assets under management. MoneyWare, one of ECFT’s key products, covers the complete lifecycle of the Wealth and Asset Management business including, CRM, Portfolio & Revenue Management, Mobility and Reporting.

MoneyWare is a multi-asset class, multi-markets and multicurrency platform that allows wealth and asset managers to run their complete front to back-office lifecycle including on demand digital customer engagement through Robo-Advisory, research and analytics enabling DIY journey including virtual remote monitoring assistance through video conferencing and co-browsing. The solution empowers RMs and Financial advisors to pro-actively advise and assist clients. It enables portfolio managers to track and rebalance portfolio with direct market access. The solution improves operational efficiency by providing straight through processing and integrating with brokers, custodians, and market data platforms.

Project details

In a transformational project, Robinsons Bank revamped the IT environment for its trust business with a plan to replace its legacy system with MoneyWare to address its day-to-day business needs, support new business strategies and keep abreast with regulatory compliance. ECFT implemented its MoneyWare Trust Banking Solution v17 to assist the bank with its transformation goals. For the program, the solution incorporated modules such as Investor Servicing, Fund/ Portfolio Management, Business Analytics and Reporting, Client Portal, Portfolio Performance, and Risk Analytics. The implementation was run by the wealth operations team of Robinsons Bank, with go-live achieved in December 2019. EbixCash deployed a business analyst and multiple technical resources to the project.

Implementation
The solution provider, during its analysis, discovered that the legacy system had considerable differences in terms of accounting postings, revaluation, accruals, amortisation when compared to the MoneyWare solution. These differences were the most challenging part of the project as ECFT had to align the existing data in the format of its system. Aligning data meant the reconciliation of balances, recalculation, and adjustment/ correction of data as part of the migration. The project implementation was standard and straightforward with minimal customisations and integrations to comply with regulatory requirements such as the PFRS9 compliance, Anti Money Laundering Act (AMLA), Foreign Account Tax Compliance (FATCA), etc.

Apart from the functional side of the project, ECFT ensured that the project was compliant with the IT baseline requirements and bank’s policies, which were monitored by the IT audit. Proper business continuity plans, implementation, and network planning were also put in place during the implementation.

Solution

The solution followed the PFRS9 standards, with all internal audit findings addressed. Various MoneyWare modules were integrated to meet the multiple and diversified requirements of Robinsons Bank. One such module was MoneyWare Integra, which was implemented to meet the need for Fund Administration & Client management. Fund & Portfolio Management requirements were met by MoneyWare Fundware, which was implemented and integrated with Integra. For Business Analytics and Reports requirements, ECFT partnered with SAP for SAP BO reports, aiming to simplify reporting and analysis for business users. Performance and Risk Analytics was done by MoneyWare Portfolio Risk Analytics, which was implemented and integrated into MoneyWare Fundware. MoneyWare Client Portal was implemented as a client portal and was rebranded as Robinsons Bank MyWealth. This application was integrated into the bank’s personal online banking application/site, accessible to all trust clients.

Governance

One of the major contributing factors to project success was the overall governance. Officers from various trust groups were assigned to represent their teams/group, with the trust officer having a hands-on role in the project.

Regular and consistent project meetings aligned all the deliverables and action items with all relevant teams from the bank and EbixCash Financial Technologies well represented. Third-party and internal auditors were also involved before the project’s rollout to ensure project compliance with the standard technical and business practice.

Benefits

The successful implementation of MoneyWare modules has made Robinsons Trust compliant with the regulatory and audit requirements. The bank has benefited from the flexibility of the solution to handle ever-changing regulations, policies, and taxation.

The solution has allowed the bank to have a more flexible business strategy that is not restricted by the software’s capability or the application. The solution has resulted in greater efficiency due to automation and automatic corrections of data. It also addressed the IT environment upgrade required by the bank, providing better convenience to the users in terms of usage and accuracy and allowing Robinsons Bank to achieve its objective of digitalisation.

KEY FACTS

Bank: Robinsons Bank
Bank Headquarters: Quezon City, Philippines
Supplier: EbixCash Financial Technologies
Solution: MoneyWare Trust Banking Solution
Go live date: December 2019