Capital International Bank opens to business on iFinancial technology

By Joy Dumasia

Capital International Bank Limited, Isle of Man, the first new banking licence granted in the Isle of Man for 30 years, has recently opened its doors for business. CIB is part of the Capital International Group. It holds the first Class 1 licence issued by the Isle of Man authorities since the Alternative Banking Regime was introduced in 2016.

The Class 1 licence precludes retail customers, so CIB will only offer qualifying corporate clients and individuals with liquid assets of more than £500,000.

The technology behind the new digital bank is a combination of VELTA, a digital portal developed by the group’s head office in South Africa, and the iFinancial products AMLtrac (anti-money laundering) and BankWare (Core Banking), which work together as a seamless solution via an extensive library of APIs.

Maximising existing functionality also allowed to add new functionality such as Fiduciary Accounts and Online Foreign Exchange trading.

Capital’s CEO Greg Ellison said, “We had an ambitious program and knew what we wanted the new bank to look like. We also knew how important it was to choose the right partner to work with. We looked at most of the big-name software suppliers but having had experience of iFinancial elsewhere in the group, we had always been impressed by their flexibility and the quality of their software. We studied in detail what they had to offer out-of-the-box, and after discussing our plans with them and what they could do, it seemed the obvious choice, and so it turned out.

Mike Da Silva, iFinancial’s Technical Director, said, “Working with the CIB team has been a great privilege. There were challenges along the road, but with a lot of hard work hard, innovation and a great deal of camaraderie, they were all met head-on and defeated. As a company, we have learned a lot from this project which is reflected in the quality and functionality of the software we are shipping.”