HSBC and Emirates Bank International Win IIR's e-Bank 2002 Awards

Phil Blower, Managing Director of the MENA region for System Access, presented the awards to Louis A Scotto of EBI and Peter Loakman of HSBC.

Over 70% of the conference's participants - comprising e-banking peers from both the region and international markets - chose to vote with the assessment process based on four main criteria: market share; security; services provided; website usability.

EBI's Louis Scotto thanked the conference hosts and noted that the validation of "everything we have worked for" - of particular significance, he said, since it was "from the bank's peers". Mr Scotto went on to say that the up-take numbers for the bank's new me-BANK "speak for themselves". "We are setting the standards for what can be done when online banking is mixed with a physical presence. This is just the beginning now as we plan to move from retail banking to bank retailing."

Mr Loakman, of HSBC, which has been active in corporate in the Middle East since 1946 and was the first foreign bank to open in the UAE, said "I am delighted to accept this award. Corporate banking in this region has always been our strength and I am very happy to see this reflected in this award."

The conference participants included both regional and international banks in addition to e-banking solutions providers. During the course of the ceremony, System Access launched the latest version of its Symbols - v8 and gave a short presentation on the product. Mr Blower said that "customer centric banking" was a cornerstone of the company's vision. Symbols is an end-to-end universal banking solution designed to fully support banks and branch networks and is based on eFinance, eCRM and Enterprise Operations Center applications.

Earlier in the day, Anis Al Jallaf, the CEO of EBI, during his keynote address to the conference noted that following on from the successful launch of face-to-face banking, tele-banking and e-banking, the industry is now moving more consistently in the direction of commercial-banking or c-banking. "Before long," he said, "we will see all the key trade finance operations of banking such as letters of credit (LCs) and letters of guarantee (LGs), being processed online. This is just the logical extension of e-banking."

Anca Westley, Conference Director at IIR confirmed that the e-Bank awards will become a regular feature of the event. "We believe that this provides a valuable opportunity for e-bankers in the region to share opinions about what makes for a truly successful e-banking initiative and allows for the identification of key criteria in this respect."

The IIR e-Bank event plays host to international banking and finance experts along with the key players in the Middle East banking community and allows for individual institutions to present state of the art projects currently being undertaking in the region.