naseba organizes 1st Annual BankTech Middle East Congress in Dubai

Banks in the Middle East are spending more and more money on IT solutions; according to IDC, banks in the Gulf represent the largest single vertical in terms of overall IT investments.

They are allocating a considerable budget for this purpose, namely approximately $1.4bn in 2006. Up to 80% of this budget is spent on core banking applications, IT infrastructure, ATMs, hardware, storage and security systems.

However, a new trend is appearing in the Middle East market: banks are now investing an increasing part of their IT budget (30% to 35%) on new projects, such as CRM applications.

BankTech Middle East Congress will approach the latest issues facing CIOs and IT Heads of major Middle Eastern banks and financial institutions, namely:

-Islamic banking applications

-The increasing risk on loans by banks and credit risk. Recently, a large measure of security problems emerged in the Middle East banking sector. The competitiveness of banks in pricing and ease of access to loans has resulted in an increasing number of risks (defaults by customers and bad debts). While trying to gain a larger share of the market, banks have indeed been considerably giving loans to customers, overlooking customers' repayment ability. Experts will therefore discuss the best risk management solutions that banks should take in to consideration.

-E-Banking and the increasing risk of Internet scams and frauds. A growing number of banks are now using online applications: while only 32% of banks currently offer online services, 61% expect to offer them by 2010, therefore increasing the risk of scams and frauds. The event will look into ways to reduce those risks.

-A growing number of regional banks is adopting IT centralization & CRM applications. Those new tools indeed give banks the opportunity to increase their growth, reduce their costs and develop their cross-selling techniques, just to name a few. The speakers will discuss how banks can become customer centric and what results they can achieve.

This strategic platform, by invitation only, consists of interactive panel discussions and keynote presentations by such industry-renowned experts as Ghassan Al-Nimer, Deputy Head of IT, Arab Bank; Lee North, Senior Vice President & Head of IT, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank; Shane Fernandes, Business Development-Financial Services, Oracle Middle East & Africa; P. Ram Babu, Senior Vice President (IT), First Gulf Bank; Jassim A. K. Salman, Executive Director, IT &Operations, Ithmaar Bank; Yasser Wardany, Sales Director, STME; and Rajeev Lalwani, Director - IT Advisory Services, KPMG

There is also prescheduled one-to-one business meetings and workshops between upper-level decision makers representing major retail, commercial, corporate, central and investment banks, as well as other financial institutions in the region, and solution providers such as NetScout, eSolutions, KAL, Validsoft, Viveo, Tipping Point, TechUnified, Euronet, Sybase, FRSGlobal, Maveric, NCR and Intellvisions.

"BankTech Middle East is an event uniquely designed to assure excellent business-making opportunities for the IT solution providers with pre-qualified attendees from the banking and finance industry. Visit the two-day event to learn about a variety of solutions catering to the CIOs various needs. We understand that all our participants must have a return on their investment. BankTech is packed with prolific business meetings, educational keynote sessions and dynamic networking opportunities," explained Teena Tolani, the event producer.