Second day of MEFTEC a success

The conference and exhibition is well attended and with a total of over 300 Conference delegates the initial target has already been exceeded. The participants in this event are coming from over 40 countries and with over 50% of the participants from abroad this event is setting a new benchmark for professionally organized trade shows in Bahrain. The success of this event is also a confirmation of Bahrain's position as Financial Centre and Business Gateway to the region.

Many exhibitors and conference delegates have commented that their participation in this event is a wise investment and a comment from Guillermo Kopp, Vice President, Financial Services Strategies & IT Investments reflects perfectly the complexity and the trends that need to be communicated to the local and regional financial community, "Regulatory changes and routine maintenance requirements force banks to modify their technology systems rapidly across multiple functional IT platforms. To avoid spending fortunes in duplicating technology work across functional systems, leading banks are adopting enterprise transformation strategies that are based on cutting-edge technologies and systems with greater operational efficiency and better compatibility. Investment into cutting-edge technology has a multiplier effect: For every dollar spend on new technologies there is an opportunity to gain up to seven dollars in business process efficiency."

A major focus of the MEFTEC conference today was the critical issue of IT security, which is of huge importance to the development of eBanking and the growth of online transactions. Martin Smith, the keynote speaker, and one of the world's leading authorities on security and cybercrime, said, "The biggest event on the technology horizon is eCommerce, yet the greatest brake on the growth of eCommerce is the public's lack of trust in the internet. Unless we address the IT security issue the industry's investment in eCommerce will be strangled. The greatest change we can achieve in the shortest period will be to educate the public about the everyday things they can do to improve the safety and securty of their online experience'.

Pierre Herbelot, Director of Sales for SafeNet - a market leader in WAN encryptors, said, 'We are interested in targeting regional banks with head offices in Bahrain. We are also interested in obtaining leads from the Saudi market. We are very pleased to have attended MEFTEC 2004 because these are the people that we have actually met here'.

The exhibitors have expressed their satisfaction with the quality of the participants which are mostly top managers and IT experts from large banks including Central Banks from the region as well as their colleagues from capital market institutions and from the insurance industry.
Based on the feedback from exhibitors, conference delegates and trade visitors it can be concluded that MEFTEC is definitely filling a gap in the regional event calendar and has already been fully accepted by the regional financial community.