SBP's role in promotion of electronic services highlighted

Lutfullah Khan, Chairman and CEO AutoSoft Dynamics, said on Saturday that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has played a very effective and prominent role in pursuing banks to offer new technology and ensure electronic services to customers. With time the existing systems had to be upgraded to offer all of the electronic services to its customers, which later included online interbank transfers and utility bills payments etc. Today our banks can compete with any other bank in developed countries in their customer services.
He said the software operating in the banks today has to be flexible and responsive to the ever changing banking needs and requirements. It has to comply with national and international regulatory requirements on one hand and produce effective decision making MIS needs of the management on the other. They require some 'artificial intelligence' to be built in to an extent to caution and identify possible frauds and/or money laundering attempts. There are some external solutions for these purposes which can often be bolted on the existing system, if the facility is not built in the original system, he concluded.
Lutfullah Khan has taken the challenge of automation of banking industry and developed very successful banking solutions which are now supporting 18 banks in Pakistan and abroad. Today AutoSoft Dynamics offers a very wide spectrum of modules that are fully integrated and address almost all aspects of banking. Their 'one window' approach of the fully integrated modules working under a single General Ledger is a unique feature, unmatched by most of the local and international banking solutions, and perhaps a major factor in increasing their footprints in local and international markets.
He said growth of banking industry in Pakistan has witnessed a new era with the opening of the economy in the early 90's regime of Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif. There was a sudden expansion of the industry with the opening of 10 new banks in the private sector. These newly opened banks competed with the already established banks by adopting automation and better customer service. Unfortunately, there were hardly any banking systems available in Pakistan at that time offering a suitable and affordable solution for newly formed banks. Almost all of the established banks had their own home grown banking systems which were quite archaic in offering only back office and accounting support with little help to the front office and customer service. The banks were also quite reluctant to share their systems with other banks.