Oracle looks to India for financial services business

Oracle plans to make its Indian subsidiary a hub for its strategy for the financial services market. I-flex solutions, the Indian banking software subsidiary of Oracle, said Friday that in line with these plans, it will change its name to Oracle Financial Services.

The new branding reflects the importance that Oracle attaches to the financial services sector, a notice to the Bombay Stock Exchange quoted Charles Phillips, Oracle’s president, and a director of i-flex, as saying on Friday. Oracle Financial Services will be a focal point for Oracle's investment in innovation and leadership in financial services, Oracle said.

I-flex also announced Friday its plans to acquire the entire stake in Flexcel International, a joint venture it had set up with HDFC Bank in Mumbai to offer its banking software in an application service provider (ASP) model to small banks.

Based in Mumbai, i-flex is a vendor of banking and financial services software and services. It has 790 customers in over 130 countries. Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI),a financial institution in Central America, for example, has recently deployed i-flex’s Flexcube banking software.

Oracle currently owns 81 percent of the equity of i-flex. The change of name is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, i-flex said.

The local managers who set up i-flex will however continue to manage the company, a spokesman for i-flex said on Friday.

Oracle acquired from Citigroup's venture capital unit about 40 percent of the equity in i-flex in 2005, and raised its stake in the subsidiary in stages. The acquisition of a stake in i-flex was part of Oracle's move to expand beyond general purpose ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications and into more industry specific software, Oracle said at the time.

Oracle also has product development and services centers in India.

Author: John Ribeiro @ www.infoworld.com

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