HBL deployed a new system in 4 months that garnered two international awards – Celent for innovation in Cash Management and IBM PureAppliance.

1. HBL Technology Innovation Awards
HBL is Pakistan’s largest commercial bank with 1700 branches, 2000 ATMs, and eight million clients. HBL has a
global presence in principal international markets including the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Africa
and the Far East. HBL’s main business is retail banking and has significant presence in Corporate, Consumer,
Islamic and other lines of banking.
The Business Case
Corporate clients in Pakistan were demanding cash management services as offered by large global transaction
banks. HBL recognized an opportunity for market growth by providing its customers with an online portal for
cash management, trade services and supply chain finance. The business required a single platform with
integrated products and services to increase internal efficiencies and integrate with customer systems. Benefits
included client self-service, initiating payments and service requests, minimizing operational effort, reduce
processing costs, minimize manual intervention and potential for errors.
With this project, HBL sought to:
 Deliver a unified cash, trade and payments and electronic collections platform to enable the bank to capture
a major share of the 6 billion rupees/year market
 Attract key client segments such as the large and growing telecommunications and retail distribution sectors
through innovative electronic and mobile collection services
 Integrate with ERP systems (e.g. SAP Treasury and Oracle Financials) with straight-through-processing of
host-to-host transaction files, a differentiator among regional bank solutions
 Offer new products across customer segments on the integrated digital platform, including supply chain
management, dealer financing and wealth management, increasing cross-sell revenue streams
The Solution
IT worked closely with the business to deliver the first phase of the Misys Cash Portal. We used an Agile mindset
to deliver this project wherein features and functionality were added over time rather than in one go. With this
approach we broke the norm of multi-year initiatives and the system went live in 4 months. Key success factors:
 We used the application out of the box – it’s a functionally rich application and no need to customize the
system.
 Interfaces were kept to a minimum – each interface adds to the development time and complexity.
 Deployment in phases - minimum viable product in 4 months for select customers. New features, capability,
and interfaces added every 1-2 months over the next one year.
The flexible implementation approach allowed HBL to re-prioritize features as market and client needs changed.
Gradually migrating customers also avoided the risks of a “big bang” conversion and potentially damaging
disruption.
The Awards
The deployment of the Misys Cash Portal in 2015 has garnered HBL two awards in the international arena:
Celent Innovation Award: Celent is an independent technology analyst house that advises banks on
technology transformation and aims to provide the best practice frameworks for bank technology. Their
clients are large banks and corporates mainly in the US and Europe. Each year they single out the best
tech implementations to highlight as an industry best practice. HBL won the Cash Management & Trade

2. Finance award in 2015. Winning the award is an accolade because it represents best practice
implementation and highlights the ‘model’ bank around the world.
IBM Pure Appliance Award: The solution was implemented on the IBM PureApplication - a special
hardware and software appliance for rapid deployment of internet based applications. The
PureApplication Premier Program was held during IBM’s annual InterConnect Conference earlier this
year in the US where IBM hosted over 100 of its top PureApplication clients worldwide. HBL won the
award for the rapid deployment of this system and as the first bank in Pakistan to embrace the private
cloud journey using this platform.
These successes are a testament that HBL IT can deliver solutions to international standards.