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IBS Journal on Global Investment House’s progress with SAGE’ss Prospero Wealth Management system

IBS Journal, the leader on in-depth analysis and reporting in the financial technology industry, has recently published an article summarizing the search, selection and implementation process embarked upon by Kuwait-based Global Investment House (GIH) for a wealth management system.

GIH, with AUM exceeding USD 5.3B and a major customer of Swiss IT vendor, SAGE Group SA, has gone on record with IBS about its implementation of Prospero, SAGE’ wealth management solution. The GIH/SAGE story can be summed up with the project suffering delays but still having an ‘end result’ that ‘is very good.’ These thoughts come from GIH’s CIO himself, Hakam Abu-Zarour.

Prospero has been installed in GIH’s Kuwait headquarters and Saudi office and once the implementation is proven by the users (in Kuwait), it will be deployed to its other branches and offices in the MENA region, including Egypt and Jordan.

The choice was made by GIH principally because SAGE Group SA offered an integrated asset management system which ran on a single platform and with a single database. […] Other systems on the market […] were a combination of two or three packages, running on multiple databases.’ […] such a system would have led to ‘operational issues and higher maintenance costs.’

Abu-Zarour believes that the bank’s RFP for an end-to-end asset management platform was ‘very complex’ but SAGE Group SA ‘had the basics of the requirements and the courage to identify and develop their gaps.’