Welcome
Sujan Menezes

Sujan Menezes
Industry Manager,
Financial Services,
Microsoft Canada

Finding opportunities to grow and succeed can be a complex task even in the best of times. In an economic slump, it can be a Herculean one.

But despite the doom and gloom hanging over today’s economic environment, there is room for optimism. Understanding that the global economy is cyclical, savvy financial services companies are thinking strategically and looking to increase business capabilities, drive IT requirements and empower employees to drive success.

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Feature Story
Feature Story
  • (Re)-Considering Core Banking Replacement

  • One of the challenges of bank channel renewal is integration: how should companies integrate their channel renewal strategies with the core-banking systems that support them? For many businesses, core-banking system enhancements must be handled carefully, because failed deployments could be catastrophic. In this article, Rob Burbach, an industry analyst with IDC’s Financial Insights, explores a new concept that could change the way business and technology decision makers consider core banking implementations.







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Highlights and Customer Successes


News, Views, and More
  • Four Themes for Canadian Financial Services Firms to Consider in 2009
    The global outlook for financial services has changed considerably since last September. While the Canadian industry has been the most stable and resilient in the developed world, it is not immune to the effects of the global economic slowdown, and the collapse in the price of oil to the $35-$40 range coupled with the solvency issues affecting North American auto industry are having an impact in Central and Western Canada.
  • Infusion Development Boosts Broker Insight with Microsoft Unified Communications
    Investment brokers face ongoing challenges related to risk analysis, regulatory reporting, and ensuring clients receive the best products and services. Microsoft Certified Partner Infusion Development has created a concept to address all three. Employing the Microsoft unified communications platform, the Infusion idea streamlines risk management, communication, and regulatory systems into a single solution that helps brokers improve customer relationships, reduce risks and enhance their regulatory compliance. We interviewed Infusion Development Canada Director Bill Baldasti to learn about the business drivers behind the solution, and the role Microsoft software plays in the platform.
  • In Focus
    Canada Gets Up to Speed With Electronic Trading
    The launch on Sept. 26 of Alpha Trading, with its consortium of big bank backers, marks the latest milestone in the rapid development of electronic trading in Canada. Alpha Trading technologies uses Microsoft Office suite to automate its internal operations and Microsoft SQL Server for its data warehousing.


Related Links
  • BMO Maps New Locator Site
    BMO Financial Group is launching a map-based locator to make it easy for customers to find an array of services. Not only will the locator reinforce BMO’s brand, but it will also offer cross-selling opportunities.
  • HPC Revs Up at BMO
    Every time somebody signs into their Facebook account, they access a server farm of more than 10,000 computers linked together in a High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment. Now similar virtual supercomputers, with their massive and economical computing power, are being adopted by financial institutions – including BMO Capital Markets. Read on to learn how this organization worked with Microsoft and HP to develop its first internal grid computing environment.
  • Insurance Provider Simplifies Processes with Microsoft Partner Insurity
    With 11 subsidiaries across North America offering everything from personal automobile insurance to commercial truck-fleet protection, Kingsway Financial Services in Mississauga, Ontario needed to consolidate 23 policy processing and claims systems. The company selected Microsoft® Insurance Value Chain partner Insurity as the solution provider. Learn more about how Insurity’s policy management platform has helped Kingsway reduce technology expenses and attain a comprehensive view of operations, resulting in faster time-to-market for new products.
  • Versabanq Turns to Microsoft Technologies for New Business Opportunities When Pacific & Western Bank of Canada started working with its flexible Microsoft-based asset management system to comply with the Basel II accord, the company quickly realized it was developing not only a compliance solution, but also a platform for improved business intelligence that other firms could leverage. Learn more about how a technology project blossomed into a new company and new market opportunities.
  • Capital Fund Slashes Reporting Time, Improves Efficiency
    Crystal Capital Fund (CCF) employees had to enter customer data multiple times in several data locations to ensure systems were updated with the latest information. The process was not efficient, and lacking a centralized data store CCF was challenged to assemble reports to analyze market and customer trends. After adopting Microsoft® Dynamics™ CRM 3.0 and Microsoft SQL Server® 2005, CCF benefited from an integrated database. Find out how the new software system helped CCF reduce the time needed to generate reports, and increase its overall business intelligence.
  • Raymond James Financial to Provide CRM Solution, Distribute Best Practice Workflows
    Relationship-building is the name of the game for Raymond James Financial – the company’s 3,000 financial advisors rely on a deep understanding of customer requirements to keep and attract well-to-do clients. But with too many heterogeneous CRM platforms, advisors had no uniform way to document customer interactions. Raymond James decided to standardize on Microsoft® Dynamics™ CRM. Now the firm’s customer relationship infrastructure supports a best-practices workflow library that has improved advisor performance.