A London-based developer of software for the financial services industry has announced the launch of its latest version of its banking software in an effort to arrest the company's declining sales.

Financial Objects says its activebank v.6 features new modules for trade finance, including major types of letter of credit (L/C) transactions, as well as upgraded functionality for customer relationship management (CRM) and derivatives processing.

L/C functionality

Activebank v.6 provides users with what the company describes as a real time, integrated solution to manage the complete range of trade finance transactions.

The software is specifically designed to handle both commercial and standby L/Cs alongside bank guarantees, collections, reimbursements, claims, loans, refinancing and letters of indemnity.

Bottlenecks and productivity

The latest module aims to reduce turnaround times and increase productivity and efficiency by minimising manual intervention, thus claims the company, making paper intensive trade finance processing simpler.

Activebank v.6 automatically logs and stores all workflow statistics in a database, thus claims Financial Objects, making it easier to create reports on work in progress, identify bottlenecks and assess worker productivity.

Users can customise fields and transactions with a simple point-and-click procedure - a feature that the London Stock Exchange-listed company reckons provides users with a high degree of flexibility.

A bright future?

The software is flexible enough to change with the times according to Financial Object's group development director, Steve Lane. "As well as meeting the diverse business requirements of today's financial institutions, its flexible component-based architecture will allow it to adapt and evolve in line with future developments," he says.

Lane is confident that the suite of new modules makes activebank v.6 "one of the most comprehensive core banking solutions in the marketplace."

Confidence boost

Confidence in the new software apparently needs to be well founded. The company made a pre-tax loss of £1.2m in the first six months of this year and has committed to investing £1.5 million of additional funds over the next 12 months in an effort to arrest declining activebank sales.

The new modules will be officially launched at the upcoming 20-24 October Sibos conference and tradeshow in Singapore.

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