DMS Bank and Trust

DMS Bank and Trust incorporated in the Cayman Islands is an independent specialist bank which predominantly services the offshore financial services sector. DMS believes that its key business differentiator is that it is able to measure its performance in hours and minutes, not weeks and days like some of the larger banks, whilst at the same time always being mindful of a high level of compliance and AML.

Chief Executive Officer Paul Muspratt was responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations, finance and control at DMS. He brings with him considerable banking and offshore experience having been Manager of Banking and Custody Operations at Fortis Bank (Cayman) Limited, and, more recently, in establishing Fortis’ fund administration operations in North America.

The Decision

From the outset DMS began to refocus from its ‘private banking’ heritage to offering exclusively institutional offshore financial services and realised that they needed a new banking system with online capability to enable this re-positioning to take place.

Muspratt and his team looked at three international banking systems with comparable capability. They spent some time evaluating the alternatives with their main criteria being that it met their business needs, cost, simplicity and reliability. They finally selected BankWare, iBank, and AMLtrac from International Financial Systems (iFinancial).

Muspratt and iFinancial were known to each other. Fortis had previously worked with iFinancial and used an earlier version of their flagship system, BankWare. This was a ‘major influence’ on DMS’s decision, said Muspratt. Together, iFinancial’s BankWare, iBank and AMLtrac systems provided a total solution that had ‘all and more functionality’ than DMS required.

Importantly, said Muspratt, the systems were ‘relatively inexpensive’ in comparison to the big-name brands and iFinancial’s flexibility, commitment and customer service was already proven. Having made their decision, Muspratt called Terry Day (CEO – iFinancial) and asked If they could do a remote implementation aimed at saving both time and cost.

Issues:

• Data security
• Future-proof system
• Location
• Ease of use
• Flexibility of suppliers
• Cost effectiveness

Solutions:

• Remote installation
• Off-shore data
• warehousing
• Upgrades included in license
• 24 hour support

Internet Banking

One of the key benefits of iBank is its capability to enable two groups of users to view and transact on a client account online, but with varying access rights. For example, Fund Administrators can review and manage all the funds for which they are responsible whilst, at the same time, giving restricted access to the Fund Managers to only see information of the funds that they manage. This, effectively, is a value-added service that enhances the Fund Administrator’s offering to their customers.

Satisfaction

The level of satisfaction with the new system is very high – ‘iFinancial were, and continue to be, proactive and responsive to our needs’ said Muspratt.

Asked if DMS would make the same choice of provider again, Muspratt gave an unequivocal ‘yes!’

As for the future, DMS has plans for growth. The iFinancial systems, said Muspratt, ‘will help achieve these ambitions by providing at least comparative, if not better, functionality than our competitors’.