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Cedrus Bank was founded in 2015 when Cedrus Invest Bank

(CIB) completed its acquisition of Standard Chartered

Lebanon from Standard Chartered Bank. Cedrus Invest

Bank and Cedrus Bank together form the Cedrus Group and offer a

diversified range of banking products and services across commercial,

retail, private and investment banking. Along with the acquisition

of Standard Chartered Bank, came the complexity of consolidating

multiple systems, including systems related to compliance and risk

management. .

At the time of the acquisition, the bank was using multiple systems,

data sources and conventional tools to perform the day to day

activities of compliance and risk management which impacted the

time consumed and in turn employee efficiency. This case study is

a summary of how Cedrus Bank enhanced its compliance and risk

management operations using Capital Banking Solutions (CBS) as a

technology and solution partner

With a clear objective of implementing a consolidated system

characterised by flexibility, scalability, and reliability, Cedrus Bank

realised CBS’s Capital Compliance suite to be the best fit solution.

Further, Capital Compliance built on an open and scalable architecture

is accompanied by robust deployment, comparatively lower TCO,

local presence for the quick support and existing positive relationship.

For a financial institution which is of the size of Cedrus Bank, it was

not easy to change core modules and processes, i.e., compliance and

risk management of the bank. From compliance officers’ perspective,

there is always a considerable and justified amount of hesitation

to change the existing system, its operations, and the associated

process. Since the beginning and throughout implementation CBS’s

team of consultants deployed at the implementation site played a

critical role to handhold the Cedrus Bank team, educate them and

address all their concerns and queries to gain the initial trust and

improve the bank team’s confidence on the solution.

The software suite implemented at Cedrus Bank, i.e., Capital

Compliance v9 included the following:

Capital Compliance - Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

• Follows risk-based scoring approach, supporting automatic and

manual scoring

• Predefined rules and scenarios with an opportunity to build

scenarios

• Real-time filtering to ensure transaction credibility

The implementation was completed within four months and involved

a total of 3 consultants from CBS who coordinated with Compliance

Officers as a single point of contact from Cedrus Bank. The

implementation of Capital Compliance product suite was running in

parallel with the core banking implementation, and hence, the system

has to be made available along with the core banking system.

Following were some of the key benefits achieved from the

implementation:

• Automated risk scoring processes, behavioral client profiling

based on defined scenarios

• Detailed parameterization of the solution concerning triggers

and alerts

• Built-in workflow and integrated document management

systems

• Advanced reporting and alerts management.

Any solution implementation is associated with a unique set of

challenges. However, the key to success is in a collaborative approach

to mitigate the challenges and eliminate potential risks. Following

are some of the key challenges faced during implementation & an

overview of innovative ways in which the challenges were mitigated

from being potential risks.

Cedrus Bank Strengthens its Compliance & Risk Management with Capital Banking Solutions

CASE STUDY

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IBS Journal June 2019 49

the number of customisations, the harder becomes

the maintenance in a live environment. With extensive

parameterisation encouraged by CBS, the associated

potential risk is mitigated, and Cedrus Bank requirements

met sufficiently.

With the successful implementation, the platform addresses

consolidation of applications with AML Profiling, FATCA and CRS all

available at one place. The solution currently caters for assessing

risk with a total of 14 different scenarios for triggers and alerts using

a combination of 10 KYC fields to determine an automated score. In

conclusion, the integration of a new compliance and risk management

solution platform with a Core Banking application has been beneficial

in centralising and streamlining Cedrus Bank operations for flexibility,

scalability and reliability.

• Timelines: With about a total of four months in hand, there was

no room for any delay or deviation from the implementation

objectives. One of the major tasks was to complete the User

Acceptance Testing (UAT) within one month and be able to

validate the set-up. Cedrus Bank and the CBS team took this

up as a challenge backed by rigorous preparations for UAT

concerning designing test strategy, test cases preparation and

so on. A collaborative approach towards UAT preparation and

execution helped in achieving the milestone.

• People readiness: One of the critical success factors for any

implementation, often overlooked, is the people readiness.

Achieving success in all other areas but not getting people

readiness correct would not bear optimum results. To address

the same, CBS adopted the ‘train the trainer’ approach where

a group of people is trained first hand by the CBS team and,

further, the training is passed on to a bigger group of users

by Cedrus Bank trainers. With this, the people readiness was

ensured in less than two months during implementation.

• Adapting workflow: Usually when a new solution is being

implemented, adapting product workflow to the organisation

structure of the bank becomes a challenge. While addressing

the associated challenges, the product/workflow undergoes

customisation, which in itself is a potential risk. The more

KEY FACTSBank: Cedrus Bank

Headquarters: Dora, Lebanon

Asset size : $2 billion (2018)

Supplier: Capital Banking Solutions

Solution: Capital Compliance v9

Timeline: 4 months

“Cedrus Bank selected Capital Banking Solutions (CBS) for its core, compliance and digital banking systems because CBS is a local supplier with professional services and has accepted the challenge to implement the systems in a short time, as stipulated by the bank.

Elie Barakat, Group CIO, Cedrus Bank Sal & Cedrus Invest Bank

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