Rubikon CBS Brochure

Next Generation Banking Solution

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Rubikon

Intro
The How, When & Where...
For banking and financial services institutions the
drivers that precipitate a review and change of sys-
tems can generally be categorised into a combination
of three main business challenges:

New or enhanced revenue streams

Greater operational efficiency, visibility, risk and
control

Lower total cost of ownership

Rubikon is a next-generation core banking technology
platform that uniquely brings together six key
attributes in a state-of-the art solution in order to
address those three main business challenges:

Integrated multi-channel management

Integrated workflow and business process
management

Integrated business intelligence

Integrated development environment

Modern, clean, new technology and architecture

www.neptunesoftwareplc.com 1

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Rubikon

In turn, those six key attributes translate into a dozen
significant and rapidly attainable business benefits for
adopters of Rubikon:

New products via mobile devices and the Internet to
generate additional revenue streams

Innovation in delivering value-added services linked
to mobile and Internet channels to generate new
revenue streams

Introduce new and enhanced customer-collabora- Increase efficiency and visibility over business
tive processes, e.g. payment transaction authorisa- through seamless integration to other systems
tion or validation via mobile and Internet channels through an open SOA using web services that deliv-
to generate new revenue streams ers a “single version of the truth” to end-users

Reduced overheads and costs of errors thanks to Significantly decrease cost of ownership through
planned procedures becoming the de-facto execut- optimisation of operations, e.g. Lean/Six Sigma
ed processes that can extend outside the organisa- business process improvement initiatives
tion through multi-channel delivery
Reduce costs associated with be-spoke tailoring of
Dramatically increase staff collaboration and systems that traditionally required software source
efficiency through the adoption of “push” process- code changes using the integrated development
ing on an exception basis through integrated work- environment
flow and business process management
Lower the cost of system delivery through 100%
Refine and improve profitability of products, serv- web-based user interface, zero down-time, and
ices and processes to deliver competitive advantage low-cost scalable hardware and operating system
using integrated business intelligence requirements

Extend key performance indicator data capture to High quality, low risk, low cost, quick win imple-
boost efficiency and improve regulatory and risk mentation approach
management using the integrated development en-
vironment with no need for software source code In essence, Rubikon delivers; how it matters, when it
changes matters, where it matters!


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Rubikon

Overview
Rubikon is Neptune’s flagship, “mashup friendly”
platform providing banks and financial institutions of
all sizes with banking systems solutions that enable
the support of an agile enterprise that can reap signifi-
cant benefits from change - turning change into profit.

Rubikon is designed to deliver an industry specific,
closely coupled, business-oriented and collaborative
framework for financial services. Rubikon’s unique
Financial Service Oriented Architecture (FSOA)
facilitates rapid incremental deployment as; either
a complete universal banking system, or a series of
special-purpose applications that collaborate with
the existing infrastructure to deliver new products
or services, addressing new channels to market, or
streamline currently inefficient or high-risk processes.
This approach allows banks and financial institutions Products & Services
to achieve accelerated returns on investment and gain Factory

competitive advantage.
Customer Business Process
Each of Rubikon’s components is closely-coupled to Relationship Workflow & Case
Management Management
the others, enabling Rubikon to simultaneously pro-
vide an environment that is: Business Intelligence,
Risk Mitigation, Compliance &
Financial Control
Customer-centric

Business-service and Workflow oriented User Collaboration Events & Limits
Tasks & Alerts Monitor
Event driven

Easy and fast to develop new products and services
Channel Manager
Channel agnostic

Intuitive and collaborative for users

Management information rich and compliant Figure 1. Rubikon FSOA


The Rubikon technology platform is based on
“real” new technology, 100% Java and J2EE, adopting
open standards and an SOA architecture, which brings
scalability and agility while delivering process excel-
lence to the business.

The use of J2EE enables the standardisation of a
number of different technologies to create a robust
platform for building distributed, multi-tier enterprise
applications. In addition to an online, real-time gen-
eral ledger, Rubikon supports high-volume transaction
processing and provides embedded workflow manage-
ment.

By using an externalised rules engine, Rubikon
enables financial services institutions to improve
operational efficiency with increased automation and
without compromise in performance or scalability.
It reduces “time-to-market” for new products and
services, improving client satisfaction, and gaining
competitive advantage.

Rubikon offers an effective combination of scalability,
performance, online database, and no end-of-day
requirement; enabling financial services institutions
to give superior 24/7 services to their clients in a
multi-channel environment, for faster implementation
and cost reduction.

www.neptunesoftwareplc.com
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Rubikon covers a full range of core banking functionality that
can be implemented in a modular fashion to suit each financial
services instituition’s specific needs.

Figure 2. Rubikon functional Overview

5

Rubikon Core
Workflow & Case Management

Rubikon Workflow management, in conjunction with
its rules engine, enables financial institutions to
define customised business processes such as loan
origination, credit approval, loan set-up, drawdown,
and transaction approval - as well as account open-
ing, ‘Know Your Customer’, and case management.
Unlike existing legacy systems that still dictate how
and when financial institutions operate, Rubikon’s
workflow engine enables organisations, in line with
their business needs and compliance, to decide how
business processes are implemented and monitored.

Financial institutions can define alerts, notifications,
and invoke tasks at each stage in a workflow proc-
ess. Built on a configurable and integrated platform,
Rubikon also has the ability to record and track cus-
tomer queries and complaints received regardless
of the channel used by the customer.

Customer Management

The customer-centric architecture offers a unified
view of the bank’s customers across channels and
products – providing valuable, real-time access to
information relating to client activities and profile.
It supports customer interaction through a number
of channels such as web pages, email, automated
telephone or SMS. Financial Institutions can lever-
age this information to offer cross-selling opportu-
nities, new and innovative products and services to
their customers. Figure 3. Workflow & Case Management

6

General ledger

This is a flexible integrated multi-currency, multi-
branch, multi-entity system that can handle large
volumes of transactions. The general ledger provides
a flexible chart of accounts, organisational structuring,
and a high level of automation with online real-time
transaction updates. Financial institutions have the
ability to apply or define different revaluation schemes
across different operations and channels.

Product Definition Framework

A flexible product-definition framework based on tem-
plates, business rules, and workflows enables users
to create new products, modify existing ones quickly
to deal with market demands. Products can also be
deployed to specific branches or business units.

Transaction Posting Engine
Rubikon’s online transaction processing, batch post-
ing, memo posting, and back-value transactions
facilities are available for a range of transactions.
Data integrity has been developed to support trans-
action processing 24X7, as well as providing trans-
action configuration flexibility. Financial institutions
can benefit from Rubikon’s external rules engine
to create new or modify existing policies and rules
upon which new transactions and behaviour can be
defined.

User Defined Screen Facility

Financial institutions can define and design new
screens without the intervention of the solution
provider. Additional fields can be added to existing
screen and are reflected in the database.

7

Reports Facility

Rubikon offers comprehensive reports at various
levels, including budgeting and forecasting, cost of
funds, activity based costing, asset liability man-
agement – that are fully supported by comprehen-
sive customisable report-generating and business
intelligence tools.

Operational Services
Figure 4. Reports facility
Operational services are available 24/7 to support
transaction processing across disparate channels
and the running of various batch jobs. An end-of-
Security Management
day batch run, in today’s environment is a costly
The security features of Rubikon contain both ad- event for most financial services institutions. Often
ministrative and operational types. Administration key banking system services have to be stopped
types are used to set-up the operational security to perform these daily administrative and financial
in Rubikon, whilst operational types determine the tasks. Rubikon eliminates the traditional end-of-
runtime access to different parts of the system so- day batch processing. It allows a seamless transi-
lution based on user roles. These features also con- tion from one day to the next without having to
trol the restrictions in terms of monetary values to deny services – offering true 24/7 availability and
users of the system. has no restriction on GL updates.

8

Reference Data

Developing high-quality reference data is a constant
challenge for financial institutions and an essential
first step in creating an enterprise data management
strategy. Rubikon Reference Data allows organisations
to create one trusted source of cleansed, complete,
consistent data. Reference Data categories include:
security, configuration, business rules, customers,
securities, legal data, product (definitions), book
definitions and book hierarchy, accounting, toolkit
configuration and Workflow.

External Rules Engine

The Rubikon externalised rules engine provides finan-
cial services institutions with controls and the flex-
ibility to change the operating rules, without recourse
to the software vendor. It enables them to align prod-
ucts, business processes, and bring differentiated new
products to market fast, as well as supporting the
management of regulatory policies and dealing with
consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions.

Alerts

Rubikon provides various types of real-time alerts and
notification schemes as part of the built-in workflow
module in order to notify customers or employees
about events that require their attention, for example
when an authorisation is required or a customer has
missed a payment.

File Import/ Export

Rubikon can import or export data from flat files,
using ASCII, and XML formats without further cus-
tomisation; alternatively, financial institutions may
apply their own formats. Figure 5. External Rules Engine

9

Rubikon Retail
Retail functionality
Teller - Based on automated business processes,
tellers can perform their daily tasks quickly and
efficiently. It supports cash drawers, local and foreign
currency deposit and withdrawal transactions, pur-
chase and sale of foreign currency, traveller cheques,
advice generation and much more.

Current Accounts - Rubikon current account is
a deposit product that can be structured in various
ways. Some of the features include Cheque Process-
ing, Overdraft Facilities, Interest bearing (Debit and
Credit Interest), Charge application and waiver, trans-
action restrictions.

Cheque processing - Rubikon Cheque processing
includes chequebook type creation, chequebook or-
dering, chequebook issuing, customer used cheques
tracking. Cheque based transactions handled in
Rubikon include third-party cheques, on-us cheques,
Banker’s cheques, travellers’ cheques.

Deposits - Rubikon offers a wide range of demand
deposit accounts in nominated currencies, with
individual, joint or company ownership, with support
for cheque and cheque book management including
single, joint or multiple signatories, service cards,
statements account service charges both periodic
and irregular, credit and debit interest, standing
orders, direct debits, and balance sweeps within the
specified accounts at periodic intervals.

10

Collateral - Rubikon covers collaterals, securities or
guarantees pledged for the repayment of a loan if one
cannot procure enough funds to repay.

Term Deposits - Rubikon supports term deposit,
certificates of deposit, and notice savings accounts,
and accounts associated with terms and conditions
Funds Transfer - Funds transfer facilities between
regarding the notice period before funds can be with-
customers’ accounts are available with definable
drawn, or partly withdrawn, or where the number of
straight through processing.
withdrawals is limited. It covers penalty charges for
early withdrawal. Remittances - Rubikon covers a wide range of remit-
tance or cross-boarder transfer facilities, such as local
Loans - Rubikon provides a flexible framework and international SWIFT tranfers, direct debit authori-
supporting credit applications, retail and corporate ties, inter-bank and intra-bank transfers, using when
lending, including loan origination, loan set-up, repay- possible, straight through processing.
ments scheduling and rescheduling, disbursement,
lifecycle and penalty processing, delinquency and past Standing orders - Any person or company with a
due management, identifying non-performing assets, current account at a bank can give a standing order
provisioning, customer and group limits monitoring, instruction. The standing orders can be managed
insurance and collateral management and reporting. online. Standing orders can be created for utility pay-
All processings can be enabled and monitored through ments, credit card payments and other standing order
workflow and the externalised rules engine. types for such as account transfers or school fees.

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Direct debits - Direct Debits are a simple way to pay
bills or make regular or occasional payments to any
kind of organisation that accepts direct debit pay-
ments. Direct debit mandates can be set up for utility
payments, credit card payments and other direct debit
types. As an extra control over possible excess pay-
ment requests, a maximum amount can be optionally
defined against the payment schedule.

Clearing & Settlement - Rubikon handles clearing
and settlement of paper based and electronic pay-
ments through platforms such as RTGS, SWIFT and
Loyalty Points - Loyalty points are supported for any
automated clearing houses, and generates related
type of product within Rubikon, enabling banks to
reports.
reward loyal customers and in turn improve customer
retention.
Advanced Retail
Internet Banking - Rubikon Internet Banking has Leasing & Hire Purchase - Rubikon offers leasing
been designed to make online banking experience and hire purchase facilities, which allow a business to
secure, easy and efficient. The bank’s customers can use an asset over a fixed period, in return for regular
perform a range of transactions via the net such as payments.
balance information on savings, checking, and loan
accounts, pay bills online, initiate stop payments,
change password, perform account transfers and
schedule recurring transfers.

SMS Terminal - Rubikon SMS banking is based on
exchange of SMS messages between the customer
and the bank. It saves customers the time and effort
of going to the bank branches, as the customer can
conduct transactions from their GSM phone, irrespec-
tive of the service provider. Rubikon SMS Banking is
cost effective and is available 24 hours a day.

Biometrics - Rubikon supports industry standard
external devices for biometrics, MICR readers, card
readers and image scanners.

12

Rubikon Trade Services
A fully-integrated application meeting the needs of
both local and global banks, Rubikon’s trade Serv-
ices module supports all trade finance processing
functionality. It is designed to satisfy and support
the processing and reporting needs for documentary
credits, standby letters of credit, collections, bonds
& guarantees, shipping guarantees, reimbursements,
remittances, participations & syndications and loans.
It also automatically captures and generates SWIFT
messages and documents.

Rubikon Trade Finance makes decision-taking and risk
assessment easier, since it takes over the bulk of the
administrative procedures, at the same time giving
comprehensive information online. Management
information is available immediately through online
enquiries or customised reports. It boosts productivi-
ty, thus enhancing the options of processing increased
business volumes without impact on staffing. Rubikon
Trade Finance provides total security and comes with
easy auditing of all processes.

The products are component-based and facilitate
the processing of trade finance products and related
activities for all parties involved. This is achieved

EUR O PE by automating all aspects of the business flow and
minimising the need for data entry at all stages of
A FR the process. The overall design allows standardised
I CA processing whilst maintaining the flexibility to tailor
the system according to regional needs and require-
ments. Rubikon Trade Finance is user-friendly and
feature-rich. It enables management to fully moni-
ASIA tor and control the workflow. The system is seam-
lessly integrated with SWIFT, Telex and document
management systems. It’s a complete end-to-end
solution, covering every step from customer input
via the Rubikon e-Banking module through to a
bank’s back-office.

13

Figure 6. Rubikon Trade Finance

14

Rubikon Mortgages
Rubikon supports the creation of mortgages from a
wide variety of channels – via mortgage brokers,
internet, mobile, telephone, iDTV, post or from a
branch with full “Know Your Customer” functionality.
It also supports the entire mortgage lifecycle - from
origination to maturity - offering customers a wide
range of products. This includes various repayment
options ranging from traditional tables, linear and
interest-only mortgages through to current account
and equity release mortgages sourced locally or inter-
nationally in any currency.

Interest can be calculated on any period from daily
through to annually – with fixed, stepped, tracker,
discounted or capped interest rate options – and
includes the ability to support offset mortgages on
any repayment method. The bank can choose to offer
flexible mortgages with cash backs, portability, over/
under payments and mortgage holidays. Systems
features include mortgage calculators and illustra-
tions that link through automatically to the origination
process – and mortgage servicing so that customer
and application is captured once.

15

Rubikon Treasury
Neptune Rubikon is a web based service-oriented,
Treasury, Securities & Derivatives solution with com-
prehensive STP front to back office capabilities, cross-
product processing of a wide range of financial instru-
ments. In an integrated system, it can process plain
vanilla and complex derivatives, fixed income, and
equity and treasury trades.

Neptune Rubikon Treasury combines integration
across financial instruments across the different func-
tions within a financial institution. As a result, it is
the ideal solution for small to medium financial in-
stitutions looking to reduce costs through adopting a
centralized approach to business processes, system
operations and data consolidation.

Rubikon Treasury functionalities include:

Core Treasury

Trading & back office processing

Capital markets

Cash management

Middle office risk & control

Market data analysis & trade pricing

Limits monitoring

Back office operations

Settlements & confirmations

Accounting

Regulatory compliance

Reporting & Enquiries

16

Figure 7. Rubikon Treasury

17

Business Intelligence

Figure 8. Rubikon Banking Intelligence

Rubikon’s business intelligence module provides
critical business information in a dashboard style
view, allowing authorised staff a comprehensive over-
view of the health of the financial services institution
or business entity at a glance. Graphic displays, in
conjunction with the use of special colour coding and
icons, ensure that the information is clearly and easily
understood.

Scorecards assist in monitoring the financial services
institution’s key performance indicators (KPI’s) that
may be associated with different aspects of the finan-
cial services institution – financial, customers, busi-
ness processes, learning, and growth. The business
intelligence module allows the goals for each KPI to
be separately defined. It also obtains and compares
the actual performance data with the stored targets
and where necessary, automatically generates alerts
to areas of the financial services institution that may
require the management’s attention.

18

Channel Manager
Rubikon Channel Manager acts as an interface between Administration module - The Administration module
any retail banking application and its external delivery utilises the business logic of the core business
channels like ATM, SMS, mobile and Internet banking. management system and handles all administrative
It allows the administrative user to manage easily the and back office configurations for the e-Banking
e-banking environment, which encapsulates custom- solution.
ers, accounts, branches, services, currencies and other
required elements. Rubikon’s flexible architecture Channel Integrator - The Integrator Service
makes it seamless to add new channels. The Channel provides a transparent connection point for the
Manager ensures that customers experience a consist- channels and the core application. It also provides
ent level of business across all delivery channels. a transparent communication between the
external channels and the core system. The Inte-
grator Service is packaged into eight major serv-
ices: security, accounts, transfer, post, cheque,
bills, correspondence and customer.

Figure 9. Channel Manager

19

Technology Platform
J2EE Technology

Rubikon is 100% Java and embraces J2EE standards
and web services for integration. The system’s modular
architecture and integrated technologies ensure busi-
ness requirements can be developed and incorporated
as needed, minimising project risks, and reducing
total cost of ownership. The use of J2EE standardises
a number of different technologies to provide a robust
platform for building distributed multi-tier enterprise
banking applications. Some of the advantages of this
approach include cross-platform portability, availability
of open-source libraries, a large server-side de-
ployment base, and coverage for most W3C standards.
Software products developed under these standards,
ra t h e r t h a n b e i n g i n h i b i t o r s , q u i c k l y b e c o m e
f a c i l i t a tors of business change.

Open Standards

Rubiko n ’s a d o p t i o n o f o p e n s t a n d a r d s enables
inter- operability and integration between applica-
tions. The open design also allows financial services
institutions to make the best choices in terms of data-
base, application servers, and hardware platform.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

As business and IT move forward, SOA enables finan-
cial services institutions to increase competitive
advantage and build a sustainable business by accel-
erating innovation, capturing new revenue, developing
operational efficiencies and empowering staff.

It allows financial services institutions to link stand-
alone processes to make changes faster and facilitate
seamless design and execution across the financial
services institution’s traditional boundaries - and to
include its financial partners. Figure 10. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

20

Browser-Based

The browser-based nature of Rubikon means no client
installation is required and makes propagation of new
changes fast and seamless. It employs AJAX technol-
ogy to provide the user with a rich and user-friendly
interface.

Security

Rubikon’s integrated security management system
protects financial institutions from unauthorised
application access and malicious activity. The archi-
tecture ensures that business functionality is securely
maintained and is only available to authorised users.
The system provides sufficient flexibility to allow
financial institutions to include third party authen-
tication services or third party directory services if
required. It includes the following components:

A scalable secure service for storing and managing
user information

A runtime model for user authentication Scalability, Performance & High Availability

An administration model enabling administrators The Rubikon architecture supports a clustered hard-
to selectively delegate access rights for different ware deployment to provide scalability, availability,
modules and activities across the system and fault tolerance. As the financial institution grows,
servers can be added to the cluster and the architec-
ture automatically balances the load between the serv-
ers, providing faster access and improved availability
to the customer. This architecture enables Rubikon
to provide these services even in the event of server
failure or loss of network connections. It also means
that a clustered partition will continue to function in
isolation until the complete cluster is reconnected.
High availability enables the system to continue to
provide services even when an individual server fails.
A clustered environment is also useful for system ad-
ministrators, who can selectively shut down servers
for maintenance and up-dates without adversely
affecting the services provided to customers.

21

Database

Rubikon uses Oracle 10g RDBMS as its database and
delivers high performance and scalability on Windows,
Linux, and UNIX servers. It can also reduce total cost
of ownership by moving from a single server to a clus-
tered environment without changing a single line of
code. To provide fault tolerance and scalability,
Oracle’s Real Application Cluster option supports the
deployment of a single database across a group of
servers.

Application Servers

Rubikon has been developed and thoroughly tested
on BEA WebLogic Server 9.2 developed to support
mission critical applications and service-oriented
architectures. The WebLogic enterprise-grade kernel
keeps applications up and running even when deploy-
ing a new version, changing the server configuration
or failing over within or across data centres.

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) can be
used for composition, orchestration, and coordination
of web services.

22

Neptune Software has delivered mission-critical core LONDON, UK
systems to over 65 financial institutions and has the Tel: +44 (0) 20 8680 0239
proven experience needed to meet the requirements of Fax: +44 (0) 20 8253 5920
internationally recognised banking practices. In 2008,
Neptune achieved a top 5 ranking in the IBS Sales
NAIROBI, KENYA
League of international banking systems vendors.
Tel: +254 (20) 2719491
Neptune has 6 locations in EMEA, a development cen-
Fax: +254 (20) 2719309
tre in Chennai and a growing global partner network.

Since 2005, Neptune has demonstrated continuous LAGOS, NIGERIA
process improvement by regularly passing ISO Tel: +234-1-279 8030
9001:2000 TickIT audits. Since 2006, Neptune has Fax: +234-1-587 0420
been awarded the highest available rating, 4 Stars,
by CGAP (an organisation housed at the World Bank). CHENNAI, INDIA
This rating is based on functional coverage of the Tel: +91 (44) 4266 6015
applications and customer feedback in terms of projects
Fax: +91 (44) 4266 6021
being delivered on time and within budget.

Neptune has a solid track record of financial stability JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

and profitability with sustained re-investment into Tel: +27 (0)11 465 7253
research and development of its products. This has Fax: +27 86 5209127
allowed the development of Rubikon, a brand new
world-class banking technology platform. KAMPALA, UGANDA
Tel: +256-41-237781
Fax: +256-41-237782

info@neptunesoftwareplc.com

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