Infy’s Finacle head Merwin Fernandes puts in papers

BANGALORE: Infosys Technologies is seeing the exit of another top level official with the head of its banking product business leaving the organisation. Merwin Fernandes, who was heading Infosys’ banking product business - Finacle - has put in his papers, sources told ET.

Mr Fernandes has spent close to a decade in Infosys and was the VP and global head - Finacle. He moved into the role following the elevation of Girish Vaidya as senior vice-president, Infosys Leadership Institute. However, it is not known what will be the Mr Fernandes’ future plans, though speculation is rife is that he will be moving into one of the rival businesses of Finacle. Confirming the development, Infosys in a statement said: “Yes, we can confirm that Merwin Fernandes has resigned from the services of the company to pursue his personal interests. At this stage the organisation is in the process of appointing a successor. The successor will be announced shortly to ensure a smooth transition.” Sources said Infosys has asked Mr Fernandes to stay on in the organisation till a successor has been found. Already, Infosys has sent letters to the various banks which are its customers, notifying the change. This will probably be another top level official exit from Infosys after Akshay Bhargava left its BPO business. Its other high profile exits have been Hema Ravichander.

Finacle - a core banking solution has been doing well for Infosys having recorded over 50 per cent growth year-on-year (YoY). For 2006-07, it registered revenues of Rs 538 crore recording 50.7 per cent YoY growth. Finacle constitutes 4 per cent of Infosys revenues which has 91 customers with presence in 55 countries. It has a dominant share among the Indian PSU banks. Syndicate and Canara Banks have chosen to implement Flexcube of i-flex.

Finacle has been positioning itself as a global player and is targeting the global tier 1 and tier 2 banks. It had recently bagged an order from Emirates Bank of Dubai. It is also looking actively at the regions of South East Asia, western Europe and Australia and New Zealand where deals might start off from anywhere between $40 million and go up to $500 million.

At the marketplace, Finacle is competing not only against the Indian players like i-flex, FNS of TCS but also against the established global players like Misys, Temenos and Metavante. The current market size of core banking solutions is expected to be in the multi-billion dollars range spread over a longer period of time.

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