Midas (banking system)

Midas is a line of banking system solutions provided by Misys corporation.

History

Kingsley-Smith and Associates

Kingsley-Smith and Associates (KSA) was formed in 1972, initially as a full software service company comprising 5 people serving Manufacturing, Banks and Insurance Companies within the UK. By 1973, the company had expanded to around 20 personnel, and begun to focus on UK Banks and Foreign Banks which had operational activities in London. KSA realised a gap existed in packaged software aimed specifically at Banks, at the same time as IBM released its System/32, later known as IBM 5320, as a new small PC system which could easily be programmed in RPG. The original five Kingsley-Smith and Associates members were Brian Kingsley-Smith, David Eley, David Mitchell, David Shaw, and David Harington.

Initial Development

The MIDAS banking system was designed in 1975 at Kingsley Smith and Associates by Barrington (Barry) Fludgate. It was the brain child of Achie Reid a then director of KSA. The system was originally going to be called FALCON, since SWIFT had just been announced, but at the last minute was changed to MIDAS (Modular International Dealing and Accounting System), the name was suggested by Jeremy Blackman, one of the two original programmers on the development. The development phase consisted of three people, Barry (designer and architect), Jeremy (technical programmer) and John Gilbert (business programmer) The system was built for the newly announced System 32 in RPGII. The first sale was made to Australia and New Zealand Bank in early 1976 and was installed and running live in their New York office in the summer of 1976.

The KSA development of MIDAS banking system had nothing to do with the Management Information Distributor Accounting System (MIDAS) software system created by David Shaw in 1972 for Jaguar Rover Triumph.

BIS Banking Systems

In 1976 KSA and Midas was sold to the BIS Group. The company was called BIS Software and the main office was in Lincolns Inn Fields. The Managing Director of BIS Software was John Prosser with the charismatic Stan Smith as the Sales Director. David Tebbs (see ITNEA) became CEO in 1983 and later moved the business to Wimbledon and the company was renamed BIS Banking Systems. In 1988 the BIS Group was bought by Nynex, an offshoot of the recently demerged AT&T, and by this time the Midas banking packages supplied 900+ of the world's 1,000 largest banks.

Leadership phase 70s and 80s

Midas became the standard package for banks off shore operations (and some domestic wholesale banking operations) worldwide by the end of 1970s, and thanks to that early leadership it has been argued that Midas is (or was) the world's most successful banking system. In the 1970s and 1980s the Midas family of banking-packages led the market with more world-wide customers, more awards, and more capability than any other. Thanks to the inertia of banks, 10 year renewals and cost of migration by some accounts it could claim to have kept this leadership position into the 1990s. The system had markedly broader functionality than most of the packages initially available, and reduced risks bringing efficiency due to a fairly standardised and comparatively automated process cycle.

Off shore expansion 1990s

In 1990 BIS opened an offshore maintenance center in Makati city Philippines. This pioneering move in the banking software industry was not capitalized on quickly and for the next decade the location was a little more than a coding shop taking orders from the UK. It did however provide a cheap pool of resource amenable to travel who go on site to customize the software. By the end of the decade no two Midas user sites ran the same code base.

In 1993 BIS Banking Systems merged with ACT^{[disambiguation needed]} which had previously purchased Kindle Banking Systems.

In 1994 Misys bought Kapiti followed in 1995 by the purchase of ACT. Misys spun off Kindle with its LAN based Bankmaster system into a separate organisation. The IBM AS/400 based products, Equation from Kapiti and Midas from ACT/BIS were united into the Midas Kapiti International (MKI) business.

Midas stll has a very broad coverage of many banking business areas. Although in the 70's and 80's it had provided market leading functionality in several of those areas, in the late 1990s other packaged systems caught up with and overtook Midas in areas like retail banking and treasury. Despite this throughout the 1990s Midas maintained a leadership position or very close to leadership position in terms of annual new names sales.

Misys International Banking Systems - decline

On 1 October 2001, Midas-Kapiti International [MKI] was renamed as Misys International Banking Systems. The new name formed part of an extensive re-branding exercise undertaken by the company, which also embraced sister companies MKI Frustum and the Credo Group, becoming unified under the new brand name.

Midas had built up an impressive user base of international branch banking and treasury operations in the previous decades. This portion of the Midas user base came under attack from cheaper Windows and Unix based systems with better coverage of the newer classes of financial instruments and overall customer numbers were in decline.

Midas is now a core part of Misys PLC, the user base is still large compared to most competitor system when measured by numbers of banks, user banks profiles and the re curring revenue stream. in the 1990s Midas was the first core banking system to introduce global processing to the core banking industry - a means of driving down risk and improving efficiency.

Misys 2010 onwards - Stasis

Two technology refreshes Midas+ and Bankfusion Midas have staunched the flow of defections from the existing user base and existing user banks are expanding usage of the system. However no new name users have been signed for several years.

External links

References