About HBL

HBL is the prime Bank in country, established in 1941, having its registered head office in
Karachi. It was nationalized in 1974, but on 26th February 2004 it was privatized by Government
of Pakistan and taken over by Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED). They
acquired 51 percent of shares of HBL.
It is one of the largest Banks of Pakistan with 1466 branches inside country and 112
overseasoffices (presence in 25 countries) at different destinations around the world covering 5
continents. It internationally operates in countries including USA (New York), United
Kingdom(London, Manchester, Birmingham), Scotland (Glasgow), Belgium (Brussels), France
(Paris),Lebanon(Beirut),Netherlands(Rotterdam),Turkey(Istanbul),Kenya, Mauritius,Seychelles,
Nigeria,Afghanistan,Bahrain,Oman,UAE, Iran,Sri Lanka, Sudan, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Egypt,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Maldives, Indonesia and Australia. Currently HBL is having
customer base of over 6 million

History of HBL
Habib Bank Limited was established by Mr. Ismail Habib on August 25, 1942 on the desire
of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, father of the nation. It was established with paid up
capital of Rs. 2.5 million. It was the first Muslim bank of sub-continent. Quaid-e-Azam first of
all opened his personal account.
The first branch of HBL started functioning on 30th August, 1942 at Muhammad Ali Road
Bombay, on the desire of Quaid-e-Azam, Habib family migrated to Pakistan and later on shifted
the Bank's Head Office from Bombay to Karachi on 7th August, 1947 just one week prior to
independence, to play its pivotal role in the development of this newly born country.

The challenge
In 1999-2000, Habib Bank decided to replace its in-house developed distributed core banking
system MOBS, with a centralized banking solution MISYS. The biggest obstacle that Habib
Bank was facing in this migration was to maintain continuity of the banks e-banking and
existing alternate delivery channels without data duplication or corruption. This was a major
challenge for the bank.

The solution
The migration process was performed gradually, and branch-by-branch centralization was done
while maintaining the uptime and service level on all the alternate delivery channels operating in
Habib Bank.
Phoenix supported both MOBS and MISYS hosts and ensured that there was no data duplication
or corruption, and disruption in service delivery on the alternate delivery channels was minimal.

Mission & Objectives

To make our customers prosper, our staff excel and create value for shareholders

Vision
Enabling people to advance with confidence and success

Our Brand
Our brand identity is the outward expression of what we stand for as an organization. This is
summarized in our vision, mission and is supported by our values.

Values
Our values are the fundamental principles that define our culture and arebrought to life in our atti
tudes and behavior. It is our values that makeus unique and unmistakable. Our values are defined
below:
A. Excellence B .Integrity C. Progressiveness D .Customer Focus E. Meritocracy

SURVEY of HBL
We have conducted an interview with Mr. Nauman Khan, programmer and developer of
HBL software works in i2c For the purpose of this assignment we have asked some questions
from him. Some of the highlights are as follows.

Software for Core Banking Activities

HBL is using MISYS and EBS (Electronic Banking system) for its core activities
There are two types of software, either bank is using a software to secure the data regarding
banks employees and for maintaining their attendance etc. and others are to facilitate its clients.
Bank distributes cards to its customers like prepaid card, Debit card and credit card.
Data and transaction is being generated, for this kind of data banks ask some software house to
make software for them

Activities are generated through core banking software

Each and every activity of a card holder is maintained in the software system .like balance
inquiry and money transfer through account, all these works are done through web portal, sms
system or IVR
IVR is an automated device response, queries are also resolved through IVR
For example: it asks you to enter your card number or it may set your pin.

The way to achieve these functionalities

Through the banking software you can set or reset your card pin, you can make it activated,
balance inquiry, information regarding all the transactions done by you in last 30 days
Bank gives its web portal , all the data regarding it customer is uploaded on that portal and a
customer can access it to make changes , all these services are achieved through sms or IVR too.
All this is done through a software system, these are some core things done by a software.

Alert generation
Its also a kind of functionality whenever a transaction is generated by your account you may get
an alert through email or sms .Daily balance or different types of alerts are generated through it

The way reporting engines works

Its also a part of software. This is known as SAAS model, Software as a service. Means all the
work for bank is done by a programmer in the form of software.

Centralized Database or Decentralized System

A centralized database (sometimes abbreviated CDB) is a database that is located, stored, and
maintained in a single location. This location is most often a central computer or
database system, for example a desktop or server CPU, or a mainframe computer.
"A decentralized system is one which requires multiple branches to make their own independent
decisions" In such a decentralized system, there is no single centralized authority that makes
decisions on behalf of all the parties.
HBL is using a Centralized system

Which system are you using?

a) Web based b)Text based c) Desktop based
Banks gives multiple portals to its customers, so it may be using all three systems at the same
time.

CLI (command line interface) or GUI graphical user interface

HBL works on CLI
A CLI (command line interface) is a user interface to a computer's operating system or an
application in which the user responds to a visual prompt by typing in a command on a specified
line, receives a response back from the system, and then enters another command, and so forth.
In computer science, a graphical user interface or GUI, pronounced is a type of interface that
allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such
as secondary notation, as opposed to text-based interfaces, typed command labels or text
navigation.

Security controls HBL have adopted for backup and recovery

Eg. If a person have a card number it is stored as 091**********00 so that all the card number
is not given for security purpose, if some hacker gets to the data base somehow he cannot get all
the information through it
In case of DC (Data center) more than one DC is prepared to secure the data and they are located
at several places
Eg. One is in America other is in China

Network access
Network is a centralized system with which certain computers are linked and all the members of
the bank cannot access it. There are two kinds of IPs to access or not to access the network
1) White List IPs 2) Black List IPs
White list IPs are those that can communicate within a network, other than that is a malware.
Blacklist IPs means a particular hacker or some sort of material is specified to be blocked so that
he cannot access the system again.
Similarly some websites are secured that you cannot even access it from your system. These are
all activities done to secure the system

In-house software or third party software

MISYS is a Third Party software

Selection Criteria of software for Bank

Security: Top most reason is security, it shouldnt breach the security of
your card holder
Performance: Banks performance rely on what kind of software they
requires
How much vendor charge: The software is according to the budget bank
can maintain
Services: It depends upon type of service software have to provide.
Downtime: if you are making a change how much time application takes to
restart, thats the downtime.
Change management: How quickly your software makes changes in
something, this is a major factor for selection criteria of your software.

How do you resolve bugs?

It is based on testing, at first developer tests it on its own end then it goes to Quality Assurance
Server then Staging Server Testing, if everything is clear than Software is deployed for
production but still If after production issues prolongs then vendor fixes it up

How banks makes stop payment if a cheque book or ATM is lost?

Card status are maintained as active, pre active, closed.
Eg. When card is issued to branch manager its status is pre active then a customer makes call to
the bank to activates it , so status changed to activated similarly when card is lost and status is
marked as Invalid and all these are already deployed in a software.

Flaws in the System

SBP do not have a direct access to it for monitoring & this software is dependent on other
software

Competitive Edge of Software

It is user friendly, Time of transaction is minimum, it do not requires heavy
bandwidth for transmission of data
Conclusion
From the above-mentioned information it can easily be concluded that HBL is
using MISYS as a core banking software but the bank has very controlled and
secure IT environment as it has its own qualified and highly skilled IT department
and has its own data recovery sites.