Bank Assafa goes live on iMAL core banking system

Bank Assafa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morocco’s Attijariwafa Bank, specialising in participative finance, has gone live with Path Solutions’ iMAL core banking system.

Bank Assafa selected iMAL back in August 2018

Morocco’s central bank gave its approval to set up five fully-fledged participative banks in 2017, one of which was Bank Assafa.

Launched in July of that year Bank Assafa offers Islamic banking products supervised by and compliant with the country’s religious body the Higher Council of Ulema. It operates 40 branches across 20 cities.

The bank signed for iMAL back in August 2018 and has become one of the vendor’s largest clients.

“The project implementation has delivered a multi-award winning Islamic core banking platform that includes a comprehensive model bank enabling us to be fully compliant with local regulations,” says Yousseg Baghdadi, general manager of Bank Assafa.

“The market potential here is immense and we believe that the flexibility and scalability provided by the system will support Bank Assafa in its ambitious strategy to take innovative products and differentiated services to market rapidly”.

Mohammed Kateeb, group chairman and CEO of Path Solutions, adds: “Morocco is embracing inclusive Islamic finance and Bank Assafa will definitely be a key contributor in expanding this segment in the country and in West Africa as a region.”

Path Solutions has other clients in the country in the form of start-up Bank Al-Tamweel Wa Al-Inma. The firm is a joint venture between Al Baraka Banking Group and BMCE Bank of Africa, who own 49% and 51% of the bank, respectively.

Al Baraka Group is already in the process of rolling out iMAL across eight of its subsidiaries in the Middle East and Africa.

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The Attijariwafa banking group is a major user of the Sopra Banking Amplitude system from Sopra Banking Software, which it deploys across many of its locations in Africa and Europe.

Related: Sudan’s Al Khaleej Bank selects Path Solutions and iMAL