For TSYS And SpareBank 1, Norway Is PRIME Territory

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1 For TSYS And SpareBank 1, Norway Is PRIME Territory Hi, this is David Evans from Market Platform Dynamics. I have the honor to be talking today to John Goodale, who s the Senior Director for Business Expansion at TSYS in London. He s going to be telling us about an interesting deal that they have recently done with Sparebank 1 in Norway, and with us from Sparebank 1, we have Kjell Kleveland, who s the Program Manager for Sparebank 1 in Norway. John and Kjell, thanks very much for joining me today. Thank you, David. Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to come and talk, it s much appreciated. Great. So, John, we have you from London, and we have Kjell from Norway, I take it today. Yes, that s right. I m in Trondheim actually, in the middle of Norway. John, let s start a little bit with you, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about some background on TSYS new partnership. I understand that it involved a product line that TSYS has called PRIME. So maybe tell us a little bit about that. Yes, we were delighted to announce last week the deal that we struck with Sparebank 1. And it s connected to our PRIME license family of products, 1 and what the PRIME solution is, PRIME 4 in this particular case, it provides

2 both a card issuing and an acquiring capability for our clients, and it s been adopted by many clients across the world. We ve got over a hundred clients that use it now in around 70 countries. And I think one of the reasons why it s particularly interesting for TSYS as a product, is it fits very nicely for those clients, in particular those regions in the world, whether for their own individual client reasons, or maybe for specific regulatory reasons in certain areas. It provides a capability to those clients to manage their own solution with that particular license capability. So, a lot of people associate TSYS with processing services, which of course, we ve done for a number of years. But I think less people maybe consider it for licensing. But of course, with a hundred odd clients, there s significant license capability that we have, and that is supported through that PRIME family. So in this case, it s the PRIME 4 solution, and as per the information in the press release, it s for supporting the MasterCard and Visa issuing requirements that Sparebank 1 have, which cover their credit charge, prepaid and contactless requirements. John, how long has TSYS been active in Norway? Well, in Norway, we ve been active for 15 years. But I can actually sort of expand that question a little bit more to cover the whole of the Nordics, which is really quite a strong region for TSYS, particularly in licensing by itself. And actually, we ve got a very strong share that we ve built up since that first client went live in Norway in 1997, to a point now where something like the top seven of the top ten banks now use PRIME as a licensed solution within 2

3 their businesses. So for us, it s been a very strong, successful track record, from that initial set- up in Norway, all the way through, across the whole of what is a very important Nordic market for us. Mainly in issuing, but not only consumer cards, but also commercial cards, they are all on that PRIME platform. What I will just say, because I think it s an important part of this, is this success that we had is based on that initial Norwegian client back in 1997, which was, I think, sort of supplemented by a very important piece of work we did with DnB NOR, who were the market leaders in Norway, who announced, a 2.2 million card conversion in So I think that moved us from an initial market entry through to a very dominant position within the market. Kjell, maybe you could tell us a little bit about how the Norwegian banking environment differs from that in the US. I assume to being with that you don t have the 15,000 banks that we have here. That is correct. And I don t consider myself as an expert about the US market. But of course, the most obvious difference is the volumes. The volumes are much, much lower. Creating low volumes, ultimately, means that you have to keep some focus on operating costs and cost- effective workstreams. In Norway, we are about 4 million adults. The card - - credit card market in Norway is very mature. In the total card market though, there are 12 million cards, meaning that we have approximately three cards per adult in Norway. Mm- hmm. 3

4 Out of this 12 million, five million are credit cards. Ten issuers are controlling more than 95% of the Norwegian credit card market. For the coming year, Sparebank 1 aims to actually be on the second or third position when it comes to issuing, because the Norwegian credit card market is very much about issuing, and not about acquiring, as we have a situation where, Nets and operators owned by the banks - control almost 80% of the acquiring market. Mm- hmm, very interesting. Kjell, how was TSYS able to meet Sparebank 1 s needs, specific needs, with regard to this partnership? Yes what was very important to us, we had three key factors in our organisation process, that was system flexibility, integration technology, and the vendor s ability to deliver. In June 2011, Sparebank 1 initiated a project, setting up a credit card company, that is from scratch. And the aim was to actually launch a pilot product in November Which is a very, very, limited time frame. And, having this limited time frame, the ability to deliver into the Norwegian market, was a very, very important key factor for us, in the detailed evaluation. In addition to that, you also see that the players in the Norwegian market, and the market itself, requires user- friendly and highly functional services and systems, and to provide it to the markets, and to the end users through different channels. And because of this, the integration technology, and the system s ability to actually adapt to different technologies, was very important to us. That s very helpful, Kjell. John, you said PRIME has an extensive footprint 4

5 globally, surveying financial institutions. I don t think you mentioned this, but my understanding is it serves financial institutions in more than 70 countries. Is that correct? It is, it is. And I think those words are very accurate, the extensive global footprint is a great description for it. When I first started working with PRIME, probably six, seven years ago now, the thing that struck with me was its diverse geographic range, literally everything from South America, across Europe and Africa, all the way a large part of Asia. The platform is used in the same form. Obviously, for different purposes. We ve got issuers and acquirers that require different product types, and what have you, using it. But the other thing, I think, that s really quite striking about it, is the range of sizes of potential clients. We ve got people that are using it with literally just a few thousand cards, but are using the same system and others who are using the same system for multiple millions of cards, and supporting very, very different needs from those products itself. I think, the other thing for us, that has made a big difference, from a TSYS perspective that has made a big difference and a big influence, is our own use of the product. We also use PRIME for ourselves, in our own processing environment, and we recently announced the completion of the Carrefour portfolio conversion in Brazil, which I think covers some 13 million cards. And it s all based on exactly the same core PRIME 4 platform, that we re implementing here with Sparebank 1. So, to me, the biggest impact is on the range of clients that are able to leverage the capability of PRIME and PRIME 4 in particular, but also, our 5

6 ability as TSYS to use it in our environments, at our own data centers to meet our expansion requirements around processing. John, let s turn back to the Norwegian situation just for a second. In the release announcing the partnership with Sparebank 1, it says that Norwegian banking needs are evolving. Maybe you and perhaps Kjell if he wants to chime in as well, could speak a little bit about how they re evolving in a way that s important for this partnership and for the use of PRIME? So John, why don t you take this first. Yeah. OK, well I think the, particularly, the evolving requirements around Norway, I think from my perspective, it s important that people understand how the requirements in Norway are maybe different from other requirements in Europe, and I think it should be seen through those lights as well. The regulatory requirements in Norway are different. It s not part of the EU. There are some very stringent data protection requirements and other elements as well that dictate the type of solution, and the way that that particular solution is implemented, that something like PRIME and the flexibility around PRIME has to support. So I think, having the context and the understanding about the fact that Norway itself is a quite different market, and as I said has some different regulatory constraints around it is an important bit of background to understand. Kjell, do you have anything to add to that? 6

7 No, I think, John actually did answer it. What you also see is that the market is evolving with new product characteristics. As, the market is very competitive, and you see that several of the vendors now are combining credit card products with other financial products, such as insurances. Mm- hmm. And of course, you have this adoption of new technology, mobile, contactless etc., etc. So we are in a changing time. And you also see that it s important actually to have an association, system- wise, to have this flexibility. And are able to actually have a short time to market. Kjell, that s very helpful. Thank you very much for that answer. John, what s next for TSYS on the international front? Yeah, well TSYS is very active internationally. I think we ve had a lot of developments over the last few years which we re very pleased with. I think we re up to 150 clients, in say 75- odd countries, and about 2000 team members now in International, spread around 12 or so locations. So for us, I think the most important thing is to build out on that expansion that we ve done. I mentioned Carrefour earlier down in Brazil. Big opportunity, obviously, in Brazil as a market, so I think growing in Brazil is a big piece of that. Here in Europe, we need to build scale. We have entered three new countries in the last months. Switzerland, Italy, and Luxembourg. We need to build out on those, and obviously build on that investment that we ve made. We see a very strong interest in cross- border, particularly amongst European issuers who are looking - - 7

8 Mm- hmm. - - trying to consolidate their systems. So we see again, big opportunities around how the banks themselves can grow, but be supported more importantly by software solutions to meet that growth. And I think for us, when it comes back to the where next? we have to look at all the countries we re in and decide what are the next logical countries to go into. So we re looking at those, and we re looking to see what propositions we can add to our, what we call our existing home markets, those markets where we have already a strong market share. We re looking at debit propositions, we re looking at retail propositions. And also, we re looking very heavily at how we can take the global product developments that we re making, things like the collected mobility work that we re doing at the moment, and bringing those to market for our clients over here in Europe and International wider. John, thank you very much. John and Kjell, this is very informative. It sounds like a very interesting partnership you guys have, and we really appreciate the time you spent with those today. So have a great rest of the day, and thanks again. Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you. 8