Grameen Foundation and SunGard Join Forces to Support Technology Advancement in Microfinance

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- SunGard has established a dedicated team of technology and consulting professionals from its Global Services business to provide strategic support to Grameen Foundation's Mifos® team and its customers.  Mifos is an open source technology platform for accelerating microfinance. SunGard has been instrumental in benchmarking and scaling the capacity of Mifos to help enable microfinance institutions (MFIs) to serve millions of clients.  Through this collaboration, SunGard and Grameen Foundation will also help improve understanding of technology-enabled microfinance and its impact on accelerating development and alleviating poverty in the world's poorest regions.

SunGard's Global Services business has a strong track record of collaboration with Mifos and MFIs in developing countries. Leveraging its domain expertise and best practices from the financial services industry, over the past three years SunGard has built test environments, procedures and quality assurance to benchmark Mifos' scalability and extensibility as a portfolio management platform.  This work has already delivered direct and significant value to Mifos customers such as Grameen Koota, a leading MFI in Karnataka, India.  In addition, SunGard's Global Services staff have joined forces with Mifos field professionals to bring enhanced services in data migration, reporting and implementation management to other MFIs such as Adhikar in Orissa, India and Kabalikat para sa Maunlad na Buhay, Inc. (KMBI) in Valenzuela City, Philippines.

"SunGard is pleased to assist Grameen Foundation in its mission to accelerate technology advancement in microfinance in order to bring financial services to more of the world's poor," said Mack Gill, president of SunGard Global Services.  "The commitment of SunGard and our employees to make a positive social impact combined with our deep expertise in financial technology and our global reach position us well to complement Grameen Foundation's technology initiatives."

"We set out to use open technology as an enabler to satisfy the enormous demand for microfinance," said George Conard, executive director of Grameen Foundation's Technology for Microfinance Initiative.  "SunGard's support, know-how and leadership can help Mifos more effectively scale and penetrate the marketplace."  

Launched in 2006, Mifos is an advanced software platform for microfinance institutions that offers both an online hosted service, Mifos Cloud(TM), and a downloadable open source edition for use on premise. In a recent CGAP review, Mifos was awarded 4 out of 4 stars for its technical capabilities and comprehensive implementation, training and support provided by Grameen Foundation and its specialists. Mifos is currently used by MFIs in the Americas, Asia, Middle East-North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries such as India, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Philippines and Tunisia, serving more than 800,000 clients. Mifos is spearheaded by the Technology for Microfinance Initiative based at Grameen Foundation's Technology Center in Seattle, with support in Africa, Asia, Middle East and the Americas.

About SunGard Global Services

SunGard Global Services delivers business consulting, technology and professional services for financial services firms, energy organizations and corporations. Leveraging SunGard's global delivery model, approximately 4,500 employees in 25 locations help customers manage their complex data needs, optimize end-to-end business processes and assist with systems integration, while providing full application development, maintenance, testing and support services.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world's leading software and technology services companies. SunGard has more than 20,000 employees and serves 25,000 customers in 70 countries. SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software. With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 380 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and IT services company. For more information, please visit www.sungard.com.

About Grameen Foundation

Grameen Foundation, a global nonprofit organization, helps the world's poorest people access financial services and technology solutions by providing financing, technology support and management strategies to the local organizations that serve them. It also spearheads technology initiatives that create new microbusiness opportunities for the poor, provide telecommunications access for the world's rural poor, and improve their access to health and agriculture information and other services.  Founded in 1997, Grameen Foundation has offices in Washington, D.C., Seattle, Washington, Hong Kong, Ghana, the Philippines and Uganda. Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is a founding member of its board of directors, and now serves as director emeritus.  For more information, please visit www.grameenfoundation.org.

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