Bank of China announced that it has signed a contract with two U.S. companies for processing services in its treasury and capital markets departments.
The Beijing-based bank signed a licensing and installation agreement with Frustum Group Inc., a New York software firm. Hardware will be supplied by International Business Machines Corp.
"We are extremely pleased with the teamwork between IBM, Frustum, and the bank to define the work required to deliver a total solution for the bank," said Liru Qin, Bank of China's deputy general manager.
The parties would not comment on the contract's value, but industry sources said it is worth more than $900,000.
The Frustum software, called Opics, is a PC-based system for foreign exchange and deposit and loan processing. Bank of China will use the system for both front- and back-office tasks. The software runs in a Windows environment.
Opics is designed to give users in the treasury and capital markets areas real-time currency positions and customer credit risk information.
Bank of China operates three offices in the United States. At Yearend 1992, it had worldwide assets of $184 billion and U.S. assets of $1.7 billion.
