Selangor, Tuesday, 23 January 2007 – Scope International (M) Sdn Bhd  expanded its International Software Centre Malaysia (ISCM) at Cystal Plaza, Petaling Jaya to increase business capacity and capability. With the expansion, ISCM now has the capacity to centralize its workforce support and the capability to handle high volume business transactions.

Edwin Nevis, Head of Kuala Lumpur Global Shared Service Centre and Chief Information Officer Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia said, “This latest expansion at ISCM enabled our workforce to hone service skills to offer a broader range of services. This has resulted in better cost management and efficiency for us. For our consumers, we are better positioned to offer more effective business solutions.”

“With the rapid growth in business volume, ISCM has established an improved operational efficiency via a stable yet interoperable platform with greater bandwidth capabilities. This has enabled the creation of a single, centralized workforce supporting the Standard Chartered Bank network in Asia.”

“Moving forward in 2007, it is essential for ISCM to enhance its competitive advantage. With this expansion, we are well positioned to leverage on the many business opportunities that lie ahead for us,” he said.

Scope International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Chartered Bank is the second largest MSC status company. Scope International is an integral part of the Bank’s strategy to consolidate and rationalize operations in the Shared Services Centre.

ISCM was formed in August 2002 under the umbrella of Scope International and operates as part of Global Support Shared Services (GSSC) & Group Technology Operations. The centre is capable of starting and finishing a higher percentage of projects offshore, with the advantage of co-location of Business Processing and Systems Support.

As the dedicated software unit within Scope International and as the largest software division of Standard Chartered Group, ISCM is made up of 570 people. The team at ISCM currently manages more than 200 projects whilst providing global support for over 400 applications. Sixty percent of the staff strength is in supporting mainframe applications which are Hogan, Credit Card Management System and Secured Lending. The remaining are in non-mainframe applications such as Testing and Configuration Management, Engineering Quality, Channel, Wealth Management, Global Release Management, Management Office and Regional Resource Management.