If you’re not familiar with Tom Papagiannopoulos’s company, that’s fine by him.
“I’m glad that you’ve never heard of us,” he said, “because that’s what we do: we work in the background.”
Papagiannopoulos is the co-founder, with Mohsin Syed, of BanQsi Inc. The Winnipeg-based company provides core banking transformations and consulting services that help financial institutions modernize operations, reduce risk and navigate change.
When Papagiannopoulos is explaining what he does to family and friends, he likens core banking to a key part of human anatomy and BanQsi’s staff to medical experts.
“We’re like the heart specialists of banks,” he said.
Core banking is the back-end connection for multiple branches of the same bank or credit union that allows customers to access account transactions, such as loan management, deposits and withdrawals, in a single safe entity.
If a financial institution is updating or migrating its core banking, or merging with another organization — think of the credit union mergers that have occurred in Manitoba in recent years — BanQsi is there to help.
“We help them merge the hearts together,” Papagiannopoulos said. “What we do are projects (where) institutions can’t afford to get it wrong.”
Since May 2023, BanQsi has successfully completed 40 large-scale projects across North America. The company has doubled its workforce in the last year to approximately 50 employees, Papagiannopoulos said, at least a dozen of whom live in Manitoba.
In October, BanQsi established an office in Dubai, so the company can pursue work in the United Arab Emirates and the other five countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council.
By Papagiannopoulos’s count, there are fewer than six companies in North America that do what BanQsi does. As the company continues to grow on this continent, Papagiannopoulos and Syed saw an opportunity to serve the growing financial services market in the Middle East.
“We wanted to make a statement,” Papagiannopoulos said of establishing the Dubai office. “We know that we’re going to be active there … And once we are, we have one or two other international markets that are kind of lining up for us as well.”…
Read full article by Aaron Epp of the Winnipeg Free Press