Norkom Signs Financial Market Leaders in Britain, Korea.

Norkom Technologies, Dublin, announced this week that it has signed as customers Woori Bank, Korea, and a UK unit of the Co-operative Financial Services (CFS).

Woori, Korea's second-biggest financial institution is using Norkom's anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) software, to comply with stricter Korean legislation, which took effect at the end of 2008. The Seoul-based bank is Norkom's first Korean customer.

Manchester, UK-based CFS will use Norkom's Multi-Channel Fraud Solution to protect its 5.5 million customers—a greater task now under the UK's mandatory real-time payments initiative, Faster Payments.

Avivah Litan, a research director with Gartner Group, Stamford, Conn., commented, "Faster Payments in the UK is going to force banks to support real-time payments, which means that they don't have time to screen for fraud. They're going to have to make decisions immediately—so the fraud detection systems that they're used to using will have to undergo dramatic upgrades."

Norkom CEO Paul Kerley recently told BS&T that the technology Norkom sells—counter fraud and counter terrorism software—is in a "must have" category, crisis or no.

He indicated that Norkom anticipates meeting analysts' expectations for continued revenue growth. Stock analysts are predicting that Norkom, traded under the symbol: NORK, will end its financial year with revenues up by between 17 percent and 22 percent. That would translate to possibly $63.3 million (50 m) by Norkom's fiscal yearend on March 31. Norkom gets just 1 percent of its revenues from its home country, Ireland, Kerley added.

Yoonchul Ahn, head of compliance with Woori Bank, said, "We chose Norkom because of its superior technology and global reputation We are confident of achieving compliance with local Korean AML laws and global regulatory demands in an effort to expand our international business across Asia, USA and Europe."