Midas (banking system)

Midas is a line of banking system solutions provided by Misys corporation that was initially developed in the 1970s and gained significant market share through the 1980s and 1990s.

Kingsley-Smith and Associates (KSA) was formed in 1972, initially as a full software service company comprising five people serving manufacturing, banks and insurance companies within the UK. By 1973, the company had expanded to around twenty personnel, and begun to focus on UK banks and foreign banks which had operational activities in London.

KSA realised a gap existed in packaged software aimed specifically at banks, at the same time as IBM released its System/32, later known as IBM 5320, as a new small PC system which could easily be programmed in RPG. The original five Kingsley-Smith and Associates members were Brian Kingsley-Smith, David Eley, David Mitchell, David Shaw, and David Harington.

The MIDAS banking system was designed in 1975 at Kingsley Smith and Associates by Barrington (Barry) Fludgate. It was the brainchild of Achie Reid a then director of KSA. The system was originally going to be called FALCON, since SWIFT had just been announced, but at the last minute was changed to MIDAS (Modular International Dealing and Accounting System), the name was suggested by Jeremy Blackman, one of the two original programmers on the development.

The development phase consisted of three people, Barry (designer and architect), Jeremy (technical programmer) and John Gilbert (business programmer) The system was built for the newly announced System 32 in RPGII. The first sale was made to Australia and New Zealand Bank in early 1976 and was installed and running live in their New York office in the summer of 1976.

The KSA development of MIDAS banking system had nothing to do with the Management Information Distributor Accounting System (MIDAS) software system created by David Shaw in 1972 for Jaguar Rover Triumph.

In 1976 KSA and Midas was sold to the BIS Group. The company was called BIS Software and the main office was in Lincolns Inn Fields with software development based at York House near Waterloo; convenient for the City. The Managing Director of BIS Software was John Prosser with the charismatic Stan Smith as the Sales Director. David Tebbs (see ITNEA) became CEO in 1983 and later moved the business to Wimbledon and the company was renamed BIS Banking Systems. In 1988 the BIS Group was bought by Nynex, an offshoot of the recently demerged AT&T, and by this time the Midas banking packages supplied 900+ of the world's 1,000 largest banks.

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