In Europe more than 4 billion direct debit mandates will need to be migrated to SEPA by February 2014. On this date corporates will no longer be able to use national Credit Transfer and Direct Debit schemes for Euro payments. With CGI SEPA Services, the Netherlands-based insurer will migrate its legacy payments and collections to the new SEPA Credit Transfer and SEPA Direct Debit schemes, manage and store client mandates, and have access to a payment hub capability.

"With the SEPA deadline less than a year away, we realised that we needed to act swiftly to ensure that we could migrate all of our Direct Debits and Credit Transfers to SEPA," said Jan-Kees Adriaanse, Finance Director, ZLM Insurances. "Doing everything in-house was not an option for us. We chose CGI as a partner based on its industry expertise and the ability to provide a comprehensive SEPA platform that we can connect to quickly. This de-risks our SEPA migration. We're confident that working with CGI means we can enrich legacy mandates and payment files to SEPA XML easily and cost effectively."

The CGI SEPA Services portfolio combines a fully managed SEPA platform and consultancy services, to provide corporates with a one-stop-shop for SEPA. CGI technology is used to process 15% of SEPA Direct Debit transactions in Europe, surpassing any other provider in the market, and is part of CGI's wider suite of payment solutions.

"Although the Netherlands has an aggressive national migration plan for SEPA, we are still seeing corporates waiting on the side lines and the same is true in many other European countries as well," said Garry Young, IP Solutions Director at CGI. "Currently, in the Netherlands only 2.53%[i] of credit transfer transactions have migrated. The challenges the industry and corporates face are significant. It's clear that not everyone will be compliant in time. ZLM is ahead of the curve and we are working with them to ensure they are ready well ahead of the end-date and continue to run 'business-as-usual' post SEPA."

Corporate customers throughout Europe can take advantage of CGI's SEPA Services suite by taking as many or as few services as they need according to their own SEPA strategy and requirements.