ACE Software Solutions, provider of intelligent payment, AML and STP solutions for the financial sector, today announced that Commerzbank, Germany's second largest bank is upgrading to the latest version of ACE's OFAC Guard to ensure its cross-border message filtering capability is ready for Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) messages.
Commerzbank, one of Europe's leading banks, processes over 100,000 transactions a day. The German bank has reached new levels of SEPA readiness and is live on the latest ACE solution for message filtering and anti money laundering. Commerzbank is a long time customer of ACE's OFAC Guard with the solution installed in Frankfurt and run globally in multiple locations using ACE's innovative Web OFAC interface for simple deployment.
The payments landscape is continually evolving. With the imminent arrival of SEPA on January 28th 2008 heralding a significant change for Euro payments, there is an additional need to be able to process SEPA formatted messages. Filtering transaction messages against official watchlists is an effective method of identifying potentially suspicious transactions and flagging them before they can be processed.
"Commerzbank initially selected ACE's OFAC Guard, to help manage our AML obligations and compliance, based on a technical and functional fit with our requirements and we have been very pleased with its performance," said Markus Rosner, VP, Commerzbank, "We are committed to providing the best possible service to our clients and have invested time and resources in making sure that Commerzbank is fully ready for SEPA. ACE's OFAC Guard has ensured that our compliance and message filtering is able to receive and process transactions in the new SEPA format without impacting on our high rates of STP."
Part of the successful Pelican range of intelligent payment solutions, ACE's OFAC Guard module is a proven solution, in use at a global client base for message filtering. It is capable of scanning high volumes of payment messages against various watchlists from national governments and other authorities. It uses advanced artificial intelligence to accurately determine suspicious messages, resulting in a low rate of false positives, and ensures resources can be concentrated on those transactions most at risk.
"ACE's superior technology repnology represents a significant advance over other solutions, even those that have been launched in the last two years. This is the basis upon which we have built a long term relationship with Commerzbank," comments ACE Software Solutions CEO Parth Desai, "ACE's OFAC Guard ensures rigorous checks can be made to ensure the validity of messages thus preserving reputational integrity and avoiding regulatory fines. We look forward to working with, and supporting Commerzbank, as their payments requirements change over time."
"The latest version of OFAC Guard that we are testing will ensure that our compliance standards are maintained at the very highest level. Over time both the payments market and our requirements have evolved but it is clear that ACE has continued to invest in product development to effectively meet the needs of a changing market," concluded Markus Rosner.