Source: SMA Consulting
New start-up bank The Islamic Bank of Britain is preparing to go-live on SWIFT via the Bureau as of Swift's December cutover and futures brokerage Refco Overseas Limited commence testing in the next few weeks, and hope to switch-off their existing SWIFTAlliance interface shortly.
SMA's Bureau Service is based around the SWIFTAlliance product family, and offers much more than SWIFT FIN connectivity, such as message re-formatting and access to SWIFTNet FileAct and Browse. It is one of the first 10 Bureaus to be awarded the new SWIFT Bureau accreditation label.
Stephen Hinds, AGM Head of Operations at Islamic Bank of Britain PLC says "As a start-up bank, we see no advantage in handling the purchase, installation and configuration of a SWIFT Interface ourselves, when we can use a company like SMA to manage all of our SWIFT connectivity issues on an outsource basis. At Islamic Bank of Britain, we prefer to concentrate our resources on establishing our core retail banking products and services, with SMA's Bureau Service competently handling the financial messaging side".
"As an SMA SystemCare and SWIFTAlliance Access customer of several years, we have decided to hand over our SWIFT responsibility lock-stock and barrel and connect via SMA's Bureau Service. We will have a more resilient solution, with more services available to our end-users, at a fraction of the cost" says Simon Tatam, Head of Treasury, Refco Overseas Limited.
"The SMA SWIFTAlliance Bureau is a natural extension of our outsource model" says Guy Griffiths, Director of Marketing at SMA, "and as a SWIFT Business Partner, it is a great way to increase SWIFT's endpoints and our own extensive customer base".