With this new agreement, the National Bank, under their brand, will market payroll services to its clients. CGI remains responsible for creating, maintaining, hosting and managing the back office for the business processing of the bank's 8,000 payroll clients.

CGI will be streamlining the current systems offering an enhanced, state-of-the-art infrastructure allowing businesses to benefit from a reduction in costs and gain administrative efficiency. Moving forward, CGI will continue to invest in R&D for payroll services.

This agreement does not translate into incremental annual revenue for CGI. However, as it is a 10-year deal, CGI estimates that it increases its backlog for the same activities from CDN$25 million to $200 million.

"Our goal as a financial services partner is to help our corporate clients grow their businesses. By providing them with tools that can help automate business processes that are not core to their business we are fulfilling our mandate. Payroll is one such area. Through payroll services, our clients can, for example, have their staff paid by direct deposit. Also, they do not have to worry about tax time paperwork," said Tony Meti, senior vice-president, corporate and international services of the National Bank.

Michael Roach, CGI's president and chief operating officer added: "We are very pleased to expand our relationship with the National Bank. We feel confident that our payroll solutions provide great advantages for companies. Today, close to 18,000 businesses are relying on CGI for their payroll processing. It is one of the fastest growing areas within the BPS space as companies strive to obtain increased productivity at a lower cost in less time."