The announcement signifies a closer level of cooperation between the two organizations, under which they will work together to deliver unrivaled industry value to over 2,000 customers using SunGard's AvantGard solution. Over the past year, SunGard and SWIFT have expanded their relationship to extend greater connectivity and communications options to banks and corporations.

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect over 8,500 banking organizations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 209 countries. Several years ago when SWIFT opened access to corporations, SunGard took the new offering one step further by integrating connectivity to its corporate solutions for treasury and payments, and then wrapped a service bureau around the solutions.

Electronic banking systems require the integration of several different interfaces and the subsequent functional management and administration of these. This can be costly to install and maintain and can strain in-house IT resources. By leveraging a single connectivity point via AvantGard operating as a SWIFT Service Bureau, corporations can access SWIFT faster, for less cost and with increased straight-through-processing capabilities.

Corporations can also leverage SunGard to interface with the Accord for Treasury solution from SWIFT, which matches confirmations and provides exception handling results in real-time. Accord for Treasury also automatically updates the matching status to reflect subsequent corrections and cancellations to initially confirmed trades, and can be integrated with SWIFT's Bank Account Management (eBAM) service.

Gottfried Leibbrandt, head of marketing at SWIFT, said, "We value our partnership with SunGard and are pleased to be deepening this relationship by granting SunGard the preferred status of Global Partner. Its solutions offer value-added services to the SWIFT network, helping corporarporations to improve management of free cash flow. SunGard's dedication to helping foster collaboration across the financial supply chain demonstrates that our organizations have shared goals."

Ken Dummitt, president of SunGard's corporations business, said, "Our corporate customers are increasingly challenged by proprietary systems, protocols and connectivity options. Core to our strategy is the ability to offer our customers market neutral and vendor neutral connectivity, aimed at helping to reduce friction across the corporate commercial EcoSystem. SunGard's AvantGard solutions help optimize liquidity and foster communication between buyers, suppliers, banks and other trading partners."