Corona 7.0, released earlier this year, is the biggest release of the product ever produced by the company and delivered both major functional and technical developments. This latest version provides an integrated approach to transaction lifecycle management. With unrivalled matching rates and automated exception management, Corona 7.0 reduces risk and delivers greater control over their transaction lifecycles.

Citibank Belgium, a long standing Corona user, decided to upgrade to Corona 7.0 to implement a centralized application for all their Cash reconciliations and to expand the use of Corona to cover their Securities operation. Additionally, the bank decided to use Corona 7.0 to automate the reconciliations process for approximately 275 internal accounts.

The upgrade to Corona 7.0 took six days in total: three days for testing and three days for implementation. Pascal Nyckees, Chief Operating Officer, Citibank Belgium, stated, "The business case to move to Corona 7.0 was straight forward as not only were we able to extend our use of Corona into new areas but we were able to consolidate all of our Cash reconciliations into a single area. The fact that the upgrade process itself was rapid, on time and on budget means that the ROI for the upgrade is almost immediate. A further benefit that we are now enjoying is simplified reporting procedures - as all our reconciliations data now resides in Corona 7.0 it is easier to generate reports."

Commenting on the successful project, Jim Hannibal, Regional Manager, SmartStream Northern Europe, explained "It's good to see Citibank realising the audit and control benefits of using a single integrated solution across their organisation. By centralising their cash reconciliations and using Corona to reconcile internal accounts and securities accounts manual intervention has reduced and STP rates have increased."