Oberbank is a highly successful financial services firm operating across Central and Eastern Europe managing approximately €18 billion for clients through a range of retail and wholesale products. As a highly experienced bank in trade finance, Oberbank wanted to ensure its operations could continue to offer a wide range of products and deliver value for money to its clients.

After analysing a range of trade finance solutions, Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to further automate its Guarantees, Letters of Credit and Collections business processes. The solution will be installed at Oberbank's headquarters in Linz, Austria and will initially process domestic guarantees, followed by its Austrian trade finance business and later on its branches in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary.

Hubert Umlauf, General Manager, Organisational Development & Process Management at Oberbank, commented: "Finding a solution that could automate our paper-based processes for domestic guarantees and integrating it in the whole range of our trade finance business was critical as we look to continue our success. The SmartStream TLM solution clearly met our requirements with its ability to automate many of the processes and our staff found it easy to use. With TLM Trade Finance as a single, centralised solution for our domestic guarantee and cross-border trade finance business we believe that our business will be more efficient. With automated workflows and improved reporting capabilities we can spend more time talking to customers and providing the best possible service."

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, said: "We're delighted that as part of their organisational review Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to manage its domestic and cross-border business. This will enable them to replace paper forms and data re-entry with workflow-based processes, electronic forms and documentation. As a result, Oberbank will lower their operational costs and risk, while supporting their ultimate goal; to further enhance reporting and client service to maintain a competitive advantage."