Logica, a leading business and technology service company, today announced that national French mortgage bank, Crédit Foncier de France (CFF), has selected its Logica All Payments Solution (LAPS).
LAPS helps CFF attain SEPA reachability and provides long term scalability for its evolving payments needs. The first and second phases of the implementation, now live, enable the delivery of incoming SEPA Direct Debits (SDDs) for CFF and fully automates SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) for Compagnie de Financement Foncier, a subsidiary of CFF. CFF is part of Groupe BPCE, which is the second largest banking group in France.
As a result of the SDD initiative coming into effect on the 1st November 2010, CFF decided that it needed a flexible payment system. After a competitive selection process, CFF chose Logica as its solution provider. This was due to Logica's ability to deploy LAPS in less than three months with minimal risk, deliver a cost-effective 'pay-as-you-grow' license model and its proven success and strong customer references. Logica's on-site support team's ability to implement the solution and train the bank's staff in French further supported CFF's decision.
Luc Rondot, Chief Information Officer, Crédit Foncier de France, said: "With the SEPA directives coming into effect, and ever increasing payment volumes, we wanted to ensure that we had a highly efficient payments infrastructure in place. Maintaining compliance with current and impending SEPA regulation is of the utmost importance to us. We were impressed with Logica's team which was able to meet all of our specific implementation requirements - in our local language - and implement the solution, all in a matter of weeks."
The third project phase will include fully automated SEPA Credit Transfers (SCT) for Crédit Foncier de France (CFF) in November 2011. The final project rollout will automate outgoing SDDs for Crédit Foncier de France (CFF) and Compagnie de Financement Foncier (SCF) by 2012.
Jean-Pierre Arens, director of payments at Logica, commented: "As part of France's second largest bank, we welcome CFF to our strong European client roster. LAPS provides CFF with a cost effective framewwork that can scale as its business grows. The solution also offers high straight-through processing rates and can easily handle increasing payment volumes. We look forward to continuing our work together with CFF to help them achieve SEPA compliance."
CFF and SCF are part of Groupe BPCE which consists of Banques Populaires and Caisses d'Epargnes. BPCE has more than 8,200 branches, 127,000 employees and 37 million customers.