Fundtech Ltd. (NASDAQ: FNDT), a market leader in global transaction banking solutions, announced that its BBP subsidiary, which is the centre of excellence of Fundtech for SwiftNet messaging and operates the world's largest Swift service bureau, has become a certified SAP Service Partner.
This new certification enables seamless connections between businesses that use the SAP ERP application and the SWIFT network. Almost half of BBP's 50 SWIFT-for-Corporates clients use SAP and benefit from increased STP (Straight Through Processing), improving the speed, reliability, and efficiency of their connection to banks.
"Post-financial crisis, corporates require greater flexibility with their banking relationships and improved methods to cater to new customer and regulator demands," said Nancy Atkinson, senior analyst, Aite Group. "IT budgets remain under scrutiny, so the real challenge for corporates is maintaining cost-efficiency while delivering expert customer support and access to a global network of banks. SWIFT and BBP bridge this gap by providing a single, standardized connection between financial institutions and corporates around the world."
As an SAP services partner, BBP offers the skills and experience needed in integrating SAP ERP with the SWIFT network. BBP has seen strong growth of its SWIFT for Corporates business as companies seek to reduce operating costs and have greater flexibility in their banking relationships. With a SWIFT connection, corporations use one standard interface to send and receive information to all of their banks, eliminating the expense and complexity of multiple proprietary bank connections.
According to Ben Schol, Subject Matter Expert in SAP & Treasury at Unilever: "Having our SAP system communicate with our banks through a seamless and standardized SWIFT connection has simplified our operations, saving us money and providing us with greater flexibility in our banking relationships. Outsourcing this to the BBP SWIFT Service Bureau provides us with the reliability that we require."
Through Fundtech's global First Service Bureau, BBP offers an extensive line of SWIFT connectivity services for both banks and corporations, as well as value-added services such as message filtering forr sanctioned parties, message conversion, and reconciliation services. First Service Bureau is a global network of six service centers that provide banks and corporations with a wide variety of services such as payments, cash management, electronic invoice presentment, and financial messaging.