With corporate clients increasingly demanding the option to electronically exchange data, ZKB needed to quickly enable its business partners to conduct transactions electronically in a standardised format - allowing easier processing with third-party systems. In addition, many of the larger corporate clients that have multiple bank accounts wanted to be able to process all of their transactions through a single bank which would act as a gateway to transfer orders to other institutions.

To meet these demands and to help open up new areas of business, ZKB initiated a programme to address the expansion and development of its eBusiness and eBanking services. The services in the programme included the electronic delivery of account and portfolio statements (with SWIFT often being the desired format) and the electronic acceptance of transaction orders by ZKB. As a result, ZKB had to implement a solution that would allow it to process a variety of communications protocols and data formats in a cost efficient manner.

"We have created the foundation for eBusiness Services by setting up a universal EDI-converter for carrying out B2B data exchange," said Stefan Lenz, head of Business Technology Sales of ZKB. "It is important for ZKB in the medium term to offer front-end tools to enable corporate client business, but more importantly, to deliver the right data to the customer at the right time."

ZKB has created a platform as a part of its "Metro" (Message Transformation Gateway System) project which facilitates communication with internal and external partners. Metro is based on the SeeBeyond's eGate(tm) Integrator and has been in operation since November 2002. As a "central hub", Metro brings together messages of various formats and ensures the communication between internal and external partners. Since August 2003, a connection to SWIFT (release 1.2) has been in place and in November 2003, the connection of Finance Service Provider Partners in the Life Insurance Sector and data conversions of asset management mandates of corporate clients have been integrated with the Data Exchange Financial Services.


With the eGate platform, ZKB can now deliver real-time data to its clients, who in turn, can utilise the data to optimise their own business processes within their own environments.

"Online business transactions with external partners using EDIFACT and the SWIFT-Network are essential for a customer-oriented bank. SeeBeyond's scaleable, STP-oriented, SWIFT ISO15022-compatible solution ensures continuous trading for ZKB and enables the processing of an increasing volume of transactions in a secure environment," said David Bennett, senior vice president and general manager, EMEA, SeeBeyond.