SunGard today announced that KOSCOM, a leading professional financial IT solutions firm providing IT infrastructure to the Korean securities and futures market, has gone live with TAPS, SunGard's retirement savings solution.
The corporate, personal and pensions retirement administration modules of TAPS have been rolled out as an ASP solution for KOSCOM to support retirement savings administrators.
The implementation of TAPS is one of the first retirement administration solutions to meet the new Korean legislative requirements for retirement savings. Finalised in January 2006, the legislation stipulates optional employer contributions to their employee's retirement funds.
Mr Si Bong Lee, corporate pension task force team leader, KOSCOM, said: "The timely implementation of TAPS will help KOSCOM in our endeavour to become a leading provider of retirement administration services in Korea. SunGard is a global leader in software and processing solutions for financial services with a strong regional focus. Our partnership has helped KOSCOM to be one of the first companies to provide a legislative-compliant service."
Key to KOSCOM's decision-making process was the need for a system that could be implemented as an ASP solution. TAPS enables KOSCOM to provide the infrastructure for its participating companies to administer their retirement savings products.
"The TAPS ASP solution provides our clients access for employer and employee administration, contributions, trading and settlement of investments, and external reporting via the Web. This means our existing 11 participating clients can provide the service levels they require without the need to investigate or invest in their own administration solution," said Mr Lee.
TAPS will help KOSCOM offer a comprehensive platform for its participants by providing retirement savings, private banking, custody and investment fund capabilities. Importantly, the modular design of TAPS will help KOSCOM's participating companies grow their product offering with rapid time-to-market.
John Wilson, president of SunGard's Asia Pacific business unit, said, "SunGard's partnership with KOSCOM provides us with our first wealth management customer in Korea. The project involved adapting our Australian-compliant wealth management solution, to Korea's new legislative requirements. This was achieved within a tight deadline, and demonstrates SunGard's ability to readily customise the TAPS solution to Asia Pacific's growing wealth administration industry. SunGard is dedicated to understanding the needs of our customers, and to working with them to assist them in the accomplishment of their goals. We look forward to developing new relationships within Korea and across Asia Pacific."