PGGM signs Trax to support SwiftNet migration
Trax, a leading provider of financial messaging processing platforms, has been selected by PGGM, the second largest pension fund in Europe, to support the migration of its banking communications to SWIFTNet, a secure platform for exchange of financial information and transactional data via standardised messages.
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PGGM is responsible for providing the pensions of 1.9 million people in the Dutch healthcare and social work sector and makes approximately 200,000 payments to pensioners per month.
Until now, the pension fund has sent bulk files containing pension payments to its main payments bank via cartridges. When the bank announced the withdrawal of this service by the end of 2005, PGGM decided to migrate to SWIFTNet for communication of all payment and transaction data with its banks. Over three stages, the migration will eventually remove eight proprietary bank platforms from PGGM's treasury operations, including those supplied by its two custodian banks.
PGGM selected Trax Corporate SWIFT Station to support the migration and to implement new workflows to improve its payment processes. Under the new process, Trax automatically corrects errors in the payment file, such as missing IBAN or BIC codes, before the file advances for authorisation and digital signature. PGGM selected Trax based on the resilience and performance of the platform and the firm's detailed understanding of its requirements.
"We wanted to move to SWIFTNet because it is a secure, bank-independent payments channel. We chose Trax as our global payment factory solution for its scalability and high performance and Trax's consultants based on their sound advice, technical expertise and the fact that they regard SWIFT connectivity as a core competence," said Roelof van der Struik, Team Manager Payments and Settlements at PGGM.
"For any organisation with a variety of bulk, domestic and cross-border payments, SWIFTNet provides peace of mind because it offers a single, reliable and secure communication channel to the banking community.
Pension funds such as PGGM have the opportunity to create real cost savings by reviewing and streamlining their payment processes and thus reducing the number of channels they use to communicate transaction data with banks. We are delighted PGGM has selected the Trax platform and we are confident we will help them achieve their business objectives." said Hans Cobben, CEO, Trax.