SmartStream - Press Releases

Oberbank integrates domestic guarantee and cross-border business with SmartStream TLM Trade Finance

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:50:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Austrian-based financial services group Oberbank has selected TLM Trade Finance to create a single platform for its cross-border and domestic business.

Oberbank is a highly successful financial services firm operating across Central and Eastern Europe managing approximately €18 billion for clients through a range of retail and wholesale products. As a highly experienced bank in trade finance, Oberbank wanted to ensure its operations could continue to offer a wide range of products and deliver value for money to its clients.

After analysing a range of trade finance solutions, Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to further automate its Guarantees, Letters of Credit and Collections business processes. The solution will be installed at Oberbank’s headquarters in Linz, Austria and will initially process domestic guarantees, followed by its Austrian trade finance business and later on its branches in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary.

Hubert Umlauf, General Manager, Organisational Development & Process Management at Oberbank, commented: “Finding a solution that could automate our paper-based processes for domestic guarantees and integrating it in the whole range of our trade finance business was critical as we look to continue our success. The SmartStream TLM solution clearly met our requirements with its ability to automate many of the processes and our staff found it easy to use. With TLM Trade Finance as a single, centralised solution for our domestic guarantee and cross-border trade finance business we believe that our business will be more efficient. With automated workflows and improved reporting capabilities we can spend more time talking to customers and providing the best possible service.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, said: “We’re delighted that as part of their organisational review Oberbank selected TLM Trade Finance to manage its domestic and cross-border business. This will enable them to replace paper forms and data re-entry with workflow-based processes, electronic forms and documentation. As a result, Oberbank will lower their operational costs and risk, while supporting their ultimate goal; to further enhance reporting and client service to maintain a competitive advantage.”

Helaba selects TLM Trade Finance to create a scalable platform to manage future growth

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:30:15 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that German financial services firm Helaba Group has selected TLM Trade Finance to automate its letters of credit and guarantees business processes.

Frankfurt-based Helaba is one of Germany’s leading Landesbanks, with total assets of €185 billion and serving approximately five million customers. The bank operates as a centralised organisation, supplying a range of products and services to savings and commercial banks across the Hesse and Thuringia regions.

Helaba’s existing trade finance system had been in use since 1990 and could no longer scale sufficiently to handle growing volumes and didn’t offer the flexibility required to manage increasing complex business processes. As a result, it examined the market for a new trade finance platform that would ensure it remained agile to the changing requirements of the banks it served. Helaba selected TLM Trade Finance and will install the solution at its data processing centre in Offenbach.

Jörg Hartmann, Senior Vice President, Head of Structured Trade & Commodity Finance at Helaba Group, commented: “As our clients’ needs evolved the technical limitations of our existing system became clear. It was evident that the SmartStream TLM Trade Finance solution was a good fit for our organisation and provided us with the ideal platform for processing our client banks’ letters of credit and collections, as well as our guarantee business. It also offers the potential for expansion to meet future processing needs and technical challenges. This will ensure that Helaba continues to provide our business partners with the best quality services.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President, at SmartStream Technologies, added: “Helaba is a sophisticated firm that offers a wide range of services through its bank partner network and as a result required a modern platform to meet its trade finance processing needs. TLM Trade Finance is a robust and proven solution for automating Letters of Credit, Guarantees and collections documentation, enabling firms, such as Helaba, to focus on client service needs. I’m delighted they have selected SmartStream to manage their trade finance processing and l look forward to working with them as the Helaba Group implements the solution across its business.”

TLM Corporate Actions praised for innovation in BISS Research Benchmarking Report

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:35:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that TLM Corporate Actions has attained accreditation in the 2009 B.I.S.S. Research Corporate Actions Systems benchmarking evaluation.

The benchmark tests organised by B.I.S.S. Research and set by an industry panel highlighted SmartStream’s innovative approach to event processing and its integration with the wider TLM solutions that set it apart from the competition. It also praised TLM Corporate Actions ability to automate much of the corporate actions process through proactive monitoring and predictive technology.

The independent panel noted that TLM Corporate Actions can significantly reduce operational risk in the corporate actions department and increase service levels to the end investor to enable regulatory compliance.

Gary Wright, C.E.O., B.I.S.S. Research and creator of the B.I.S.S. business benchmarking concept, said: “SmartStream has gained a valuable nod of approval from our independent industry panel for its new TLM Corporate Actions solution. It is crucial that investment in new system developments is proved to be worthwhile and financially rewarding and the B.I.S.S. 2009 Corporate Actions benchmarking shows SmartStream has been very clever and mindful of changes in the securities markets and should succeed. TLM Corporate Actions offers the market a clear differential to other corporate actions products and genuine choice for financial services firms. It is always an objective of the B.I.S.S. benchmarking to find the real differences between systems and provide buyers with an independent analysis of what they are and in TLM Corporate Actions we have found and highlighted a system with a very different approach to solving the problems in corporate actions operations.”

Paul Phillips, Senior Business Development Consultant at SmartStream Technologies, said: “The 2009 B.I.S.S. accreditation reflects the significant amount of hard work and creativity invested by SmartStream to develop a new solution that offers the functionality required to meet today’s event processing challenges. We are seeing high levels of interest from firms globally who are still struggling with processing inefficiencies and legacy systems that are creaking under the increased pressure of client, market and regulatory demands. As a standalone solution TLM Corporate Actions is proving to be one of the most functionally rich corporate actions solutions available today. It also offers integration with our broader suite of TLM solutions that we believe offers unparalleled ability to create more proactive middle and back office operations, reducing operational risk and lowering costs.”

SmartStream wins Leader in Innovation award for Exception Management and Investigations

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:57:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Financial-i, a UK-based magazine focusing on strategy and technology for the buy-side, has selected SmartStream as the winner of its Leader in Innovation for Exception Management and Investigations.

The awards were selected by an independent advisory panel composed of industry analysts from the leading research houses – Aite, Celent, Chartis Research, TowerGroup – as well as representatives from consulting firms and independent consultants.

Anita Hawser, Editor of Financial-i, commented: “Our Leaders in Innovation Awards identify global transaction banks and financial hardware and software vendors that in the last 12 months have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to innovation.”

According to the advisory panel: "Post-crisis, now more than ever before, firms are looking for business solutions that provide a much quicker return on investment and do what they actually say on the tin. In selecting winners in each category we have tried to focus on those companies we and our advisory panel believe have that little something extra that makes their solutions stand out from their competitors in terms of depth and breadth of functionality, ease of implementation and support and solutions that are not looking for a problem to solve but actually address real business needs."

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, said: “SmartStream is the recognised market leader in post trade processing solutions. We offer these capabilities through a number of deployment options, including SaaS, on premise and full BPO. Each one is based on the same core technology and enables firms of all sizes to reduce the cost of their transaction processing, lower their risk and create new levels of middle and back office efficiency. SmartStream has continued to invest heavily in each of these areas, and it is therefore gratifying that the independent panel of highly respected industry analysts have judged our TLM technology to be the innovation leader.”

SmartStream named best reconciliations vendor in Europe by Waters Magazine

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:47:22 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has been named as the Best Reconciliations Vendor by Waters in its first European Financial Information Technology (EuroFIT) Awards.

The awards set out to recognise the best financial IT products and services for European investment firms. Chosen by the editors of Waters with help from sibling publication Dealing with Technology, the winners won based on the maturity of their offerings, leadership in their respective fields and their strength moving forward in a challenging landscape.

Phil Albinus, Editor of Waters, said: “With the EuroFITs, Waters wanted to honour the innovative solutions that have served European investment firms so well. These awards shine an overdue spotlight on the tools and services that will help Europe emerge from the recession’s vice-like grip. SmartStream is seen as the leader in reconciliation and exception management solutions and this award follows on from its success earlier in the year in the Waters Rankings that were selected by our readership.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, commented: “SmartStream is the leading reconciliations solution provider and has continued to invest in the underlying TLM technology with two major launches this year. Firstly, the SWIFT partnership around our SaaS-based offering, TLM OnDemand, which enables firms to access the industry leading solution with no upfront licence costs and re-use their existing SWIFT infrastructure to lower risk and cost. Secondly, at SIBOS, we announced TLM Reconciliations-Premium that delivers massively scalable transaction processing with the flexibility to quickly optimise the solution to meet each individual client’s specific transaction processing needs. Our continued reconciliations success with TLM, whether powering an internal utility, as part of a BPO service or through a cost-effective SaaS approach, is testament to its ability to drive down the cost-per-transaction and deliver a significant return on investment.”

SmartStream appoints Asia Business Connections as a partner in Indonesia

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:39:05 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has appointed Asia Business Connections (ABC) as a Strategy and Consulting partner for SmartStream’s full range of TLM solutions in Indonesia.

ABC is a Singapore based company that acts in an advisory capacity to financial institutions in the Asia Pacific region. It offers expertise in specific fields such as treasury, governance, risk management, payments, wholesale banking, wealth management and compliance. ABC works with SmartStream across the Asia Pacific region to help identify potential clients across the region and to promote SmartStream’s solutions for the middle and back office.

Alan Talbot, Director at ABC, said: “ABC’s mission is to bring innovative and proven software solutions to the Asia Pacific financial services sector including Indonesia. SmartStream is recognised as a leader in delivering financial technology solutions and we believe that the TLM solution suite can add value to our clients by helping them to deliver more efficient and cost-effective operations. We look forward to combining the strength of SmartStream’s solutions with our market knowledge and therefore being able to help organisations across the region to introduce greater levels of automation and control.”

Alastair McGill, Business Development and Alliances Director, SmartStream Technologies, said: “I’m delighted to extend Asia Business Connections involvement in the SmartStream Partner Program, which further strengthens SmartStream’s capabilities in the region. Throughout Asia, organisations are going through a period of unprecedented change and each faces its own unique challenges. Partnering with ABC offers SmartStream access to an extensive network of contacts, unparalleled experience and market intelligence. I look forward to working with them to offer SmartStream’s market-leading solutions to firms in Indonesia to meet institutions’ transaction processing needs.”

TLM Trade Process Management wins 2009 Banking Technology Readers Choice award

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01:17 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that its TLM Trade Process Management solution has won in the "Readers Choice” category at the 2009 Banking Technology Awards.

The awards, now in their tenth year, were chosen by Banking Technology's readership of more than 11,000 subscribers. TLM Trade Process Management was selected due to its success at a number of leading European firms where it has delivered a unified operations platform that monitors and controls instruments across their lifecycle. TLM Trade Process Management has consolidated fragmented and siloed infrastructures at these firms, ensuring more cost-effective operations by retiring multiple legacy systems and paper-based processes across equities, fixed income and derivatives.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, commented: “This latest award, as voted for by readers of one of the industry’s leading titles, highlights the significant benefits that SmartStream’s TLM solutions can deliver. TLM Trade Process Management reduces operational risk through an automated, workflow-based approach to monitoring trade activity from deal capture to allocation, confirmation and settlement. This proactive approach helps to lower the cost-per-transaction while providing greater operational flexibility and scalability to respond to market and client demands across the range of instrument types.”

The United Bank selects TLM Corona as reconciliations platform

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:07:38 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Egyptian firm The United Bank has selected TLM Corona to automate its back office processes.

The United Bank was formed in June 2006 as a state-owned entity during financial reforms in Egypt and has since acquired three banks; the United Bank of Egypt, the Islamic International Bank for Investment and Development, and the Nile Bank. The bank had been reconciling transactions manually but recognised the need to reduce its operational risk and costs through automation. Further, with its transaction volumes continuing to rise, the bank required a single solution that would scale to meet its future processing needs.

After completing a solution analysis, The United Bank selected TLM Corona, through SmartStream’s local partner Intercom, to reconcile its cash, ATM and credit card transactions. A decisive factor in selecting TLM Corona was its ability to provide reconciliations across multiple transaction types within a single solution.

Mr. Mohamed Mostafa, Chief Information Officer at The United Bank, commented: “TLM Corona will provide us with a single reconciliations and investigations platform, automating the processing of all cash, ATM and credit card transactions to reduce our operational risk that was present in a manual environment. Automation will also significantly reduce the cost of processing these transactions while helping to deliver enhanced customer service.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, said: “We’re delighted that The United Bank has chosen TLM Corona to create an enterprise-wide reconciliations platform. Its decision shows TLM Corona’s strengths in providing a strategic and flexible solution that will allow the institution to reduce costs and operational risks while also providing the scalability to manage its predicted volume growth.”

SmartStream launches TLM Corporate Actions, delivering new levels of efficiency across the event management lifecycle

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:18:20 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the next generation of its market leading TLM Corporate Actions solution.

TLM Corporate Actions transforms corporate actions processing by effectively managing and presenting milestones, tasks and exceptions against events in real time through a diary-based view. This proactive, exception-driven approach ensures that appropriate actions are always presented and escalated as necessary to deliver superior levels of risk mitigation and control.

The solution significantly improves processing efficiency by delivering automation across the event lifecycle; from event cleansing, position reconciliation, communications, through to elections and entitlements. This enables firms to deliver outstanding customer service to both internal and external clients through the provision of more accurate, complete and timelier event information.

To help firms manage rising event volumes, TLM Corporate Actions is a highly scalable solution that consolidates information from various industry sources to deliver a single enterprise service covering multiple markets and instrument types. Its configurable workflow model provides a flexible solution that can be efficiently tailored to satisfy the specific processing requirements of any organisation.

TLM Corporate Actions new browser-based interface improves the user experience, presenting the widest range of corporate action information on a single screen. Its thin client delivery also ensures a rapid roll out across an organisation, to reduce the cost of ownership.

Cyrus Daruwala, Managing Director, Asia Pacific at Financial Insights, commented: “In our experience firms globally struggle with highly manual corporate actions processes that, in the current market conditions, create unnecessary risk and cost, and directly impacts customer service. It’s unnecessary because solutions such as SmartStream’s TLM Corporate Actions can easily automate much of the corporate actions event lifecycle and efficiently manage event volumes as they continue to rise. The advantage of this approach is that it eliminates the possibility of single points of processing failure, thereby increasing an institution’s operational risk control, whilst delivering complete and accurate event processing.”

Alan Jones, Senior Product Manager at SmartStream Technologies, said: “TLM Corporate Actions is a highly successful and award winning solution that has delivered significant cost and risk reduction for many firms globally. We have used the experiences gained with those projects to design a new solution that delivers improved levels of scalability and flexibility to meet the event processing needs of every financial institution. The level of automation it delivers to what is still a highly manual back office process ensures firms will gain a significant return on their investment. Its full thin client delivery and innovative user interface enables firms to gain greater visibility into their event processing, identifying exceptions, providing steps to repair them and as a result reducing their exposure to risk and financial losses. This proactive, real-time approach to corporate actions supports firms to further improve their customer service and differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.”

SmartStream expands Asia Pacific operations with new office in Tokyo

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:35:37 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has expanded its global operations with a new office in Tokyo.

SmartStream has established a client base of both regional banks and mega-banks through its local distribution partners, who to date have focused on selling and supporting the company’s market leading reconciliations solutions. The launch of a direct presence in the market signals SmartStream’s intent to expand the range of its middle and back office solutions available to the Japanese market both through a direct sales operation and through a broader array of channel partners.

The new operation will be led by Eiichi Matsumoto who joins SmartStream as Country Manager for Japan. Commenting on the increased market presence, Matsumoto said: “SmartStream has transformed itself over the last few years bringing a wealth of new middle and back-office automation solutions to market. I believe the climate in the Japanese market is such that firms are being forced to seek ways to achieve greater efficiency, control and drive unwanted costs from their business. SmartStream is in a strong position to help these firms, by working directly with them and through their local partners and trusted advisors.”

SmartStream has recently announced new Reconciliations and Corporate Actions solutions. These solutions together with the company’s Cash Management and Trade Process Management solutions will be made available in Japanese.

Commenting on the market’s appetite for new workflow driven STP solutions, Matsumoto said: “SmartStream sponsored research conducted earlier this year by analyst firm Celent, revealed the need for greater automation of exception management and corporate actions processes in Japan. Market, client and regulatory demands are requiring firms to examine where they can gain greater efficiency from their middle and back office infrastructures. There’s unquestionable value in these firms implementing SmartStream’s TLM solutions across the middle and back office to lower their operational risk, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and deliver a significant return on investment.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream Technologies, added: “The Tokyo office is another significant step in SmartStream’s ongoing direct investment in the Asia Pacific region and follows the opening of an office in Beijing and the expansion of the Singapore office in 2008. The Japanese market has very specific automation needs and establishing an office in the country was always part of SmartStream’s expansion plans for the region. We have already had success with partners and by establishing a local presence we can continue to build on this and support institutions’ plans to deliver scalable and flexible transaction processing environments.”

To launch SmartStream’s new Japanese operations, the office will be hosting a series of client-focused events over the coming months.
To download the Celent “Post-Trade Processing in Japan” report, click here

SmartStream announces TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivering more proactive and cost-effective operations

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:30:42 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced TLM Reconciliations-Premium, a new solution offering pre-configured best practice reconciliation models and enhanced processing scalability.

Firms are looking to reduce their risk and transaction costs, and ensure technology projects deliver a rapid Return on Investment (ROI). In response, TLM Reconciliations-Premium offers pre-configured best practice reconciliation models developed by SmartStream through the successful delivery of projects at leading banks, assets managers, hedge funds and custodians.

TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivers scalable transaction processing through its industry-leading matching engine, with the flexibility to quickly optimise the solution to meet each individual client’s specific transaction processing needs. This increases automated match rates, keeping manual intervention to a minimum while offering and accelerated implementation that ensures a faster ROI.

To further remove risk from operations, TLM Reconciliations-Premium also provides integrated and pre-configured exception management, offering proven functionality around escalation, alerting and exceptions processing. It creates a clear separation between the root cause of an exception, its resolution and the various transactions it affects. As a result, this increases transaction visibility, enabling a single exception resolution to fix multiple breaks to significantly reduce the overall processing cost.

Neil Vernon, Senior Product Manager at SmartStream Technologies, commented: “TLM Reconciliations-Premium builds on our success with leading firms globally, where we have enabled them to drive down their transaction costs and reduce TCO. TLM, the best in class reconciliation solution, is extended still further to meet firms’ evolving business, market, regulatory and customer service needs in a utility ready model with advanced matching and exception management capabilities. As traded instruments become ever more complex, TLM Reconciliations-Premium delivers the flexibility required to react to clients processing requirements.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, added: “This announcement highlights once again how SmartStream is continuing to invest in its solutions and deliver further enhancements to the market. At a time when market conditions remain challenging, TLM Reconciliations-Premium can drive down the cost of processing transactions across multiple instrument and reconciliation types to deliver a significant return on investment.”

SmartStream launches DClear Utilities to lower the cost-per-trade through shared data and trade processing services

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:10:34 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the launch of DClear Utilities, a new division providing shared data and trade processing utilities for the financial services community.

DClear will deliver centralised processing of financial instruments across their entire lifecycle through an on demand style platform, enabling clients to benefit from a shared service centre model for common processing services. By consolidating functions such as confirmations matching, order/trade matching and position management into a single entity, DClear’s Utilities will deliver greater transaction visibility, lowering operational risk and reducing the cost-per-trade.

The DClear Reference Data Management Utility is the first such utility to be launched and has already signed its first customer, based in the United States. It will aggregate, reconcile and monitor the agreed aspects of clients’ reference data at an individual data field level, providing integration and cleansing of data sources, with rules-based processing providing integrity checks on all incoming data. As a result the utility will ensure fewer trade breaks by providing clean and consistent data, integrated across all assets, entities and instructions.

John Mason, CEO, DClear Utilities, commented: “In the current financial market of decreasing margins and volume volatility, the need to reduce transaction costs through more efficient back office processes that reduce trade breaks and increase risk controls has become even more urgent. We see that pressure is driving the trend towards the standardisation of systems and processes that offer no strategic differentiation yet consume vast amounts of time, effort and money. The DClear model based around the shared, standardised delivery of commoditised functions for back office processing and a centralised repository of standardised data delivers significant risk mitigation and reduces operational cost.”

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, said: “DClear’s industry Utilities can create a network effect by demonstrating to all market participants that using the same reference data and reconciliation and exception management processes will significantly reduce risk and cost. By taking a co-operative approach among market participants to solve a common problem these Utilities deliver the economies of scale that benefit all participants, initially for reference data and then for more generic back office processing.”

Alliance Enterprise to offer TLM OnDemand across Latin America and Caribbean

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:38:36 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced a new partnership in Latin America and the Caribbean with Alliance Enterprise.

Colombia-based Alliance Enterprise is an official SWIFT Regional partner for Latin America and will offer SmartStream’s SaaS solution, TLM OnDemand, to its clients in the region. The reconciliations service is a natural extension to the firm’s established SWIFT-based solutions and offers its clients additional strategies to control risk and cost in their business.

SmartStream’s TLM OnDemand service was designed to provide small to medium-sized firms with affordable and rapid access to the same technology that is already deployed at many of the world’s leading institutions. Alliance Enterprise has built a strong reputation for supporting Latin American financial services firms of all sizes, offering both service-based and on-premise solutions.

Luis Cortina, General Manager at Alliance Enterprise, said: “We’re delighted with this agreement to offer SmartStream’s solutions to the Latin American market. As a trusted provider to many firms it’s critical that we continue to offer our clients the very best technology available and it’s clear SmartStream’s solutions and services have an unrivalled ability to reduce risk and cost. We believe that TLM OnDemand and TLM Corona can deliver significant benefits to our existing customers and prospects. I am confident the partnership with SmartStream will benefit our clients and drive Alliance Enterprise’s continued growth across Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Alastair McGill, EVP, Business Development & Alliances at SmartStream Technologies, added: “This is an exciting partnership as TLM OnDemand offers our market-leading reconciliations solution through a cost-effective SaaS model. That makes it ideal for the Latin American market where firms can quickly replace manual and legacy systems with proven technology. With Alliance Enterprise we have gained a trusted and knowledgeable partner and that, combined with SmartStream’s market leading solutions, will deliver significant client benefits in terms of risk and cost reduction.”

SmartStream partners with Intracom IT Services in Greece and Cyprus

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:29:24 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Intracom IT Services has become a SmartStream distribution partner for the company’s TLM Reconciliations and TLM Cash Management solutions in Greece and Cyprus.

Intracom IT Services is the leading IT solutions and services provider in Greece with significant system integration experience across Southern Europe and the Middle East. Intracom’s expertise across multiple sectors and its broad portfolio of services will help to complement and expand SmartStream’s presence in the Greek and Cypriot markets.

Commenting on the new partnership, Andreas Diamanteas, Deputy General Manager of Financial & Enterprise Solution Division at Intracom IT Services, said: “SmartStream’s solutions complement Intracom IT Services’ existing products and services portfolio, providing internationally proven and state of the art integrated reconciliations and cash management solutions to our customers. These established solutions deliver rich functionality, can be easily interfaced with other systems and flexibly configured to our customers’ specific needs. With this strategic partnership, we are ready to assist institutions in Greece and Cyprus to optimise their reconciliation and cash management processes.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream, commented: “SmartStream knows the importance of working with partners who understand the needs of local firms and have a strong track record in delivering successful automation projects. The partnership with Intracom IT Services will support SmartStream to further penetrate the Greek and Cypriot markets. Together we will work with local institutions to deliver more efficient reconciliations and cash management processes that will lower their operational risk and cost.”

RZB implements SmartStream's SWIFTNet E&I solution to automate payments exceptions and investigations

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:29:24 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG (RZB) will implement SmartStream’s TLM Corona SWIFTNet E&I solution to decrease operational risk and improve customer service across its payments operations.

RZB is the central institution of the Austrian Raiffeisen Banking Group, the country's largest financial services firm and a long standing SmartStream customer. Raiffeisen also operates one of the largest banking networks in Central and Eastern Europe and is the first Austrian bank to implement SWIFTNet E&I, the SWIFT initiative to automate payment exceptions and investigations.

To support this project the bank has selected SmartStream’s TLM Corona SWIFTNet E&I solution, to create an integrated reconciliations and payments exception management platform. This will drive higher STP-rates for SWIFT-originated investigations, reduce exception processing costs and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through shorter turnaround times for investigations and more comprehensive responses to inquiries.

Walfried Lemerz, Head of RBG & Infrastructures at RZB, commented: “Innovation and the use of cutting edge technology has always been very important for RZB as we aim to offer the best services to our customers. When we decided to implement SWIFTNet E&I, it was clear that extending our existing TLM Corona reconciliations platform would provide the fastest time to market for this important project. We have developed a successful relationship with SmartStream over many years and wanted to extend that further with this project. Being the first bank in Austria to implement SWIFTNet E&I will help us to stand out from our competitors and to impress our customers with even better services.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President at SmartStream, commented: “Having a strategic partnership with RZB for many years we are delighted that the organisation has once again turned to SmartStream to support its SWIFTNet E&I project. Extending their existing reconciliation and investigations platform will help to deliver a faster ROI and enable it to quickly deliver the payments exceptions and investigations functionality within SWIFTNet to its clients.”

Eurobank selects TLM Corona for new reconciliations processing centre in Romania

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:33:17 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that Eurobank, the second largest bank in Greece, has selected TLM Corona for cash reconciliations within its new processing centre.

Eurobank has grown significantly in the last five years, acquiring a number of banks in Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey and the Ukraine. As a result, it is building a new processing centre in Romania to manage all the reconciliations of its overseas subsidiaries, and wanted a single reconciliation solution that could be used by all subsidiary operations.

SmartStream’s TLM Corona was selected because it offered the flexibility to efficiently add new reconciliation types and the scalability to manage further transaction volume growth. The first of eight Eurobank subsidiaries, Banc Post in Romania, is now moving it’s reconciliations into TLM Corona with other banks to follow over the next year.

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President, SmartStream Technologies said: “With its impressive growth rates Eurobank has demonstrated to be a particularly innovative bank and is now looking to deliver economies of scale alongside cost and risk reduction through the creation of its new processing centre. We are delighted that the significant business benefits delivered by TLM Corona at its Polbank subsidiary influenced the bank’s decision to use the same solution for this centre. I look forward to working with Eurobank as it moves more of its subsidiaries onto the solution.”

SmartStream wins Best Reconciliations and Exception Management Vendor in the 2009 Waters Rankings

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:30:50 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has won "Best Reconciliation and Exception Management Provider" in the 2009 Waters Rankings. The seventh annual Waters Rankings is an industry-respected award where the winners are chosen by the qualified readers of Waters magazine, a financial IT publication with more than 10,000 readers.

Smartstream won the newly-created category with 32.9 percent of votes, while the runner-up scored second place with 26 percent of votes. The votes for the 2009 Waters Rankings came from 1,000 readers of Waters who work inside major investment firms on both the buy side and sell side.

“The readers of Waters clearly see Smartstream as the absolute leader in the field of reconciliation and exception management. In a volatile market, investment firms of all sizes need to complete trades and avoid exceptions that could squander deals and lose profits. With more than 32 percent of the votes, our readers think of Smartstream when it comes time to reconcile and manage those important trades,” said Phil Albinus, Editor of Waters.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO of SmartStream Technologies, added: “Winning this award is a great achievement, particularly as it was voted for by people who use our software on a daily basis and rely on it to deliver efficient and cost-effective operations. Our continued success with TLM, whether powering an internal utility, as part of a BPO service or through a cost-effective SaaS approach, is testament to its ability to drive down the cost of processing transactions, removing operational risk and supporting more proactive post trade operations.”

Each year, the readers of Waters are invited to choose the best financial IT services and solutions that help CIOs and CTOs get their job done. This year, more than 1,000 voters filled out the Waters Rankings ballots. The qualified Waters Rankings voters work inside today’s leading investment firms, hedge funds and exchanges.

To view an interview with Phil Albinus and Philippe Chambadal click here (hosted on YouTube)

SmartStream wins The Asian Banker's IT Implementation award

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:48 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced it has won the Asian Banker IT Implementation award for Best Back Office Trading Project, together with The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

The award was given in recognition of the successful implementation of SmartStream’s TLM Treasury Confirmations matching solution at RBS.

The rapid surge in forex trading volumes has put great strain on the industry players in delivering efficient matching processes. As one of the largest traders in the forex market, RBS examined the market for an automated solution and selected SmartStream’s TLM Treasury Confirmations matching software.

This platform is an integrated hub for treasury confirmations, providing matching and full discrepancy investigation. It proactively highlights discrepancies to ease investigation for an efficient resolution. Enhanced real time statistical reports allow accurate and rapid problem detection, facilitating immediate adjustments. Further, statistical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) related to the transaction processes are clearly displayed.

TLM’s unparalleled matching capabilities have enabled RBS to improve its match rates and reduce the number of exceptions without manual intervention. TLM’s thin client user interface means that the system can support RBS’s global FX business, with multiple offices across three continents, and is accessible from each location.

Overall, TLM Treasury Confirmations has provided RBS with a solution that drives down transaction cost, improves control and provides flexibility in a volatile trading market.

Philippe Chambadal, CEO at SmartStream, commented: “Winning this award means a great deal to SmartStream as it was voted for by a panel of experts who looked at the merits of a number of IT implementations across the Asia Pacific region. The award is not only a reflection of the quality of our TLM Treasury Confirmations solution but, equally importantly, the quality of the SmartStream team. The award is a testament to how closely the team worked with RBS to ensure the final solution was delivered on time, met RBS’s needs and delivered significant benefits to their business.”

The Asian Banker IT Implementation Awards Programme is in its fourth year and is one of the region’s most prestigious awards programmes, recognising IT implementation projects across 13 basic and five special categories. This year, more than 50 financial institutions across 15 countries in the Asia Pacific region were evaluated. Data was collated, normalised and presented by a team of researchers to an international panel of judges, each of whom gave insights into the different aspects of IT Implementations as part of the evaluation process.

SmartStream launches TLM Treasury Confirmations

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:48 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced the launch of its new solution that addresses the post-trade confirmation needs of participants in the global treasury markets, TLM Treasury Confirmations.

TLM Treasury Confirmations delivers the highest auto match rates for the full range of treasury instruments and deal sources, combined with the enterprise scalability that institutions can rely on to manage soaring volumes. By replacing legacy applications and semi-manual processes with a single solution, TLM Treasury Confirmations provides greater control and visibility into the confirmation of any instrument, helping to deliver lower operational costs and risk.

Integrated exception management, including proactive alerting, makes managers and analysts aware of any confirmation failures as early as possible to ensure errors can be rectified before they become critical. Functionally-rich dashboards provide end-to-end process monitoring and the ability to drill down to individual transactions to discover the root cause of late confirmations.

Jason Turner, Product Manager – Treasury Confirmations at SmartStream, said: “As FX, MM and OTC volumes continue to rise the ability to effectively match confirmations on large numbers of transactions represents a huge operational challenge. Many existing systems simply cannot cope with either the sheer volume of trades or the variety of instruments being used. TLM provides a world-class solution with the features and scalability that banks need to support their operations and continue to provide the highest level of service to clients. It delivers higher levels of automated matching, freeing operations staff to concentrate on exceptions, which lowers transaction costs and supports more efficient and cost-effective treasury operations.”

Tier 1 European bank implements TLM Trade Process Management

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:47 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that the European Asset Management division of a leading European Bank has gone live on TLM Trade Process Management, delivering a single integrated system for its post-trade environment.

The bank serves a range of institutional clients, mutual funds and insurance companies. It wanted to replace a geographically oriented middle and back office environment of order management, confirmations, cash forecasting, settlement, fund accounting and reconciliation systems that were duplicated across asset classes and offices. This had led to different procedures and systems being used depending on where a trade was executed.

It selected SmartStream’s TLM Trade Process Management to deliver a single, global platform capable of processing equities and bonds in a consistent and coordinated manner. The TLM solution captures the trade from point of execution creating a T+0 confirmation via either a virtual matching utility or local matching where required.

To reduce operational risk and cost and to ensure the bank meets internal and customer SLAs and market deadlines, TLM Trade Process Management delivers cross-asset, pre-emptive exception management and alerting. It will support industry standards including Markit Wire, DTCC Deriv/SERV, Omgeo CTM and FpML over SWIFTNet.

TLM Trade Process Management also provides a flexible platform for future development due to an agile design that enables processes to be easily adapted and extended to cover new transaction types such as FX and MM, listed futures and OTC derivatives.

Christian Schiebl, Regional Director, Europe, SmartStream Technologies, stated: “The middle and back performs a critical control function. However with a mixture of legacy systems and manual processes they are unable to keep pace with the front office’s ambitions. Further, with rising transaction volumes, these processes introduce unnecessary risk and cost. Using TLM Trade Process Management to replace a variety of systems and processes, this leading European bank has created a single, scalable processing platform that can be shared by a global operation to significantly increase its post-trade processing efficiency.”

TCS Aspire Service live with first customer

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:45 GMT

SmartStream Technologies today announced that Deutsche Bank has become the first customer to go live on the TCS Aspire Service, which is powered by SmartStream’s Transaction Lifecycle Management (TLM®) software.

The TCS Aspire Service, announced in Q4 2007, is a fully outsourced reconciliations and investigations service from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and SmartStream Technologies. Deutsche Bank, the service’s first customer has gone live on cash and stock reconciliations. One of the key objectives of the TCS Aspire initiative within Deutsche Bank was the provision of a 'utility' based outsource service that created process transformation and process efficiencies while also delivering cost savings.

In parallel with the first customer going live, TCS and SmartStream are engaging with a number of other organisations who are in a position to take advantage of the 'quick wins' that can be delivered from the TCS Aspire Service. As new clients join the service they will help establish its future direction as well as benefiting from decreasing service costs as transaction volumes rise.

Commenting on the successful new service, N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, President, TCS Financial Solutions, said: “The combined expertise of TCS, SmartStream and Deutsche Bank has enabled the TCS Aspire Service to deliver a best practice approach to reconciliations and exceptions management. Using the very best in automation technology, the application of rigorous and measurable standards of service and the reconciliation of transactions at all stages of their lifecycle provides the ideal opportunity for process improvement and cost reduction. These capabilities, combined with access to a shared pool of highly-skilled reconciliations and investigations personnel deliver a service that can benefit institutions of all sizes. Smaller financial institutions can access software and highly skilled resources that might otherwise be out of reach. Meanwhile, larger financial institutions with intensive reconciliations activities can achieve enhanced utilisation of reconciliations personnel without the overheads associates with an ever expanding reconciliations team.”

Ken Archer, CEO of SmartStream, commented: “SmartStream’s experience and the inherent flexibility of TLM to achieve the highest auto match rates and support new instrument types, provides the foundation of the TCS Aspire Service. The combination of our industry knowledge and TLM’s unparalleled ability to deliver intelligent automation and standardisation to reconciliations management has enabled us to provide the TCS Aspire Service with a market leading reconciliations platform that will continue to develop. That future capability was a key reason for TCS selecting SmartStream as their preferred technology partner and Deutsche Bank choosing to move forward as the first client.”

TLM Reconciliations selected to help deliver Singapore-based clearing service

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:44 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that a new Asian clearing entity has selected TLM Reconciliations as part of its new service offering.

The new institution, based in Singapore and backed by one of the regions largest brokerages, will deliver outsourcing capabilities for buy-side investors and international broker dealers. It is developing an innovative and adaptable trade settlement/agency clearing platform that aims to eliminate complexity and cost through trade aggregation.

It selected SmartStream’s TLM to reconcile its cash, securities transactions, securities positions and inter-system data. TLM Reconciliations was chosen for its proven ability to deliver highly automated, multiple instrument reconciliations and support high volumes. SmartStream’s TLM WebConnect user interface will also ensure that new users can be efficiently added to the operations team, delivering functionally-rich dashboards to monitor and manage transaction lifecycles in real-time.

Stefan Wawrzyniak, Regional Director for SmartStream, Asia Pacific, said: “We are delighted that this new and innovative entity has chosen to place SmartStream at the heart of its back and middle office processes. It is testament to the relationship we have built with one of Singapore’s most successful financial institutions that its sister company has selected TLM to be at the core of its back office. We look forward to working with them as it develops its service.”

BBVA Finanziamento selects TLM Reconciliations to support new Portuguese retail card programme

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:44 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that BBVA Finanziamento, part of the Spanish BBVA Group, has selected TLM Reconciliations to manage its internal transaction records.

BBVA Finanziamento is the Portuguese subsidiary of BBVA Finanzia, designing and developing financing strategies in collaboration with manufacturers and distributors to increase sales and customer loyalty. To launch a new loyalty card programme for a Portuguese retail chain, BBVA Finanziamento required a solution that could efficiently manage high transaction volumes.

The bank selected TLM Reconciliations as it delivered the highest automated match rates between BBVA Finanziamento’s internal database records, significantly lowering the risk and cost of managing the loyalty card project. BBVA Finanziamento was also impressed by the solution’s generic reconciliation capabilities, enabling it to efficiently expand the loyalty scheme and manage higher volumes in the future.

Sacur Mamede, CFO at BBVA Finanziamento, said: “BBVA Finanziamento has built a strong reputation for designing and delivering successful programmes tailored to each of our client’s specific needs. An essential element of any of these projects is ensuring the accurate and efficient management of transaction data, particularly with schemes such as this one that will generate a high transaction volume. By selecting TLM Reconciliations we can improve risk control for the latest project, retail loyalty cards, without the need for additional back office resources. Its generic approach and scalability also offers us the flexibility to extend the programme and effectively manage data generated by any additional commercial agreements within a single solution.”

Christian Schiebl, Executive Vice President, SmartStream Technologies, commented: “I am delighted that BBVA has selected TLM Reconciliations to deliver its latest project. It highlights, once again, the strength of TLM Reconciliations’ design; providing scalability and the highest automated match rates in the industry to deliver cost-efficient and effective operations. With TLM Reconciliations at the heart of the transaction processing, BBVA can help its clients deliver a successful loyalty card programme.”

SmartStream extends distribution partnership with Bahwan Cybertek into India

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:43 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the financial Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that it has extended its partnership with Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) to distribute SmartStream’s TLM Corona and TLM Trade Finance solutions in India.

BCT is already supporting SmartStream throughout the Middle East for both TLM Corona and TLM Trade Finance. Following the success of this relationship, the two companies believe that their combined strengths can also deliver greater value to firms in India.

Ram Subramaniam, Executive Vice President, Bahwan CyberTek, said: “We are pleased that our partnership with SmartStream is working well and has now been extended beyond the initial remit of Middle East and into our home market in India. BCT has a long and successful history of supporting the financial services market in India, consistently adding value to our clients operations by delivering market leading IT solutions. SmartStream’s proven solutions can significantly benefit firms in India looking to deliver more efficient and cost-effective operations.”

Richard Cummings, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, SmartStream Technologies, said: “We have experienced significant growth across the Asia Pacific region over recent years and have established ourselves as the leading provider of transaction processing solutions. To further build upon our success in India and support a strategically important and growing financial services market we have extended our partnership with BCT to serve the Indian domestic market. SmartStream and BCT have already forged a strong relationship and this announcement is great news for Indian firms looking to introduce proven solutions to meet their evolving business needs.”

Mike Walsh, Channel Partners Director, Asia Pacific, SmartStream Technologies, added: “We are delighted to announce the extension of this partnership with Bahwan CyberTek into the Asia Pacific region. Our ongoing Partner Programme is essential to driving growth in new geographic regions and broaden our distribution channels. We were impressed with how well the BCT partnership was working in the Middle East and extending it into India was the logical next step. This is the first of many partnerships I hope to announce as we further expand our business across the region”.

Leading Asset Manager selects TLM to create global reconciliation platform

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:19:43 GMT

SmartStream Technologies, the Transaction Lifecycle Management specialist, today announced that one of the world’s leading Asset Managers has selected TLM Reconciliations to create a global reconciliation solution.

The firm has a strong control-oriented culture and wanted to replace manual and semi-automated processes across its cash, securities and OTC derivatives reconciliations. TLM Reconciliations was selected to deliver a single solution across its global operations, enabling the firm to introduce more proactive back office processes. As a result, it can concentrate on resolving exceptions rather than managing the entire reconciliation processes, driving down operational risk and cost.

TLM Reconciliations was chosen for its unprecedented matching ability, allowing the firm to process every instrument type, from vanilla cash and stock transactions to more complex instruments such as OTC derivatives. TLM’s volume-insensitive design provides the firm with the scalability to process more and new types of instruments as the organisation grows.

Ease of deployment to a global workforce was also a decisive factor. TLM’s thin client user interface, TLM WebConnect, removes the need to perform local upgrades in each location, enabling the firm to efficiently add new users through a browser.

Richard Cummings, UK Regional Director, SmartStream, said: “It’s clear that with higher trading volumes and ever more complex instruments, greater back office automation is critical to improving operational efficiency in today’s markets. We are delighted that this leading Asset Manager has selected TLM Reconciliations as the basis for a single reconciliations solution globally and recognised its ability to support its processing needs. This deal is testament to SmartStream’s global delivery capabilities, engaging with the client in each of its key markets to demonstrate TLM’s ability to meet their complex processing requirements. It highlights, once again, that TLM offers a proactive approach to effectively managing the transaction lifecycle, which enables firms to reduce both operational risk and cost.”