ABI Position Paper on the EC Consultation about Final Report of the Expert Group on e- Invoicing

Transcription

1 ABI Position Paper on the EC Consultation about Final Report of the Expert Group on e- Invoicing 17 th February 2010 From: ID ITALIAN BANKING ASSOCIATION Piazza del Gesù, Roma POSITION PAPER

2 Index 1. Introduction General considerations on the Final Report General Assessment Specific considerations on the Final Report recommendations Business requirements (section 3 of the report) Legal and regulatory aspects (section 4 of the report) Interoperability (section 5 of the report) Content standards (section 6 of the report) Implementation of the Framework (section 7 of the report) Specific aspects for SMEs and e-invoicing... 9 Pagina 2 di 9

3 1. Introduction The Italian Banking Association and the CBI Consortium (Customer to Business Interaction 1 ), representative of the entire Italian Banking Community, welcome the Final Report of the Expert Group on the e-invoicing, aimed at defining a common European framework to support the adoption and diffusion of the e-invoicing, endorsing the full interoperability and integration with financial services. The Italian Banking Community really appreciates the Expert Group work and believes that the Final Report represents an important milestone towards the creation of a pan-european integrated and efficient market. The Italian Banking Community trusts the value of the e-invoicing not only for business but also for the all Italian eco-system (i.e. Public Administration, SMEs, institutional players, financial institutions ). In this sense, Italy is included in the closed circle of Member States that have introduced the obligation of the electronic invoice for the Business to Government (B2G) domain: in line with the path of some EU best practices (such as Denmark and Spain), the Italian Government approved the Finanziaria 2008 Law, according to which it will be mandatory to adopt electronic invoices in the relationship with national Public Entities. Moreover, in Italy a great impulse to the e-invoicing adoption comes from the activities managed by CBI Consortium, in its role of standardisation competence centre, and thanks to its contribution and participation to international working groups, just as the Expert Group on e-invoicing. In order to express a system position on the Final Report released by the Expert Group on November 2009, ABI and CBI gathered the different points of view of its member banks actively involved in offering e-invoicing solutions. This Position Paper has been prepared by ABI/CBI on behalf of the Italian Banking Community in response to the Consultation launched by the European Commission. on the basis of comments received. In line with the structure of the questions presented in the EC Consultation document, comments expressed by Italian Banking Community are arranged to give the European Commission: - general considerations on content, clarity, completeness of the Final Report; 1 The CBI Consortium is an ABI (Italian Banking Association) satellite. CBI Consortium was established on 20th May 2008 in order to continue the activity developed by the Associazione per il Corporate Banking Interbancario (Association for the Interbank Corporate Banking - ACBI), that was started up in The Consortium defines the rules and technical and regulative standards of the CBI Service (Interbank Corporate Banking), on national and international levels and manages a modern technological infrastructure in order to support the relations among the different parties of CBI s community (Institutions, public bodies, enterprises, trade associations, software vendors, service providers, etc.). Pagina 3 di 9

4 - specific observations on each recommendation expressed by the Expert Group (six key recommendations), mainly coinciding with the most relevant chapters of the Final Report. 2. General considerations on the Final Report 2.1 General Assessment Sharing the assessment, conclusions and recommendations of the Report The Italian Banking Community completely shares the activities carried out by the Expert Group on e-invoicing, agreeing on objectives, topics and recommendations identified. The challenges affecting the European scenario - as the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the Payment Services Directive (PSD), War on Cash, etc. - and the initiatives fostered by international organisations and standardisation bodies as the UN/CEFACT, CEN, EPC, ISO 20022, and so on- underline the value of creating a collaborative dialogue among the different stakeholders operating in a cross-border environment. Reaching such a dialogue represents a key milestone in order to ensure concrete answers to the market needs of advanced, innovative and international schemes-based services. These considerations become even more significant in reference to e-invoicing issues, against a backdrop market by a general trend of legal, technical and standards harmonisation supporting the dematerialisation process of commercial services, integrated with the financial (payments, collections, invoice financing, ) cycle. In the Italian electronic services market, the e-invoicing represents one of the main innovation driver for increasing the efficiency and competitiveness levels of firms and of the Italian Economic System in general, enabling more synergy and integration with the other countries. In this sense, the Italian Banking Community underlines the relevance of the Final Report statements, considering mainly the need to harmonise the legal and VAT framework on the treatment and validity of the e-invoicing and to ensure full interoperability among different models and solutions. Considering the actual European scenario and the different ways in which the current VAT Directive has been enforced by each Member State, the Italian Banking Community endorses the proposal to amend it, especially because its actual formulation refers to specific technologies. Pagina 4 di 9

5 Further suggestions and recommendations of the Italian Banking Community to improve the Final Report In the past, the international experiences have underlined the difficulties related to leading the market to the adoption of a single e-invoicing standard. In fact, firms need flexibility in the choice of standards. As a consequence, it is relevant to remark the principle of ensuring flexibility in the messages syntax; nevertheless, it is necessary to adopt a shared and common model (data dictionary) about the meaning of standard s information (data semantic). In order to guarantee a proper communication among trading parties using different syntaxes, the Italian Banking Community suggests to analyse how the parties acting as translators could assure the correctness of their activities. For example it could be useful to share and publish translation mapping rules between most popular standards adopted by different communities. This could help trading parties to choose the best e-invoicing solution consistently with their needs. 3. Specific considerations on the Final Report recommendations 3.1 Business requirements (section 3 of the report) Further relevant Business Requirements for the successful uptake of e- Invoicing, especially to facilitate massive adoption by SMEs The industry reports (among which the studies released by the Observatory on Electronic Invoicing and Dematerialization - Politecnico di Milano's School of Management) point out that major e-invoicing benefits result from the full automation and integration among all the activities carried on in the commercial and financial cycle. Consequently, it is fundamental to ensure the preservation of the value deriving from this integration, possible only thanks to the adoption of e-invoicing solutions interoperable with financial services. These considerations introduce a further principle, focused on the need to guarantee the utilisation of e-invoicing solutions based on business, service and standard models compliant with the ones already adopted by companies in the financial sector. In the Italian Financial Community, the most relevant used standards are: Pagina 5 di 9

6 - the ISO20022 standard, representing the SEPA schemes standard too; - the CBI (Interbank Corporate Banking) standard (ISO20022 compliant), the national de facto standard for financial messaging among banks and firms. Moreover, in order to preserve the investments already made by companies, banking communities and other stakeholders (in particular, the Public Administration), it is needed to ensure stability in the International standards maintenance (i.e. CII UN/CEFACT), promoting the retro-compatibility, the flexibility and an ease implementation in reference with different communities. Against the backdrop of the responsibility in the business requirements implementation, it is essential to directly involve aggregator subjects (such as the Public Administration, the electronic communities, the service providers and the large buyers/sellers), capable to foster a quick adoption of the e-invoicing, thus ensuring the requested critical mass of users. Looking at the e-invoice process from a bank perspective, it is worth to underline that the use of fully structured data is crucial to offer financial services (such as payment, reconciliation, invoice financing) to satisfy the business needs of most innovation oriented companies. 3.2 Legal and regulatory aspects (section 4 of the report) Suitability of the Code of Practices proposed by the Expert Group to complement future VAT legislation The Italian Banking Community believes that a Code of Practice could be a useful means for obtaining a major harmonisation among the different legal rules, procedures and practices on the e-invoicing, and for enabling a common application of VAT directive in the UE member states. Nevertheless, the possibility to rely on different internal business control methods to ensure authenticity and integrity of e-invoices should be further investigated in order to understand how Tax Authorities, banks and service providers could be able to support different solutions adopted by SME communities and Large Corporates. However, it must be underlined that the Italian legislative framework has acknowledged the current Directive in a binding way, providing for the mandatory use of the electronic signature or either the EDI system. Therefore, should the very same Directive be modified according to the principles endorsed by the Expert Group, the Italian legal system would have to face a challenging task in order to be compliant with the new legislative framework. In this direction, the attention has to be also focused on the ongoing legal amendment of the Italian law (so called CAD Codice dell Amministrazione Pagina 6 di 9

7 Digitale ) which establishes rules about the different kinds of the electronic signatures. The actual tendency is to assign a stronger legal value to the simple signature (notoriously different from the advanced signature ) in order to remove hurdles to the exchange of e-documents in general. Agreement with the 11 core principles set out in the Code of Practice in Annex 3 of the report and further suggestions to overcome the existing legal constraints The Italian Banking System expresses a partial agreement with the 11 principle of the Code of Practice, because of persisting legal gaps. In particular, there are unresolved aspects related to the modalities through which the compatibility between the need of electronic invoices equal treatment compared to the paper-based invoice and the security requirements in terms of not modifiability and originality is ensured. As regards the principle of the Code of Practices about the internal business controls value for ensuring the e-invoicing validity, the Italian Banking community believes that it is necessary to identify further requirements to guarantee the electronic flows integrity and authenticity. These security needs are relevant especially about in relationship amongcompanies and fiscal authorities in order to obtain the VAT reimburse. In general, the Italian Banking System suggests to further investigate the process through which the principles of the Code of Practice should be implemented at a national and international level. In particular, the proportionality principle requires the adoption of an assessment mechanism that is very difficult to be put into practice. 3.3 Interoperability (section 5 of the report) Completeness of the eco-system described in the report to ensure all the requirements for an open and interoperable level playing field One of the main factors preventing from the e-invoicing adoption is the difficulty to reach a critical mass. It can be achieved only by taking advantage of extended networks able to ensure economies of scale. As a consequence, it is essential to capitalise on the existing networks, already interconnecting and aggregating many different actors in business communities and ensuring an open model. In particular, it is recommended the interconnection with the financial community, marked by a high level of electronic information exchange, thus enabling a quick Pagina 7 di 9

8 creation and integration among widespread, national and international, communities. Moreover, when speaking of interoperability among different networks and/or communities, it is important to evaluate the effort required by the technical parties acting as gateway/collector (e.g. Tax Authorities) in order to satisfy the interoperability requirement. While using different standards, each and every standardisation body has to approve a list of certificated standards based on the same semantic data model, in order to ensure interoperability. By doing so, the very same standardisation bodies are enabled to provide firms with practical guidance in choosing the most appropriate e-invoicing solution, consistently with their needs. 3.4 Content standards (section 6 of the report) Compliance of the proposed target model (UN/CEFACT CII v.2) with the user requirements The value of the order, invoice and payment integration to ensure Straight Through Processing transactions among the different actors involved implies the need to ensure a quick convergence between the UN/CEFACT and the ISO20022 standards. The ISO20022 standard represents the international message standard reference for the financial transactions, also chosen as a base for SEPA Schemes standard. Besides, the Final Report explains that each user has to be able to support and validate the Core e-invoice data set proposed, composed by the minimum data elements needed for legal and fiscal requirements. Speaking of this point, the Italian Banking Community identifies the need to clarify the concrete meaning and technical impact for e-invoicing systems and solutions when in the Final Report it is expressed the requirements about the support and validation of the Core e-invoice data set. This clarification is relevant in order to support a correct interpretation and implementation of this requirement, in particular for players in charge of developing and managing e-invoicing software solutions. To ensure a complete integration of the business Supply and Financial Chains, the Italian banking community has identified a further aspect: the need of standardising new messages supporting the e-invoicing process, especially related to the reconciliation and status report processes. In the end, it is recommendable to suggest a reference model for the communication protocol among users and service providers, in order to make the interoperability among different networks easier. Pagina 8 di 9

9 3.5 Implementation of the Framework (section 7 of the report) Sharing the proposed implementation bodies and suggestions The Italian Banking Community shares the relevance of addressing the key-aspects related to the EEIF implementation, in order to improve the analysis conducted during the past two years by the Expert Group and to concretely apply these principles in the EU. A well coordinated organisation, supporting the involvement of the different stakeholders categories, and a communication action plan are fundamental for the Framework implementation. The Italian Banking Community experiences in the implementation of other International frameworks suggest to take advantage of the E-invoicing Stakeholder Forum in order to create and coordinate cross-industry an cross-country pilots. In order to become Stakeholder Forum members, the interested parties have to prove their expertise, know-how and especially a sound and deep knowledge of the instances of the represented categories. Moreover, the Stakeholder Forum Members have to be able to spread evolutionary trends and fresh and innovative decisions within their categories. Likewise, it is important to support the diffusion of the e-invoicing culture by means of organising specific local events and giving practical guidance on the e- invoicing adoption processes. By way of example, the European E-invoicing Guide for SME (carried out by the European Business Lab) could be replied as a success story in other context. Likewise, it could prove to be useful for other users categories (i.e. Public Administration). 3.6 Specific aspects for SMEs and e-invoicing Sharing the SMEs requirements indentified, with a special focus on the Annex 3 of the Final Report The Italian banking Community believes that the most relevant SMEs requirements are expressed in the Final Report. Other possible requirements are described in the previous paragraphs. Pagina 9 di 9