I. Overview II. New services

Transcription

1 Overview of Key Activities 2009

2 I. Overview 2009 In 2009, the European payments business continued to successfully weather the financial crisis and proved to be a source of secure and steady income to banks based on resilient processes, practices and infrastructure. At the same time, the industry further engaged in a deepreaching transformation process driven by evolving business models and technology as well as by the ongoing integration process in Europe. Against this background, EBA CLEARING continued to evolve its existing and new services with a view to satisfying the banks need for stable yet flexible infrastructure solutions at low cost. The aim of the Company is to provide its users with innovative pan-european payment solutions at a very competitive price and based on a robust and highly resilient technical infrastructure. By sending their payments via EBA CLEARING Services in the past year, banks were able to: use a single channel not only for their cross-border but also for their domestic payments in the SEPA formats; profit from the SEPA-wide coverage that STEP2 as the only Pan-European Automated Clearing House (PE- ACH) guarantees; benefit from the newly extended reach of EURO1/ STEP1 through the introduction of a Payments Directory listing correspondent banks addressable via EURO1/STEP1 Participants; offer their customers services for their mass euro payments that match or even exceed existing domestic practices; optimally manage their liquidity and counterparty exposure while exchanging cross-border and domestic single euro payments; comply with the November 2010 mandatory requirement to become reachable for SEPA Direct Debits; count on EBA CLEARING s support for the successful implementation of the different national SEPA migration plans; 2 Mio 1 Mio work towards closing down legacy retail payment infrastructures, thereby saving further costs. Throughout 2009, all EBA CLEARING services were operating smoothly. In terms of volumes processed, the payment services for single euro payments, EURO1 and STEP1, recovered from the market-wide payment traffic dip caused by the financial crisis. The SEPA volumes handled by STEP2 continued to steadily grow over the year, with purely national traffic sent in the SEPA formats starting to significantly increase in late 2009 and early On the rise: EBA CLEARING average daily volumes II. New services The STEP2 platform welcomed two new services in the past year, a SEPA Core Direct Debit Service and a SEPA B2B Direct Debit Service. Both services started their ramp-up period on the launch date of the SDD Schemes, following a major administrative and testing exercise: Close to 2,500 direct and indirect participants connected to the STEP2 SDD Core Service in 2009; More than 2,200 direct and indirect participants joined the STEP2 SDD B2B Service; A stand-alone automatic test partner was developed, enabling the banks to individually test the full direct

3 debit flow, including R-messages, in the STEP2 test environment; An online operational directory was put in place, allowing banks to provide contact information for offline SDD-related queries and for invoicing balancing payments; Participant banks formed a STEP2 SDD Implementation Forum in order to monitor the evolution of the services and swiftly remedy any emerging teething problems. With the interbank processes being in place and working smoothly since early November 2009, EBA CLEARING s users have been given a full year to prepare for the mandatory roll-out of SDD products in November To further support the industry in its migration to the new direct debit instruments, EBA CLEARING will organise special joining sessions throughout 2010 and work with its user banks towards further expanding the STEP2 SDD offerings in line with their requirements. STEP2 SEPA Services: the PE-ACH with the reach 4,386 financial institutions in SCT, 2,504 in SDD Core and 2,337 in SDD B2B having signed the respective EPC Adherence Agreements are reachable through STEP2 STEP2 SCT covers 99%, SDD Core 90% and SDD B2B 89% of banks in SEPA III. Key service improvements Over the past year, EBA CLEARING implemented the following enhancements on its service platforms: In April 2009, a EURO1/STEP1 Directory was introduced with the support of SWIFT, enabling participants in EURO1 and STEP1 to list their reachable banks worldwide (branches, subsidiaries and correspondent banks): Within less than a year, the Directory expanded the indirect reach of EURO1/STEP1 by more than 2,000 additional financial institutions or over 16,000 additional BICs; Banks are now able to send more payments through the cost-effective EURO1/STEP1 infrastructure and to receive more payments via that channel on behalf of their client banks; A bulk upload functionality was developed in order to support banks in integrating large numbers of third party banks in the EURO1/STEP1 Directory. In November 2009, the MT 202COV, the new message type for cover messages to commercial payments, was implemented in EURO1/STEP1 as part of a new release in line with the combined financial industry efforts to improve anti-money laundering procedures. In February 2010, a multi-cycle functionality was successfully implemented in the STEP2 SCT Service enabling user banks to exchange and settle SEPA Credit Transfers several times a day. More intra-day cycles can now be added to the STEP2 SCT Service upon request. Other significant enhancements are under way, such as the migration of the EURO1 end-of-day settlement arrangements to the Ancillary System Interface (ASI), which will considerably speed up this settlement process. Status: April 2010

4 IV. Other key activities System operations In addition to successfully running the day-to-day service operations and implementing new services and enhancements, EBA CLEARING particularly focused on the following activities in the area of operations: Completion of the STEP2 benchmarking exercise, which confirmed that the STEP2 platform is able to process tens of millions of transactions per day with no modification to its current configuration and could process more than 50 million payments per day following simple hardware configuration upgrades; Execution of a business continuity exercise, which was undertaken with the Oversight Division of the European Central Bank and where EBA CLEARING presented a full package of documented procedures setting out the various Business Impact Analyses against its overall Business Continuity Strategy; Preparation of a STEP2 SEPA Services crisis simulation exercise, which was successfully carried out with the participation of 43 banks in January User communication As in previous years, EBA CLEARING placed great emphasis on fostering strong ties with its shareholder and user community throughout 2009: Presentations on EURO1 risk management controls and liquidity optimisation tools given throughout the user community provided participants with a revision of the key facts and concepts, and served to widen the knowledge base about EURO1 within the respective banks. Consultation and information meetings on STEP2 SEPA Services: EBA CLEARING provided updates on ongoing and upcoming developments around STEP2 SCT and SDD to the user banks at two information meetings in spring and autumn 2009; A joint SEPA Services Business Working Group was created in early 2010 as an interim user forum for the STEP2 SEPA Services community. Discussions on Additional Optional Services (AOS) developments conducted with a number of banking communities across SEPA: EBA CLEARING is working with the Italian community on the implementation of an AOS that will allow STEP2 SCT banks operating in Italy to comply with local requirements to forward payments to the new account of a customer if an account change has taken place; EBA CLEARING is also in the process of developing an urgent payment functionality in close co-operation with a number of Finnish banks; The Company is assessing other AOS in an intensive dialogue with interested user communities, including services facilitating bilateral file exchange between banks with significant bilateral volumes. Survey on the quality of customer support, conducted in February 2010: In 2009, the ICU staff received and followed up on over 3,400 inquiries; An initial analysis of the survey findings showed a high satisfaction rate among users with the support provided to them. V. Outlook for 2010 EBA CLEARING is in a privileged position to support its shareholders and users in successfully coping with industry challenges by minimising infrastructure costs, limiting their risk exposure and by enabling an efficient centralisation of liquidity, which has proven to be a key asset during the financial crisis. The Company will leverage on its core competencies of operational robustness and strong cost management in its continued effort to dynamically evolve its services with a view to helping user banks safeguard and expand their payments business.

5 Contact: EBA CLEARING 4 rue de Galliéra F Paris clearing@abe-eba.eu Address as of 2011: Paris Eight - 2 nd floor 40 rue de Courcelles Paris Tel: Fax: The cover illustration of this brochure was created by students attending Dokter Herman Bekiusschool in Lelystad (Netherlands), a school for the education of children with mental difficulties. Bekiusschool is co-operation partner for the 2010 donation initiative of the EBA Group.