IBC / TWIST BSB – Fall 2010 Newsletter

11.12.2010 // Newsletter // editor

Since the last newsletter Deutsche Bank has gone live with 10 countries in Europe, HSBC has gone live with Canada with more countries to come and Standard Chartered has gone live in the Middle East. Citi and J. P. Morgan have been rolling out the BSB to additional countries / regions. Additional banks offering the BSB are Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Danske Bank and Société Générale. Bank of America will make the BSB available for accounts in Europe, Asia, Canada and Latin America during the Q1 2011. Additional a few banks are providing the BSB on a limited basis to select corporate customers. See News from the Banks for more details.
Schwabe, Ley & Greiner announced that their bank relationship module, which will be tightly integrated into its flagship product, the Treasury Information Platform (T.I.P.) will interface with the TWIST BSB. Additional vendors/products that support the BSB are WFG’s BRMEdge, Chesapeake Systems SmartAnalysis, TriSyn and SunTec. See News from the Software Vendors for additional information.
GE shares with us what they are doing with the BSB. On November 18th, Lufthansa hosted a corporate meeting on the BSB. See News from the Corporates for additional information.
Two projects are underway to expand the BSB capability. The first is to register the BSB under ISO 20022. The second is to expand the Service Codes used in most BSB files to include “Global” services, Global Service Codes project.

For more information read below.

TWIST and SWIFT collaboration to extend BSB under ISO 20022 umbrella

Tom Buschman, Chairman of TWIST reports:

“TWIST and SWIFT have agreed to maintain the Bank Services Billing standard jointly under the ISO 20022 umbrella. The SWIFT Board has allocated resources to rapidly develop together with TWIST an ISO 20022 version of the existing TWIST BSB standard. This process is expected to be completed before the summer of 2011. In addition to the rendering of the TWIST standard in ISO 20022, TWIST and SWIFT are collaborating with the active support of key banks in two areas:

to extend the BSB standard to enable electronic invoicing of bank services

to complement the BSB standard and the eBAM standard to provide a comprehensive set of bank-customer administration standards

The team that will collaborate on these topics is under formation, kick starting its activities before the year end. For further information please contact Tom.Buschman@TWISTstandards.org, Stephen.Weiland@opensolutions.com or Paul.Burstein@TWISTstandards.org.”

Global Service Codes Project

Steve Weiland reports:

The project has received significant new support and direction in the last three months. Bridget Meyer, who has done extensive work for the AFP in the maintenance and support of the AFP Service Codes, has joined the team. She brings with her direct AFP input and years of experience working with common service codes.

Recently we sent out the first draft of what will become the first ever AFP Global Service Code Book! The draft has been sent to participating banks for review and comment. Rather than trying to expand the existing AFP domestic codes for additional global services, we’ve come to the conclusion that a new set of service codes designed for the global community and the BSB is the right direction. For those customers who receive analysis from both US domestic and global banks, AFP will provide a mapping from the existing AFP codes to the new global codes to facilitate common service identification and reporting.

The draft list of services is designed to identify three types of services:

Services that participants feel should be deleted from the existing AFP code list. These are services that do not apply globally and would be considered US domestic services only. The draft already identifies many services based on feedback from participants that should be eliminated from the eventual. AFP Global Service Code Book.

Services that are specifically global that the participants currently use or would potentially use that should stay in the final draft of the Global Service Codes.

New services not contained in the draft that the participants feel should be added to the final draft.

The net result will be an AFP supported Global Service Code Book designed to be used by overseas banks along with a mapping that will tie services in this new book to services in the existing AFP Service Code book. This effort will allow multinational corporations receiving BSBs from their banks to identify common services across all the banks they deal with.

News from the Banks

News from the Corporates

News from GE

Viplav Rathore of GE says:

“GE continues to derive significant value and actively advocate the TWIST BSB bank fee reporting standards. We currently receive regular TWIST BSB fee reports from Danske Bank (5 locations), Barclays Bank (UK), Socgen (France), Citibank EMEA (12 locations), Deutsche Bank (Germany), BNP EMEA (3 locations), KBC (Belgium), Westpac (Australia) and Intesa SanPaolo (Italy). In 2010 we went live with Deutsche Bank Austria and Spain as per the roll out plan and are testing with Citibank APAC, HSBC India and Deutsche Bank (Thailand and Indonesia) for an intended go live before the close of 2010. We also have commitments with timelines from HSBC (Hong Kong and Mauritius), Citibank (LATAM and Middle East) and Deutsche Bank India. In terms of the next generation steps we are looking at all the existing TWIST BSB fee report providers to deliver this reporting via SWIFT and incorporate interest information as part of these reports.”

Lufthansa Hosts Corporate BSB Meeting

Paul Burstein reports:

“On November 18th, Deutsche Lufthansa AG hosted a meeting of German and Austrian corporates at their Frankfurt headquarters. Presenting to the attendees were representatives from the corporate world, Porsche Corporate Finance; from TWIST; from banking, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank; and from software vendors, Weiland Financial Group and Schwabe, Ley & Greiner. Other corporates attendees came from Bayer, Bosch, Deutsche Post DHL, Henkel, Linde, MAN SE, Siemens, ThyssenKrupp, and Wacker Chemie. Other corporates expressed interest, but were unable to attend. Topics included a “Survey of Bank Charges”, “Getting Control of Your Bank Service Charges”, what two banks who produce the BSB for their customers are doing, and demos of two software products that process the BSB for corporates. Most of the corporates in attendance expressed interest in adopting the BSB.”

News from the Software Vendors

Schwabe says:

“Schwabe, Ley & Greiner, the leading European treasury management consulting company, annouces the release of a bank relationship module, which will be tightly integrated into its flagship product, the Treasury Information Platform (T.I.P.). The module allows users to easily collect information on world wide banking fees and associated transaction volumes via a web-based interface. Flexible reports will give a transparent and systematic overview of banking fees. Soft factors, such as banks‘ service quality by service category, can be obtained from end users in local markets, giving a holistic view of a bank relationship. Automated matching between expected and charged bank fees will be possible, using interfaces to international standard formats such as TWIST/BSB or EDI 822.”

For more information or an online demo of the Treasury Information Platform please contact Hubert Rappold at tip@slg.co.at.

Open Solutions says:

“I am pleased to announce the acquisition of The Weiland Financial Group to the BSB community and to introduce our company, Open Solutions Inc. Open Solutions is the leading provider of innovative core processing software to banks and credit unions as well as of health savings, corporate money management, and customer access accounts to corporations. With our acquisition of Weiland, we have greatly enhanced our account analysis offerings and look forward to continuing Weiland’s critical support of the BSB global bank services billing standard. As you may know, Weiland has worked extensively with TWIST over the last six years to develop and promote the BSB. We view the BSB as a key component to our strategy for Weiland’s market-leading bank fee analysis solution, BRMEdge, as well as for Weiland’s best-of-breed commercial account analysis system, CAA. We support Weiland’s passionate efforts to promote acceptance of this critical standard.

To learn more about Weiland Financial, please visit http://www.weiland-wfg.com/. You can learn more about Open Solutions at http://www.opensolutions.com/ and about our acquisition of Weiland at http://www.opensolutions.com/news/Weiland%20Financial%20Group.htm”

Steve Cameron, President, Open Solutions Inc.

Chesapeake Systems says:

“In order to accommodate the broadest range of international banks, Chesapeake SmartAnalysis now supports any input format, as long as it provides the essential data elements of service description and quantity or fee. SmartAnalysis service code mapping enables internal standardization to AFP codes and/or any required international extensions. This allows multinational organizations to process all of their banks without waiting for full BSB implementation. Meanwhile, Chesapeake continues to work with customers and their banks through their migration to BSB, processing TWIST files and providing feedback on any standards compliance issues.”

For additional information contact John Snyder, jsnyder@chessys.com, +1 410 356 6805 x118.

SunTec previously reported:

“As a leading provider of Relationship-based Pricing and Centralized Billing solutions to the Financial Services industry, SunTec is committed to delivering solutions which meet the standards followed by the industry. TWIST BSB is one such standard for the distribution of electronic details which reflect the charges applied to clients. SunTec has delivered TWIST BSB output through its standard data interfacing platform, thus ensuring that future upgrades to the standard can be achieved through Meta data updates in much the same way as acquiring a new map for your navigation system. The user defines the structure and format of the source and requests output in the desired format and version. The facility has been trialed by various clients and is expected to be in production shortly.”

TriSyn says:

“As one of the first service providers to offer support for TWIST BSB, TriSyn is committed to meeting industry needs and standards. The TriSyn solution allows financial institutions to offer TWIST BSB as a delivery option to their commercial customers. Usage of the TriSyn TWIST BSB offering continues to grow with additional client adoption. The offering supports full international statement options, including support for interest calculations and earnings credits (ECR). Recent enhancements to the solution include expanded administrative features that improve the management and delivery controls associated with this XML standard.

TriSyn Group, an Infor company, is a provider of core banking applications including the industry leading commercial billing solution Infopoint Account Analysis. For more information about TriSyn Group or Infopoint Account Analysis please contact Randy Powers at randy.powers@infor.com.”

Lastly you can participate

Pass this newsletter on to others who might be interested and email us to include them in future mailings.
Corporates, you should contact your bank relationship managers to let them know of your interest in receiving the BSB.
Let us know if your company or bank wishes to be publicly identified with the TWIST BSB project and what you are doing.

Best Regards,
Paul Burstein

paul.burstein@twiststandards.org