IBC / TWIST BSB – Fall 2013 Newsletter

10.27.2013 // Newsletter // editor

13 banks are live with BSB (Bank Service Billing) for corporate customers. Of these,12 are public about their activities, they are; Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citi, Danske Bank, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, JPMorgan, SEB (Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken), Société Générale, Standard Chartered Bank and UniCredit. Two additional banks have publicly endorsed the BSB standard and with plans to implement in the future, Lloyds Bank and Standard Bank. Four additional banks are in the development or planning stages; one is a global bank and the others are regional banks. (They have committed to go public when they go live.) For more information on the banks that are public see News from the Banks.
Four vendors offer products to help corporates to process and analyze BSBs. Three other vendors assist banks to produce bank account billings and the BSB. Read about their offerings in News from the Vendors. Also one ERP and one TMS are currently developing corporate software, more about them when they go public.
Lufthansa, Siemens, Cigna, Deutsche Post DHL plus a fifth corporate shares their experiences in News from the Corporates.
Lastly, many banks responded to a survey about their implementing the ISO 20022 camt.086 and Global Service Codes standards. Read a synopsis of their responses, ISO 20022 and GSC Survey.

For more information read below.

Feature

Banking Survey – Implementation of camt.086 Message and Global Service Codes

The ISO 20022 camt.086 BSB message version of the TWIST BSB is one year old and the AFP Global Service Codes (GSC) is now two years old. Question: how far along are the banks in implementing both standards? A survey was sent to 30 banks who are active with the BSB or have an ongoing interest. 15 banks responded. Below are the aggregate results of the survey.

The ISO 20022 camt.086 is the new version of the BSB., it is functionally equivalent as the TWIST version 3.1. All future enhancements will only be to the camt.086.

The Global Service Codes allow receivers of BSBs from multiple banks to do standardized analysis of bank services. All bank systems run on their own set of proprietary service codes; these are transmitted with the BSB. The GSC allows banks to also report the services using industry standard codes; that allows corporates to compare services between banks and to aggregate services across all banks.

Banks

Of the 30 banks

12 are live with the TWIST version 3.1 and 1 is live with the cmt.086; 12 of these banks are public (see News from the Banks)
2 are in limited customer release
6 are in development or have future plans

Of the 15 banks that responded

10 are live with the 3.1 version only, no change from last year
1 is live with the camt.086 message only
3 have plans for initial release with the camt.086 BSB, two by 2nd Q 2014 and one by 2015.

Of the 10 banks that responded and produce the version 3.1, 9 have plans to introduce the camt.086

1 will release by the end of 2013
6 are planning for 2014
2 are planning for 2015
1 has no plans of yet

The 10 banks above have limited plans for sun-setting the TWIST version 3.1

7 banks have no intention of sun-setting version 3.1
3 banks are dependent on client needs or plan at least 2 years after going live with the camt.086

Plans for implementing the Global Service Codes vary

2 banks are live with the GSC for their 3.1 version, 8 are not
8 banks are implementing with the camt.086 and 1 is TBD
The 1 bank that is live with the camt.086 is also live with the GSC

Banks have been slow to migrate to the camt.086 message, with none having done so over the past year. Most are planning to do so in 2014. While some banks already provide the Global Service Codes with version 3.1, the majority will implement with the camt.086. (All vendor software for Corporates already reads the version 3.1 and the camt.086.)

News from the Banks

News from the Corporates

Daniel Sylla says “Deutsche Lufthansa AG has spent the last months on co-operating with banks and corporates on an enhancement in TWIST billing quality and global availability. As a company with a global footprint, we have the vision of receiving TWIST reporting in a very high number of countries across the world. One of the core challenges for global banks seems to be the lack of central billing systems. Some of the global cash management banks have evolved from numerous mergers and acquisitions and as such still suffer from a fragmented IT-landscape. In order to achieve global TWIST availability, banks will have to upgrade and consolidate their banking systems. On top of that, pricings, pricing structures and the whole way we talk about bank services in transaction banking need internationalization. Today, a product that has one name and one price in Germany may be sub-divided into 5 products and 5 prices in the US – obviously an area with great room for improvement. Finally, we receive data from a lot of countries – but the data quality is often insufficient and regularly has little resemblance with the paper invoice we receive.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG and a number other German corporates have strongly lobbied for these improvements. For instance, in mid-2013, 15 large German corporates (including Lufthansa) sent a petition to more than 20 international banks, addressing the issues mentioned above. We think that our efforts have been fruitful and we have seen significant change in the attitudes and business policies of major banks. However, there is still a long way to go.

Lufthansa is currently receiving TWIST reports for almost 40 countries worldwide by its two strategic cash management banks (Deutsche Bank and Citibank).

Countries that are currently available (although with varying data quality) for Lufthansa are Austria, Algeria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.”

Jonas Korte of Siemens’ Financial Services says “Siemens is now implementing a software which handles electronic billings. Additionally, we are taking part in a move of German Corporates to push the TWIST initiative further. Our main bank partners are aware that we are looking forward to receive TWIST/camt.086 files for all cash management business activities in the medium-term. We are planning increased roll-out activities beginning of 2014 which will help us to gain much more experience on the topic.”

Maureen Ryan, Treasury Manager says, “Cigna is receiving TWIST BSB feeds from Citibank into our Weiland BRM Edge system. The implementation was smooth as are the monthly feeds. It is providing us valuable insight into our fees paid to Citibank globally. We are very pleased.”

Christine Pitzen Senior Treasury Manager says “Since four years Deutsche Post DHL has developed its analysis and reporting processes in regards to bank charges. Starting with manual investigations, supported by inhouse-developed excel tools, today we are using a professional software (TIP from SLG) which enables an automated analysis of standardized reportings. All current formats are able to be processed: XML for TWIST BSB and camt.086, EDI 822, Excel, csv. Not only the controlling of the invoiced bank fees has been improved, as well the internal quality management of the used services is today integrated in our Corporate Treasury´s day-to-day support to the group entities. Based on greater transparency, a better understanding of the cash management services has been achieved.

Today Deutsche Post DHL has experienced a wide range of benefits from “the implementation of TWIST BSB” which justifies the personal effort and the investment in a new analysis tool.

Even though in Germany more and more Corporates are joining the TWIST initiative, the development in most banks has to be increased in order to fulfill such requirements. In order to point out this necessity, together with other German Corporates a petition was provided to several banks, organised by Lufthansa, Deutsche Post DHL and Siemens. Other Corporates are invited to join this initiative to support the progress of the current developments; there is still a long way to go: e-invoicing is a topic which is more and more discussed in the German Corporate Treasury community.’

A US corporate says “As most Treasury professionals would agree, it is quite challenging to track all global banking fees, but BSB helps to provide more transparency for bank fee management. Ideally, we would like to maintain all global banking fees from a centralized Treasury location and we are tackling this challenge as best we can and as technology permits. We are currently using BSB for three global banking relationships and we look forward to expanding in the future.”

News from the Vendors

“Weiland Corporate Solutions is now a business unit of Fiserv. Interest in a maturity of the BSB continues to grow. We have seen the first banks begin to deliver the Global AFP Codes to customers on their BSB files. We have also seen good progress in the currency conversion information provided by banks on their BSB’s, allowing customers to translate multiple settlement currencies on their BSB files into a single “home currency”. The integration of the camt.086 BSB format is completed in BRMedge™ and we expect to see test and production files from some banks in the next few months. We continue to fully support TWIST BSB as well, and most production customers are receiving this format from their banks today.”

For additional information contact Mike O’Brien at Michael.o’brien@opensolutions.com / +1 847 810 6113.

“Chesapeake’s SmartAnalysis continues to support all active formats and standards: 822 with the original AFP codes and TWIST with any service codes, including AFP Global Service Codes. We can also consume parsed print image statements and CSV files from banks without support for the standards. ISO camt.086 is being integrated into our next major release. SmartAnalysis has been enabled to accept four digit Canadian Bank Identifier codes when importing 822 files.

Chesapeake was an active participant in the AFP 2013 Service Code Task Force, heading the PDR code subgroup. As an immediate complement to account analysis, we are also heavily involved in Bank Account Management (BAM) functionality, starting with SmartAnalysis Relationship Manager, continuing through our SmartTreasury treasury management solution, and finally to ISO eBAM in the future.”

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

“Schwabe, Ley & Greiner welcomes German corporate giants Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Deutsche Post AG and Fresenius SE & Co. KGaA as users of their treasury reporting and bank fee controlling software TIP

In the upcoming version 3.1 TIP will include a complete “e-Survey” and a “Bank Meeting Documentation” feature. The “e-Survey” feature allows to create “Request for proposals” for banks and also internal surveys for subsidiaries based on existing information (volumes, accounts, banks) in the system. The “Bank Meeting Documentation” feature allows to document and follow-up all meetings and issues with banks.

These developments push TIP further towards a full life cycle management system for bank relationships. They were officially announced at the annual user conference and demonstrated to more than 100 corporates, which are already using TIP as their regular treasury reporting system.”

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

“TIS recruited Martin Postweiler (formerly Head of Financial and Liquidity planning at Deutsche Lufthansa AG) for our Product Management. With his expertise we will further enhance our product portfolio, which includes the Bank Fee Manager (BFM) solution. With this SaaS solution our customers can easily implement a tool that ensures an automated process of TWIST BSB / EDI 822 messages. With this audit proof reconciliation of bank charges Treasurers are also enabled to evaluate the size of wallet for the respective banks and monitor payment processes worldwide for all affiliated business units or branches. It is also an ideal task that could be shifted to a Shared Service Center.

In the coming months we are going to offer webinars and workshops that will show the benefits for Treasurers, which cover not only cost saving aspects but also process optimization and comprehensive analysis and monitoring of bank relations. We also aim at convincing more and more banks that it is crucial to provide their customers with transparent billing information in order to maintain a sustainable relationship.”

For additional information feel free to contact Martin.Postweiler@tis.biz / +49 6227 69824 49. Register for webinars at http://www.tis.biz/en/media-center/request-information/

“Infor is a leading provider of business software and services. Combining powerful pricing and relationship management capabilities with comprehensive Business Intelligence, the Infor Complete Billing System meets the enterprise billing needs of leading financial institutions in over 200 markets around the globe. As part of a powerful array of statement options in CBS, Infor is proud to provide full support for TWIST BSB and the AFP Global Billing Codes. To encourage expanded BSB usage, Infor provides our client financial institutions with a viewer application that imports BSB data and renders the XML into an attractive and comprehensive billing statement. Infor continues to stay at the forefront of providing standardized offerings in the global billing arena with support for the camt.086 BSB format. Financial institutions using Complete Billing System continue to report robust growth in the adoption of BSB by corporate clients worldwide.

To learn more about Infor’s billing solution, visit us www.infor.com/solutions/fms/corebanking, or contact Glen Chancy at 407-916-4810 or glen.chancy@infor.com.

SunTec is a leading provider of Enterprise Pricing and Billing Systems for financial services firms with clients ranging from the largest banks and card payment firms in the world to the most innovative banks in emerging markets.

With Xelerate, its next-generation Revenue Management and Business Assurance product suite, SunTec enables its clients to enhance revenue via flexible pricing, strengthen customer relationships with personalized offerings and gain operational efficiency through data-driven decision support and centralized pricing and billing. It allows banks to reward customers based on total relationship value and implement innovative loyalty programs. In addition, Xelerate is designed to accomplish key business assurance objectives like regulatory compliance, margin control, revenue leakage mitigation, and transparency.

Xelerate also enables banks to generate bills and statements compliant with industry standards like TWIST BSB.

SunTec is also one of the authorized license holder of AFP service codes and plans to incorporate support for AFP global service codes with Xelerate.
We are also engaged with TWIST organization in introducing standards such as implementing the ISO 20022 camt.086 in the future”

“Zafin is an award-winning provider of relationship banking software solutions to the financial services industry. As the market leader in relationship banking for Retail, Corporate, Wealth Management and Correspondent Banking, Zafin is transforming the way banks manage products, pricing, loyalty and billing across the entire client relationship. Our solutions are fully compliant with standards such as TWIST BSB which increase transparency and we have successfully delivered the same to Tier 1 banks globally as part of miRevenue implementations.”

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