Friday, April 20, 2007

Lost in transactions: LogicaCMG report on reachability SEPA

See the LogicaCMG website here and download the report lost in transactions. A survey done by LogicaCMG established that:
35 per cent of all retail banks (33 per cent in the “pure” eurozone excluding Sweden and the UK) anticipate problems in the correct addressing and processing of SEPA payments through banks and intermediaries. Perhaps optimistically 44 per cent expect the problems to ease over time when domestic payments volumes migrate to SEPA schemes. But 48 per cent expect the situation to stay the same during this process. In addition, 17 per cent of the banks surveyed expect difficulties in identifying the correct intermediary routing information for receiving banks, accepting that there will be operational failures.

A headline figure for the operational costs to the industry could reach between €650 million and €1.3 billion per year. This is based on conservative estimates of STP rates and payment volumes, together with the banks’ own estimates for cost of failed transactions – as evidenced by the survey.

Well, it looks as if LogicaCMG are not just investigating this for fun or for the public good. They are also among the first to address the concern that they raised themselves. Because it accidentily happens to be the case that they set up, In cooperation with CB.net, the so-called SEPA Directory. This SEPA Directory will:
- improve straight-through processing for SEPA transactions with comprehensive, premium-quality data you can trust,
- route payments with ease with a complete, granular BIC11 database,
- enrich payment instructions with IBAN to BIC validation and lookup.