SmartStream Technologies, the transaction management STP vendor, has announced that Financial Markets Service Bank GmbH, a subsidiary of HVB Group, has implemented SmartStream’s TLM(tm) (Transaction Lifecycle Management) solution. The bank has gone live with TLM for Treasury Confirmations. This forms the first phase of a project, which will lead to TLM becoming one of HVB’s strategic platforms for Straight Through Processing (STP).
HVB is one of the three largest banks in Europe with offices in all of the world’s financial centres. HVB Group has significant strength in the German, Austrian and Central European banking markets: a market of some 160 million people.
TLM is an enterprise-wide solution that tracks, matches, enriches, progresses and stores transaction data through every stage of a transaction lifecycle – from inception through to settlement. TLM uses ‘intelligent’ workflow and flexible rules to enable fully integrated management and control of transactional flows across a firm’s operations.
TLM has given HVB a treasury application which reconciles MT300 FX confirmations, MT305 FX currency options, MT320 fixed loan/deposit confirmations and MT330 call/notice loan/deposit confirmations to give a real-time status of treasury transactions conducted between HVB and its third parties.
The next phase of the project will integrate securities positions, securities transactions and cash with treasury confirmation reconciliation processing. TLM’s ability to accept data from any source in any format makes this process straightforward.
By deploying TLM, HVB is able to manage positions more effectively, while generating substantial cost savings through more effective use of liquidity, lower financing costs and lower transaction costs.
The real-time confirmation of trades is core to improving HVB’s risk management, enabling exceptions to be identified and resolved as they occur – as opposed to post settlement.
HVB conducted a competitive review of a number of market solutions and selected TLM, largely due to the solution’s flexibility and its matching engine which enables the reconciliation of internal and external data in real-time.
Frank Elbe, Senior VP Operations, within the Financial Markets Service Bank, a subsidiary of the HVB Group, commented: “During the evaluation process TLM was able to demonstrate high matching rates and we were impressed by SmartStream’s very professional project management skills. Since installing the solution for treasury confirmations our match rates have increased by over 50% – a figure that has far surpassed our expectations. Scalability was another key factor in the decision to select SmartStream, particularly in view of our plans to move all of our transaction processing onto TLM in the future.”
Mark Cappell, Sales Director at SmartStream, said: “HVB is one of the first of an increasing number of leading banks who are realising the significant advantages of adopting a lifecycle approach to transaction management. It has become clear that in order to achieve true STP, the only way forward is through implementing a fully scalable, holistic solution that can deliver control and analysis of operational performance across all financial products and business areas.”