SWIFT Regional Partner support migration of 18 Network Banks across Central and Eastern Europe

LONDON, September 9th, 2008 – SMA Financial (www.sma.co.uk), SWIFT Regional partner for UK, Eire and Channel Islands today announced the successful delivery of the SWIFT Hub Project in Romania for Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding AG.  The project involves migrating the Group's 15 subsidiary Network Banks across the Central and Eastern European region to the SWIFT Alliance payments infrastructure.

The Raiffeisen International Group operates in the Central Eastern European region and decided late 2006 to build a shared service centre in Romania to streamline payments and back-office processes and reduce costs.

A decision to streamline the SWIFT connectivity of the NWBs resulted in selection of the SWIFTAlliance product suite. The payments infrastructure is hosted on a fully resilient IBM Aix platform in Bucharest.  An RFP was issued in December 2006 and the first phase of the project commenced in April 2007 with a plan to migrate all banks over a 15 month period thereafter. All this had to take place within a fixed price budget and by the end of July 2007, 7 NWBs had already been successfully migrated.

Comments Pierre H. Brisse, General Manager of CRISP (Centralised Raiffeisen International Services and Payments SRL) “Our project was based on a very aggressive timeline and it was therefore important for us to have a committed supplier capable of providing dedicated and skilled resources to make it happen together with our own team. SMA proved to be a knowledgeable and reliable partner and also showed the necessary flexibility in dealing with our various requirements.”

"We are pleased that SWIFT regional partner SMA Financial, helped Raiffeisen International Group to achieve their centralisation project on the SWIFTAlliance product suite. As a SWIFT partner, SMA Financial has extensive knowledge of SWIFT products and services and their expertise was key in the success of this project." adds Judit Baracs, Regional Account Manager for Austria & Central Europe of SWIFT.

Simon Murby, Managing Director, SMA Financial sums up, “The SMA team have done an excellent job, working with the various teams in the NWBs across the CEE region.  There is no doubt that our experience and the fact we are the most SWIFT accredited Regional Partner was a comfort to our client when they chose us for this complex project.  We look forward to completion of this project by 1st Quarter 2009 and ensuring that the Raiffeisen International Group have realised their project goals.”