• SystemCare maintains peak performance and efficiency of SWIFT infrastructure
LONDON, 17th February, 2009 – SMA Financial (
www.sma.co.uk), SWIFT Regional partner for UK, Eire and Channel Islands today announced that Standard Life has gone live on SWIFTNet Funds using SystemCare from SMA Financial. Standard Life subscribes to SMA’s SystemCare support package to ensure peak performance and efficiency of its SWIFT infrastructure.
SystemCare is a pre-planned preventative maintenance program consisting of on-site consultancy days and access to technical resources through SMA’s dedicated call centre. SystemCare resources were used during the implementation of the SWIFTNet Funds messaging project.
Scott Innes, Senior Architect, Standard Life explained, “The SWIFTNet Funds project was implemented on time and within budget and this was testament to the cohesive team that included Standard Life’s internal resources, SMA consultants and SWIFT representatives. By using the SystemCare resources we were able to go live quickly and ensure a rapid return on our investment.”
Standard Life wanted to take advantage of the new message format to provide customers of FundZone, its mutual fund supermarket, with an enhanced service for advisers and customers on individual and group Self Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) to access over 1,000 funds via a secure and efficient channel.
SWIFTNet Funds uses the ISO20022 message format that standardises and automates various activities such as account openings and maintenance, orders and order confirmations, transfers, statements of holding and transactions. Standard Life recognised that whilst these new messaging standards were an opportunity to develop innovative services for its customers, it would require making changes to the back office systems.
SMA consultants technical expertise was used to set up and test the new operational SWIFT Alliance configuration. Once test messages were successfully sent and received over SWIFT, Standard Life was able to smoothly roll out the new functionality to its production environment.
Scott Innes concluded, “SystemCare ensures that our resources can be focused on providing an IT infrastructure that meets the needs of the business. SMA has consistently provided a high standard of technical support and consultancy and we view their team as a trusted partner that we can always count on. By maintaining the efficiency of our SWIFT infrastructure we can raise Straight Through Processing rates, lower our costs and decrease operational risk.”
Simon Murby, Managing Director of SMA Financial said, “We are able to leverage our wealth of experience gained from 300+ SWIFT implementations to help our clients manage and maintain their own SWIFT infrastructure. I am delighted that SystemCare continues to support Standard Life’s ongoing SWIFT requirements.”
