UBS Switzerland To Develop Core Banking Component of SAP Software

SAP has announced that UBS Switzerland, the banking group of $592 billion UBS AG, will implement and co-develop a new core banking component of mySAP Banking, SAP's suite of financial, customer service and planning applications for the banking industry.

UBS is helping the German software company extend the capabilities of the new component, called Account Management, for broader use. "What UBS brings to the table is resources," said Randy Packham, product manager at SAP Banking. "They're investing dollars, people and expertise."

The jointly developed application is a Web-enabled, multinational, open-standards software solution that addresses the core banking needs of large banks. The application will allow banks to optimize customer transaction processing through automation and centralization.

Account Management will manage a bank's customer cash accounts, process the accounts periodically and provide information on receivables and payables between the bank and third parties. The application will also handle computation and delivery of bank statements and balance notifications.

UBS, the world's largest global asset manager, will contribute its expertise with international banking and financial services application software. SAP will use this input to develop the Account Management component of mySAP Banking.

UBS will be the pilot customer for the new mySAP Banking solution, replacing part of its existing banking applications. The new solution will manage more than eight million customer accounts.

The mySAP Banking applications will play a central software role in UBS' Strategic Solution Program, an IT platform designed to fulfill key multinational business requirements. mySAP Banking with the new Account Management feature will be made available to other financial institutions in the future.

mySAP Banking enables banks to achieve a single view of the customer across lines of business. It offers high-performance capabilities for strategic planning, financial accounting, costing and enterprise-wide control combined with industry-specific solutions for profitability and risk analysis, customer relationship management and customer account systems.

Account Management builds on SAP's existing Bank Customer Accounting (BCA) deposit system and its Corebanking and Mortgage Loans (CML) loan system. The BCA system has 18 bank customers, eight of which are currently live installations.

"The objective is to evolve the solution to handle a broader set of banking products and also to accommodate the very high-volume banks," said Packham.

With more than eight million customer accounts, UBS Switzerland easily qualifies as high-volume, as does Deutsche Postbank-another charter customer for Account Management-with 14 million accounts and over 10,000 locations. "BCA as it exists today can handle very high volumes but not quite that high," said Packham. Benchmark results show capacity of 3.5 million transactions per hour for the new system.