International Bytes

Deutsche Bank and Wall Street Systems have launched the Settlement & Operations Clearing exchange (SOCX), an operations outsourcing capability aimed at investment banks and financial institutions.

With Deutsche Bank's Global Markets unit as its first client, SOCX is able to provide a real alternative to in-house operations, along with enhanced service levels and a significant reduction in costs. The SOCX service encompasses financial products including money markets, foreign exchange, fixed income, and vanilla derivatives. The service is easily scalable to meet a wide range of volume and service requirements.

SOCX is already processing all of Deutsche Bank's money markets trades in the U.K., and over the coming months the service will be rolled out progressively to support the business in North America, Asia Pacific and the rest of Europe.

"Deutsche Bank took the strategic decision to outsource this part of its business to a specialist service provider in order to allow it to focus on its core activities," said Paul Lewis, managing director, Global Markets, Deutsche Bank. "Partnering with SOCX saves us significant time and effort and SOCX is committed to delivering the highest service levels, at a lower cost than could easily be achieved in house."

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Suncorp Metway, Australia, has launched its new state-of-the-art online banking system using technology provided by Corillian Corp., a global provider of eFinance-enabling software.

The new system utilizes Corillian's Voyager platform, allowing Suncorp Metway to enhance its Internet banking service, using proven, new generation eFinance technology.

"Our partnership with Corillian has meant our customers are now using an Internet banking facility that is the best in the country," said Ray Reimer, group general manager, business distribution, for Suncorp Metway. "It's fast, it's secure and we've proved it can handle large volumes of online customer traffic."

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DGZ-DekaBank, Germany, will enhance its e-services using open analytical CRM (aCRM) software products from DataDistilleries.

DataDistilleries' DD Series allows DGZ-DekaBank to optimize customer relations by ensuring that all customer data is integrated. The result will be a more successful, targeted and personalized marketing effort. DD Series will also allow the bank to analyze both geo- and socio-demographic customer data, together with information from the bank's five million investment accounts.

"We have chosen DD Series because it enhances our online activities in the best possible way and it is easily integrated into our CRM infrastructure," said Matthias Fritz, program manager, e-services, DGZ-DekaBank. "Another benefit is that fast and flexible customer segmentation enables us to offer customer- specific services and products."

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Danske Bank, Denmark, has installed Syntegra's ITS voice trading technology for its 400 currency, bond and equity traders, across seven offices worldwide.

Danske Bank has its headquarters in Copenhagen, and has offices in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Oslo, London and New York. All locations are managed from the bank's head office in Copenhagen using Syntegra's ITS Management Suite--an integrated set of sophisticated management services--that enables the efficient, effective configuration and monitoring of the ITS platform. Benefits include reduced administration costs and a global standard solution that ensures staff throughout the bank use identically configured systems.

Traders at all Danske locations are using Syntegra's pV705 turrets--slim plasma turrets which take up minimal desk real-estate and have 40 key pages available--and ITS pVs81i speakers, which deliver eight channels of audio. These are supported by Syntegra's ITS p107 platform which enables voice distribution and conferencing between the network, the Nortel Meridian PBX, turrets and other voice systems, and can be expanded to support over 2,000 users. In addition, Syntegra managed the installation of SpeakerBus' global intercom, and Nice voice recorders.

"With responsibility for the management of all voice trading solutions at Danske Bank worldwide, I am continuously looking for ways to further improve our business performance. Investing in the newest and best technologies available is a key way to achieve this," said Brian Hansen, systems manager, Danske Bank.

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IntesaBci, Italy, has chosen mpct's CLS Server to power its continuous linked settlement services.

IntesaBci will run the system on the Sun Solaris UNIX platform installed at its Milan headquarters. mpct's CLS Server gives IntesaBci a robust, real-time platform on which to provide CLS processing and messaging to third party banks.

"We selected mpct because it has an advanced, robust solution that can be installed within the timescale we require and that has the capability to support our business goals--both now and in the future," said Giuseppe Attana, senior manager, Head of Treasury, IntesaBci. "CLS Server will support our proprietary as well as third party CLS services and we intend to establish our position as the premier Italian provider of third party CLS services."