International Bytes

Robeco Bank, Belgium, has experienced a 20 percent increase in productivity through its use of Siebel Finance, a CRM solution produced by Siebel Systems, a San Mateo, Calif.-based supplier of multichannel eBusiness applications software.

Robeco Bank's mission is to deliver comprehensive, high-quality private investment portfolio services to individuals throughout Belgium. Using Siebel Finance throughout the organization, all customer information generated by direct sales, the Internet, telephone, fax, or mail is captured in a central repository. This approach to managing customer relationships enables account managers to manage more customers so they can quickly and effectively target prospects, track the progress of opportunities, and accelerate closures.

Siebel Finance--which provides customer-centric sales, marketing, and service functions for retail and institutional finance markets--enables Robeco Bank to automate numerous day-to-day processes, ensuring the highest level of service and customer satisfaction.

"The industry-specific business processes of Siebel Finance are so comprehensive that Robeco Bank is using much of it straight out of the box, including prospect information, contact details, and activities," said Stefan Richter, managing director, Robeco Bank. "This approach has enabled Robeco Bank to take advantage of best-practice methodologies, increase productivity, and grow revenues."

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Allied Irish Banks has selected Carreker's FraudLink solutions to detect and prevent fraudulent check activity.

Already installed at 90 of the leading banks in Ireland, U.K., Australia, South Africa, U.S. and Canada, Carreker's FraudLink suite enables banks to expand their fraud mitigation capabilities for teller stations, the back office, and deposited items. It uses advanced check-writing and deposit behavior analytics to identify potentially fraudulent check transactions. It also helps improve risk management costs by allowing banks to better allocate resources to prioritized items and streamline the investigation process.

"Embedded deep within the culture of AIB is our commitment to protect customers' assets, as well as the integrity of our organization," said Edel McDermott, group fraud manager at Allied Irish Banks. "Carreker's FraudLink allows us to deter check fraud by quickly and consistently identifying suspect items and delivering our customers the highest standards of security and service."

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Penson Worldwide Settlements, the London-based affiliate of Penson Worldwide, has licensed STN Settlements, an automated clearance and settlement service from SunGard Securities Processing.

STN Settlements is a service that connects custodians, broker-dealers, banks and futures commission merchants to custodians, depositories and clearing institutions for trade comparison, reconciliation, clearance and settlement. STN Settlements also provides post-execution comparison, matching and netting of trades to and from broker-dealers and outside entities for clearance and settlement.

Penson, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, is a leading correspondent-clearing firm that provides clearing and settlement services to financial services companies in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe.

"For Penson, London is the gateway into Europe, and we needed a reliable mechanism for communicating with our sub-custodians who are SWIFT-eligible, as well as reducing the risks of cross-border trading," said Mark Fawver, vice president of international clearing and settlement at Penson Financial Services, Inc. "Adopting STN Settlements into our infrastructure gives our clients a straight-through, seamless trading facility by removing redundant and manual tasks, and linking directly with the Phase3 multi-currency system."