SimCorp, a leading provider of investment management solutions and services to the global financial services industry, today announced that Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), Austria’s central bank, has successfully completed the implementation of SimCorp Dimension, which is now live across the full spectrum of front, middle and back office. OeNB chose SimCorp Dimension as part of its modernization project to support its monetary policy and manage its investment activities, including foreign exchange. OeNB is just one of several central banks across Europe to use SimCorp Dimension. Lately, the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago and the Central Bank of Thailand also chose SimCorp Dimension.
OeNB is the central bank of the Republic of Austria and an integral part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Contributing to both the Euro region and Austria’s monetary and economic policy decision-making, its core business areas include cash management, monetary policy, financial stability, statistics, and payments. OeNB required a modern and integrated investment management solution to transform its treasury and investment operations, enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs.
SimCorp Dimension was chosen for its highly automated approach and has already lowered the bank’s total cost of ownership by replacing costly, ageing legacy infrastructure and several outdated best-of-breed solutions, a challenge currently facing many treasury banks around the world. A recent European buy-side report published by WBR Insights found as many as 81% of buy-side firms were overhauling legacy systems, as the top strategic priority for 2018. SimCorp Dimension’s Investment Book of Record (IBOR) has already eliminated previously siloed processes within the bank, increasing transparency across teams and enabling the bank to leverage deeper analytics for investment decision making.
Working together, OeNB and SimCorp have implemented functionality across the entire investment lifecycle to streamline the bank’s vital competencies, including collateral management and foreign exchange. SimCorp Dimension now supports all the bank’s key front office workflows, for instance providing the staff with enhanced pre- and post-trade compliance. In the back office, SimCorp’s best-in-class Accounting Book of Record (ABOR) delivers advanced processing of SWIFT and cash management, with superior accounting functionality.
Franz Partsch, Director of OeNB’s treasury department: “We are pleased to partner with SimCorp, who have been instrumental in our transformation effort. Going live with SimCorp Dimension has enabled us to automate much of the investment process and provide better analytics to support investment decisions. By overhauling and consolidating our investment operations, we’ve already seen numerous benefits from leaner processes, less manual workarounds, and reduced costs.”
Christoph Martinek, Director of OeNB’s IT and customer service department: “Replacing our treasury software landscape was a vital part of our modernization programme. We aimed to phase out our mainframe infrastructure and to use modern, user-friendly software running on widely used operating systems instead. Moreover, a concerted data set for all business areas is a clear advantage compared to the landscape we used until recently.”
Dr. Ralf Schmücker, Managing Director at SimCorp Central Europe added: “It is a pleasure to welcome Oesterreichische Nationalbank to our established global community of clients, which includes several leading central banks. Their decision to transform operations onto a modern automated platform is vital for the bank’s efficiency. The partnership underscores SimCorp’s ability to deliver a scalable and highly automated solution to central banks around the world, delivering them the operational and cost efficiencies needed in today’s market.”
