22-05-2012 KBC signs up for Arkelis’ Advanced Messaging Hub
Mechelen, Tuesday May 22, 2012 – Arkelis, a fully-owned subsidiary of financial messaging provider SWIFT, today announced that it signed up with KBC to build a new financial messaging platform for their SWIFT messaging. With this agreement, Arkelis is implementing a solution for yet another Tier 1 financial institution.
KBC is an integrated banking and insurance group catering mainly for retail, SME and midcap customers in its home market Belgium and certain countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Installing a SWIFT messaging hub for the KBC Group, making use of the newest technologies, enhancing and improving the current functionalities and reducing the maintenance costs, were drivers for KBC to initiate a new financial messaging project. Time to market, future market flexibility and the ability to meet customer demands being the primary requirements, Advanced Messaging Hub (AMH) was the perfect fit.
AMH is a modular, multi-network, high-volume financial messaging solution that can be tailored to an individual customer’s needs. Next to the ability to implement their project faster than initially envisaged, AMH is able to meet the stringent security and resilience requirements of KBC.
Hans Cobben, CEO of Arkelis states: “This deal proves the value that Arkelis brings to the leading financial institutions helping banks manage the complexities and maintainability of their financial messaging infrastructures, various standards and interoperability challenges, while at the same time enabling the bank to minimize costs.”
“The fact that we no longer have to worry about adaptations in this highly evolving business, means risks will be limited. The fact that Arkelis is part of SWIFT and adheres to its “Failure is not an option” mindset, was definitely one of the reasons to choose for AMH”, said Pierre Sleewaegen, Department Head at KBC.
About Arkelis
Arkelis has become a fully owned SWIFT company in 2010 to play a major role in SWIFT’s 2015 strategy implementation, with a specific focus on SWIFT’s high-volume customers. The company provides solutions and services addressing the need for enterprise wide multi-network messaging of top tier customers in the financial services industry. Arkelis uniquely combines the inherent quality and global support services of a standard-setting, global leader with the focus and speed of an independent technology innovator.
About SWIFT
SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 9,700 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 209 countries. SWIFT enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. SWIFT also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest.
About KBC
KBC is an integrated multi-channel bancassurance group, catering mainly for retail, SME and local midcap customers. It concentrates on its home markets of Belgium and certain countries in Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary). Elsewhere around the globe, the group has established a presence in selected countries and regions.
KBC provides banking, insurance and asset management products and services via its integrated distribution channel consisting of bank branches, insurance agents and brokers and the Internet. KBC’s headquarters are located in Brussels (Belgium), the heart of Europe. The group employs more than 47 000 FTE (nearly 60% of whom in Central and Eastern Europe). KBC is listed on NYSE Euronext Brussels.
