Pegasystems and Finextra survey finds more than 60% of banks identify lack of
business agility, IT resources and technologies as the biggest obstacles to
delivering better customer service
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-- PIN Payments Blog
Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the leader in business process management, and
Finextra, the respected information source for the financial technology
community, have found that 63% of banks recognize that delivering Electronic
Bank Account Management (EBAM) services is a great opportunity to win new
clients and better serve existing ones. However, the recent survey which the
organizations conducted also revealed that due to a lack of agility in bank IT
departments, over 45% of them believe that it will take more than a year to
undertake the necessary process and system reengineering to enable it.
The research results outline the key challenges both banks and corporate clients
face in the areas of account opening and management. Both corporations and banks
still utilize very manual and paper-based processes, creating an inefficient,
error-prone environment. SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial
Telecommunication, and a small group of leading banks, corporations and IT
vendors, have been working to help address the problem through the development
of electronic bank account management standards.
"Through our work on the EBAM steering committee, and our long history in
providing BPM capabilities to the Corporate Banking community, we understand the
frustration of banks and corporates who struggle with the manual and cumbersome
process of opening, closing and maintaining bank accounts," said Adi Reske,
Senior Product Marketing Manager for Financial Services at Pegasystems. "On one
hand, corporates need a better handle on their accounts and a standard way to
communicate with their banks in this area. On the other, banks are finding it
hard to respond quickly to initiatives like EBAM, due to lack of agility and IT
resources."
The survey also found that more than 40% of corporate clients are willing to
move some of their business to other banks for better customer service, and 15%
expect all of their bank providers to offer EBAM services in the short term and
are adding it to all of their new RFPs.
"With the right technology to deliver business processes and rules, solutions
like EBAM, or even bigger solutions around on-boarding, shouldn`t take more than
three to six months to implement," Reske added.
"The survey results confirm the preliminary findings we collected in late 2007,
which triggered the launch of the EBAM project at SWIFT, which was based on
requests from members of our community," said Richard Delvaux, Senior Corporate
Market Manager at SWIFT, in charge of the project. "Although the topic is not
new, it remains very high on everybody`s agenda. Best evidence is the tremendous
support our EBAM working group has received from the community of banks and
corporates, enabling us to move quickly to deliver the first EBAM XML standard
messages in less than one year. And this is just a start; immediate next steps
to collect all expected benefits will include adoption and integration, on bank
and corporate sides. Therefore, the role of vendors is critical. This is why it
was key for us to involve them in our project in its early stages."
For a copy of the report, please visit http://www.pega.com/link/EBAMreport.
About Finextra
Finextra Research is the leading newswire and online community for the global
financial technology industry, with 3 million page views and 110,000 unique
visitors per month. More than 26,000 financial technology professionals
worldwide receive our free daily and weekly e-mail newsletters. Finextra
additionally operates its own conferences and exhibitions on a range of topics
under the Finexpo brand, and collaborates with the Euro Banking Association to
produce the annual pan- European payments conference EBAday. Finextra is also
the official online news vendor for Swift`s annual financial technology
conference Sibos. Finextra additionally hosts an online professional networking
and blogging service for the global financial technology industry -
www.finextra.com/community.
About Pegasystems
Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA), the leader in Business Process Management, provides
software to drive revenue growth, productivity and agility for the world's most
sophisticated organizations. Customers use our award-winning SmartBPM® suite to
improve customer service, reach new markets and boost operational effectiveness.
Our patented SmartBPM technology makes enterprise applications easy to build and
change by directly capturing business objectives and eliminating manual
programming. SmartBPM unifies business rules and processes into composite
applications that leverage existing systems -- empowering businesspeople and IT
staff to Build for Change®, deliver value quickly and outperform their
competitors.
Pegasystems` suite is complemented by best-practice frameworks designed for
leaders in financial services, insurance, healthcare, government, life sciences,
communications, manufacturing and other industries.
Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Pegasystems has offices in North America, Europe
and Asia Pacific. Visit us at www.pega.com.
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Pegasystems Inc.
Brian Callahan, 617-866-6364
brian.callahan@pega.com
or
PAN Communications
Erica Burns, 978-474-1900
eburns@pancomm.com
Twitter: @Pegasystems
