Press Releases
Fiat Finance Selects SunGard for Multi-National SWIFT Payment Connectivity
October 1, 2008 — London, UK
Fiat Finance S.p.A. has chosen SunGard’s AvantGard for SWIFT messaging and connectivity. One of the founders of the European motor industry, Fiat Group will use AvantGard for integrating the payment messaging of its treasury operations to SWIFT and to help improve its existing international payment factory.
This large-scale project will encompass multiple centers across Europe, helping Fiat Finance to improve its visibility and control over company-wide financial flows. The AvantGard Payments solution will be used to capture payments from Fiat’s existing systems, manage the payment workflow and authorization and integrate them with the Swift network. Taking advantage of SwiftNet services to manage its treasury and commercial payments will help Fiat Finance streamline payments processing and exception handling both internally and for its European corporate clients, facilitating the auditing of the payment process in all its phases.
The project will consist of three phases. Phase one will address the treasury payment flows across Swift FIN MT1xx for both unitary payments - the process to administer individual low volume, high value payments rather than on an aggregated level - and manual entries, typically for urgent payments. Phase two, the ‘European Payments Factory’, will address batch payment flows for Fiat entities in France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, United Kingdom and Denmark. Phase three will address the integration of the SWIFTNet Accord Matching service for deal confirmations.
This year and the following will see significant changes in the management of Fiat’s payment process, due to legal and structural changes (European Payment directive and SEPA) and also the availability of standard connectivity platforms such as SwiftNet which is now open to corporates. Choosing SunGard was part of Fiat’s vision to migrate from multi-bank connectivity to a single and standardized SWIFT channel.
Hans Cobben, group vice president for global payments and messaging at SunGard’s banks and corporations business, said, “SunGard is pleased to welcome Fiat to our strong customer community in Italy. AvantGard’s footprint of corporate customers around the world demonstrates our proven ability to meet the needs of corporations both large and small. With SunGard having recently expanded its service bureau offering, we are helping customers like Fiat Finance to reduce the internal infrastructure and administration costs related to the implementation and maintenance of a SWIFT connection. The indirect access model, coupled with SunGard’s existing back-office payments processing technology, now offers customers a secure, auditable, single solution for SWIFT connectivity.”
About Fiat Group and Fiat Finance
Founded in 1899, Fiat is a huge industrial Group with more than one hundred years' experience in the motor vehicle field, designing, manufacturing and marketing cars, trucks, tractors, agricultural machinery, construction equipment, motor vehicle engines and components, and production systems. The Group is present in 190 countries and performs manufacturing and service activities through Operating Sectors, which can be divided into business areas. Fiat Finance Spa (before Fiat Geva Spa) was created at the beginning of 90’s to work as the centralized treasury and in-house bank of Fiat Group.
About AvantGard
SunGard’s AvantGard is a leading liquidity management solution for corporations, financial institutions and the public sector. AvantGard provides chief financial officers and treasurers with real-time visibility into cash flows and increased operational controls around treasury, receivables and payments management. The solution aggregates data for a single view of cash, drives productivity through automation, and fosters collaboration between trading partners. For more information, visit www.sungard.com/avantgard.
About SunGard
With annual revenue of $5 billion, SunGard is a global leader in software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.
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