Banque et Caisse d'Epargne de l'Etat (BCEE) in Luxembourg has implemented SmartStream’s Corona Universal Data solution for complying with US regulatory requirements.
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations requires banks to reconcile and report annual data, and to provide an audit trail for all transactions.
According to SmartStream, where banks work on their own individual systems, manual processes and use of spreadsheets often remain common practice, meaning operational risk remains high.
The Corona Universal Data solution is designed to automatically update custodian data as soon as new data is received.
That data is then reconciled, and an automatic alert is sent to the bank in the case of any errors. The solution also provides a full audit function.
The system is intended to provide better control over reconciliations processing, meaning clients can be better prepared to provide data to the regulatory authorities.
Alex Revelant, head of the securities department at BCEE, said: “As a qualified intermediary, BCEE must fulfil the reporting obligations to the IRS. Our team needs to ensure that the data provided by BCEE (relating to US payments) is in line with the classification of the same payments, reported by each of our custodians.”
He continued: “As each intermediary owns his own system, there is no standardisation of the disclosure, the format of the files or event and the number of fields provided. Each year, the reconciliation was time consuming and in part was performed manually for many weeks.”
“Today, as a result of having Corona, the functional team can focus on the real issues rather than on the reformatting of the files received.”
Christian Schiebl, executive vice president of the Corona business unit at SmartStream, said: “BCEE is a robust and forward-thinking organisation, always looking to make further improvements to their services. Taking this measured approach to help reduce risk, gain more control of custodian data and getting better visibility of its overall reconciliations processing is a significant step in the right direction.”
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