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SWIFT

Standard and Secure Platform of Global Financial Messaging


SWIFT, Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a co-operative established by and for the global financial industry in 1973. Since its establishment, SWIFT has been providing worldwide secure and standard financial messaging services and interfaces for 8,141 financial institutions in 207 countries. In order to enable its customers to automate and standardize financial transactions, lower costs, reduce operational risks and eliminate inefficiencies from their business operations, SWIFT is devoted to setting up the industrial standard and providing opportunities for its customers to create new business opportunities and revenue streams.

So far, SWIFT has a record of success in terms of traffic growth, price reductions, security, reliability and resilience, standards-setting and expansion into new markets.

The Only SWIFT Regional Partner in Taiwan


Ares International Corporation has strived for the SWIFT-related implementations and all the SWIFT standards and cooperated with SWIFT closely. In 2002, ARES became SWIFT Business Partner formally and was certificated as SWIFT Service Partner in Jan. 2003. Ares provides Taiwan-based financial institutions with professional consultant services, including the installation of SWIFT Products, the planning and implementation of hobbing for overseas branches, the planning of disaster backup, and so on. Based on abundant SWIFT experiences and professional knowledge, Ares has developed various solutions including SWIFT Messages Integration, Funds Automation solution, Global Cash Reporting solution, and so on. Up to now, Ares has assisted over 80% banks in Taiwan in implementing, maintaining and upgrading SWIFT infrastructure. In 2008, Ares turned into a SWIFT Regional Partner in Taiwan and our professional service is proven to be SWIFT Ready Service.

Brand new Prospects for Financial Industry


Currently, SWIFT FIN messages are used generally by global financial institutions in foreign exchanges. In recent years, SWIFT has developed more new SWIFT Solutions with XML standard to provide its customers with more automated and real-time transaction messages. So far, SWIFT Solutions includes SWIFT Funds, SWIFT Cash Reporting, SWIFT Trade Service Utility, SWIFT for Corporates, and so on. SWIFT widely provides solutions for funds transactions, cash management, international trade, and even the financial management of corporates to improve efficiency and reduce risks.

Payment Cash Reporting
  • Real-time account information and optimized balances
  • Improved risk management
  • Shorter reconciliation cycle
  • Earlier exception handling
  • End-to-end standardization
Exceptions and Investigations
  • Fully automate up to 60% of your payments enquiries
  • Reduces your enquiry cost
  • Improves your customer service
  • Benefit from new online services
  • Generate additional revenue
Trade Trade Service Utility
  • A centralized matching and workflow engine to support timely and accurate matching of trade-related transaction data
  • Increases visibility along the supply chain
  • Helps identify trigger points
  • Allows staging of product portfolio development
  • Enables reuse of data
  • Reduces risk
  • Lowers investment costs
  • Respects current corporate business practice
Treasury Accord
  • Confirmation matching: MT300, 305, 306, 320, 330, 340, 341, 360, 361, 362, 392
  • Reducing operational risk
  • Lowering total cost of ownership
  • Ease of access via GUI and/or API
  • Improving operational efficiency
  • Increasing straight-through processing (STP)
  • Reducing settlement risk
Securities Funds
  • Automate the process of Subscription / Redemption / Switch
  • Reduce operational costs and minimize operational risk
  • Improve customer service
  • Build a scalable platform for third-party distribution
Corporates Corporate Access
  • Provides a single, secure, standardized, global messaging and communication platform to access to worldwide banks
  • Reduce costs and risk
  • Improve auditing processes, ensuring easier compliance
  • Increase straight-through processing (STP)
  • Optimize cash and liquidity management
  • Streamline operations
  • Focus on continuity and security
  • Global reach

A total solution for fund automation


For a long time, the funds industry has substantially relied on fax and paper documents for manual order processing. It is estimated that the mistakes from manual process and the waste of financial manpower cost over US$ 100 million. Owing to too much manual process, inefficiency is the greatest challenge for the development of funds investment industry.

The industry is valuing more and more the standardization and automation of funds management process, with Asia and Europe among one of the key areas seeing the trend. ARES-FSTP for SWIFT Funds is the first solution for the automation of foreign funds subscription, redemption, switch orders, and online confirmations between foreign fund houses and the distributors through SWIFT standard XML messages. This solution not only improves the efficiency of backend procedures and service operations, but also provides a standard platform to accelerate the automatic dealing process while reducing costs and risks.

Ares has cooperated with SWIFT for many years; therefore, not only does it has thorough understanding of SWIFT standards and technology, but masters XML technology. In the implementation project of the fund automation system in Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank, we cooperated closely with Taipei Fubon and Fedility, and ARES-FSTP went live smoothly in Nov. 14, 2006. ARES-FSTP can handle the automation process of funds distribution and reach STP operation standard. This is a landmark for the internationalization of Taiwan’s financial industry. In addition, Taipei Fubon is the first bank that implements fund automation system successfully in Asia and inspires Taiwan banks to be more confident to catch the trend of fund automation synchronously and to raise global competitiveness of Taiwan’s financial industry.

Main Functions

  • Subscription/Redemption/Switch order automation through SWIFT (XML)
  • Subscription/Redemption/Switch orders through auto-fax (Optional)
  • Subscription/Redemption/Switch Confirmation
  • Receive Statement of Holdings messages
  • Receive Price Report messages
  • Authority control of system users

Benefits

  • Trade with fund houses with SWIFT messages as a substitute for fax
  • Offer auto-fax function to replace manual fax operation and reduce manpower cost
  • Confirm orders with SWIFT messages instead of using telephone calls
  • Instead of manually keying in confirmations, ARES-FSTP receives Confirmations and writes them in the current fund system to reduce manual operation cost and risk. Users can know the expected value day of redemption money precisely to do the following operations
  • Fund houses send holdings information with SWIFT messages to reduce manpower cost
  • Fund houses send NAV information with SWIFT messages to improve the informational time effect and completeness
swift

Customers

Bank of Kaohsiung, Bank of Panhsin, Bank of Taipei, Bank of Taiwan, Bank SinoPac (BSP), Cathay Life Insurance, Cathay United Bank, Chang Hwa Bank (CHB), China Development Industrial Bank (CDIB), Chinatrust Commercial Bank (CTCB), Citibank Taiwan, Cosmos Bank, COTA Commercial Bank, EnTie Commercial Bank, The Export-Import Bank of ROC, Far Eastern International Bank (FEIB), First Commercial Bank (FCB), Hwatai Bank, Industrial Bank of Taiwan (IBT), Jih Sun International Bank, King's Town Bank, Landbank of Taiwan, KGI International Commercial Bank (Originally Mega Bank), The Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank, Sunny Bank, TaChong Bank, Taichung Bank, Taipei Fubon Bank, Taiwan Business Bank (TBB), Taiwan Cooperative Bank (TCB), Taiwan Shin Kong Commercial Bank, United Bank of Taiwan,Yuanta Commercial Bank, etc.