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REWE Group is the first Serrala customer to use standardized eBAM

The company accelerates its bank account management with standardized electronic messaging

Hamburg, 29 March 2022: In times when finance and treasury teams increasingly work from home, digital and paperless processes become more important than ever before. This is equally true for bank account management. Banks increasingly offer electronic messaging to digitize and accelerate processes, however, usually this is only realized on a bilateral level with individual clients.

In a joint project with Serrala, a global financial automation and B2B payments software company, REWE Group, together with ING, managed to realize a fully standardized electronic messaging which enables it to digitally interact with multiple banks. To this end, REWE Group implemented the Serrala solution FS² eBAM which offers multilateral electronic messaging as a standard.

"We set out to improve and digitize our bank account management and that's exactly what we have achieved with the SAP-embedded solution from Serrala. For accounts switched to eBAM we are able to accelerate our processes by 90%, enhance compliance, and increase security for our bank account and mandate management” described Benjamin Altmeyer, Head of Treasury Process & Application Management at REWE Group the results.

“It is great to see that with this joint project with REWE Group and Serrala, yet another state-of-the-art solution is available for corporations to transform their bank account management into a future-proof, and sustainable, digital solution” highlighted Remko Streng, ING Head of Transaction Services Sales – Germany & Austria, Regional Head Transaction Services Sales CEE a.i.

Dirk Bieletzki, Serrala VP Sales DACH states: “It is impressive how the highly standardized processes and electronic messaging of FS² eBAM proved to be a successful model for REWE Group. Such standardization allows the fast and efficient replication for other companies. The communication involved with account opening, closing, and more becomes a matter of minutes instead of weeks.”

Instead of connecting every bank individually, REWE Group benefits from standardized transfer protocols such as EBICS and SWIFT that are included in the solution enabling the company to connect to any bank rapidly. The corresponding mappings for ISO20022 ACMT-XML formats are pre-set and can be implemented easily with any eBAM ready bank worldwide. The mappings, however, also offer the flexibility to adapt them to customer or bank-specific requirements, within the ISO 20022 message formats. The electronic messaging is not limited to exchanging data for opening, closing, or changing bank accounts, it is equally possible to communicate mandate information efficiently, quickly, and securely.

In a first step, REWE Group is implementing eBAM with ING, who contributed to this innovative solution, driven by its ambition to provide digital services to their clients.

Advantages of standardized electronic messaging:

  • Sending bank account and mandate management requests to the bank, including the required documentation and signatures, takes minutes instead of weeks. Such rapid processes for bank account and mandate management are particularly important for security reasons: communications help increase control and transparency to reduce fraud risks.
  • No more time-consuming implementation of electronic messaging for every single bank connection. Thanks to the standardized eBAM, banks and corporates can communicate 100% digitally.
  • Digitization helps eliminate paper-based processes, enabling secure, transparent, compliant, and efficient bank account management especially when working from home.
  • Companies benefit from enhanced auditability as they have all the information requested by auditors, for example financial annual closings, documents and information readily at hand.

For further details on the project, please go to the success story.

About REWE Group

The cooperatively organized REWE Group is one of the leading trade and tourism groups in Germany and Europe. In 2020, the company generated a total external turnover of around 75 billion euros. Founded in 1927, REWE Group operates with 380,000 employees in 21 European countries.

The sales lines include REWE, REWE CENTER and BILLA as well as BILLA PLUS and ADEG supermarkets and consumer stores, the discounter PENNY, IKI, the drugstores BIPA and the toom Baumarkt DIY stores. The company also operates convenience stores REWE To Go and the e-commerce activities REWE Lieferservice and Zooroyal. The Lekkerland Group comprises the wholesale activities of the business group in the area of on-the-go consumption.Travel and tourism under the umbrella of DER Touristik Group includes the tour operators ITS, Jahn Reisen, Dertour, Meiers Weltreisen, Travelix, Kuoni, Helvetic Tours, ITS Coop Travel, Billa Reisen, Koning Aap, Apollo, Exim Tours and Fischer as well as more than 2,300 travel agencies (e.g. DER Reisebüro, DERPART, Kuoni, Exim, Fischer and cooperation partners), the hotel chains Sentido, Aldiana, Calimera, Cooee, and the direct tour operator Prijsvrij Vakanties.

About ING

ING Wholesale Banking Germany comprises the corporate clients business of ING in Germany and is part of the ING Group’s worldwide Wholesale Banking network with offices in more than 40 countries. ING Wholesale Banking offers banking services for large, internationally operating corporate clients. In addition to traditional banking products such as Corporate Lending and Transaction Services, ING is a world leading name in structured & project financing concepts, complemented by capital market solutions. Further, ING has a strong focus and expertise in the fields of Sustainable Finance and Innovation.

About Serrala
Serrala is a pioneer in financial automation with a global track record of nearly 40 years, currently serving over 2,500 customers around the globe.

Through our precision-engineered, award-winning suite of finance automation applications that use advanced and emerging technologies to automate all working capital related processes from Order to Cash, Procure to Pay, Cash and Treasury, we free the office of the CFO from the tech, mindset, and process shackles of the past.

We empower leaders to create a quality-driven autonomous finance machine that enables finance departments to deliver unmatched operational excellence where working capital is continually optimized, insights are available for real-time situation visibility, and risk can be better understood and managed, positioning your finance organization for success.

 

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