BearingPoint's Abacus platform taken up by Raiffeisen Bank International
Raiffeisen Bank International has confirmed it will leverage BearingPoint’s RegTech platform Abacus in the New Year. The consulting firm’s tried and tested offering will be used to help Raiffeisen meet its growing regulatory requirements, following the launch of MiFID II in January 2018.
Over the past two decades, regulation has expanded on multiple fronts – in particular accelerating following the international economic crisis of 2008 – and with landmark legislation such as the GDPR rapidly approaching, will continue to do so in 2018 and beyond. As well as the famous General Data Protection Regulation, financial constraints placed upon lenders and risk controls are also set to increase, so organisational compliance is now one of the top items on the agenda of most businesses, in order to avoid crippling fines. This is especially the case in financial services, where regulation is a key way of keeping the institutions running smoothly and minimising risks.
Against this backdrop, early on in the new Millennium, international management and technology consultancy BearingPoint began leveraging insights and expertise from management consulting to start providing its clients with solutions for dealing with regulatory requirements. The firm, which has its roots in KPMG Consulting and the now defunct Arthur Andersen Consulting, has been helping clients in the financial services sectors for decades with improving their reporting and compliance operations. The firm’s consultants saw huge potential to improve the technology landscape in the market.Now, as BearingPoint prepare for a huge year for their RegTech offering, the firm has unveiled Raiffeisen Bank International has selected Abacus for its transaction-based reporting needs. Raiffeisen is one of Austria’s leading commercial and investment banks, and employs almost 50,000 people. The bank serves over 16 million customers through more than 2,000 business outlets – mostly in Central Europe. BearingPoint announced that Raiffeisen will use Abacus/Transactions to submit the daily reports, according to the requirements of the MiFID II and the accompanying MiFIR. The product is based on the proven Abacus platform, offering synergies by using one software solution consisting of several modules to support different types of transaction-based reporting. The layer structure gives the customer the flexibility to use the modules individually or in combination with other Abacus/Transactions modules.
MiFID II, which is touted as a major game changer for financial institutions, was originally scheduled for implementation from January 2017 – however delays saw its enforcement pushed to the start of this year. Now, the sequel to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which updates a number of rules from the original to improve the transparency of the European financial market and strengthen the protection of investors, has finally come into effect.
Fariborz Nourani, Head of Division Head Office Operations at Raiffeisen Bank International, said, “As an important player in the financial market, we need to meet the whole range of transaction-based reporting requirements. With ABACUS/Transactions, we have found a software which can be used for various reporting types. This is time-saving, cost-effective, and will make our work much easier in the future, since we have to prepare and deliver the data only once.”
Robert Bosch, a Partner at BearingPoint, added, “We are proud that one of Austria's leading commercial and investment banks has opted for ABACUS/Transactions. Regulatory requirements for banks are constantly changing, and when coupled with the growing complexity of financial products, our software solution helps customers successfully master these challenges. With the RBI project, we continue to drive our international growth strategy.”
In 2017, BearingPoint launched a partnership programme for Abacus. The RegTech partnership, first announced in Germany, is likely to have an international rollout foreseen in due course. The suite of regulatory and risk technology solutions initially attracted five consulting firms – d-fine, Deloitte, ifb group, KPMG and PwC – who became the first companies on-boarded as partners.