Intercope has done it again – the successful ISO27001 recertification

Intercope is proud to announce that the existing ISO27001 certificate has been extended for a further three years.

In December 2022, Intercope’s ISO27001 certification was due for renewal. The re-certification audit took place in October and Intercope passed without any deviations, extending the certificate for another three years. The certification confirms that the existing Information Security Management System is compliant with the requirements of the internationally recognised ISO27001 standard.

IFU-CERT issued the new certificate on the 1st of December after processing the audit reports and the mandatory quality assurance.

During the last three years, maintaining a Management System for information security proofed to be very beneficial for Intercope and its customers. This Managament System has made customer audits easier and faster to evaluate, as all required information is derived from the management system and its processes. Using an international standard – as ISO27001 is – ensures responses to questions are accepted across all markets.

Supporting its customers is key for Intercope. To signal this, Intercope is planning to obtain the ISO22301 Business continuity certification in 2023. With this step, the company wants to ensure that not only information, but business operations are secure and continuously improved for the benefit of Intercope and its customers.

Intercope at Sibos 2022 – an update from Amsterdam

The Intercope team attended Sibos in Amsterdam – with 9000 other members of the global banking operations community.

What did we spend the week talking about? Here’s a summary:

The business agenda was dominated by payments and its infrastructure. Nobody really wanted to talk about anything else – bankers are rightly concerned about ISO 20022 migration programmes (the plural is deliberate). They’re interested in Instant, Real-Time or Faster schemes as they roll out around the world, and even digital currency gets more coverage than we had expected. They are also rightly concerned about whether the infrastructure they use to participate in these schemes is fit for purpose. So – what were people saying?

– ISO 20022 is a Big Deal. Market Infrastructures, from Target2 to the Federal Reserve, are monitoring the readiness of their participants – and finding a huge variation, from “ready” to “what is ISO 20022?”. SWIFT is reporting positively about the readiness of the CBPR+ community – meaning ALL banks and financial institutions worldwide – and optimism is rarely out of place in a trade show like Sibos. Realism, however, is also very useful. Since Sibos, the European Central Bank has declared a delay to its Target2 migration date, from November until April 2023, to give the laggards in Europe a few months to catch up. The details “behind the scenes” may well leak out over the coming weeks and months; in the meantime, our customers are getting ready for changes to their own ISO 20022 rollout planning, confident that their infrastructure is ready for them.

– Faster payments schemes – including “instant” and “real-time” – are common now. The questions are about the next steps – when the new schemes take over from the old, when the old schemes can be properly retired etc but also about the impacts of instant payments that haven’t yet been fully played out. For example – instant payments mean instant settlements – which implies real-time liquidity management and possibly, an intra-day time value of money. Today, by comparison, borrowing money means paying interest – but only if you borrow it overnight. In future, borrowing money for a few hours to settle intraday instant payment obligations might also cost money – but the infrastructure (systems, standards and rulebooks) necessary to do that at scale does not yet exist. Interesting!

– Transaction Manager is the core deliverable of SWIFT’s strategic push up the value chain. It will start getting rolled out next year, but it will be a while before it starts adding significant value to the payments process. SWIFT plans to start extending it into the world of Securities operations, and there was some evidence on show of how SWIFT intends to lay the groundwork for this (adding a “Unique Transaction Identifier” to securities trade confirmations, very much like the UETR on Payments, so as to be able to identify messages related to a single transaction and report status, like SWIFTgpi does for payments). Watch out for Securities View over the coming year.

More informally, most “corridor” conversations of the week were all about one thing – how great it was for the community to be able to meet in person again, so that matters of business substance can be surfaced, discussed and debated with dozens of leading practitioners, in a huge variety of formal and informal contexts.  Sibos is back – long live Sibos!

INTERCOPE achieved ISAE3402 Type II certification for a large service bureau

The importance of service providers in the financial market is growing continuously. To allow for a common standard, the ISAE 3402 certification assures customers and service users that a service provider has adequate internal controls and risk management. Two types of reports are defined: Type I documents the organization’s controls, the type II report confirms that the controls have been applied effectively over a period of time.

Intercope has achieved an ISAE 3402 Type II attestation to meet a customer requirement.

This complements the ISO27001 certification that Intercope received in 2019. It is a testament to the efficient and certified controls in place at Intercope.

Intercope’s BOX has SWIFT attested for Cross Border Payments and Reporting Plus (CBPR+) for ISO 20022

BOX is providing ISO 20022 validation, management, transformation and importantly migration/coexistence with the existing MT based standard for UK CHAPS, Euro TARGET2, HK CHATS, SG MEPS with US high-value – FED & TCH to come. BOX is now implementing these transformations through configuration instead of coding and customers can manage these transformations in the BOX GUI with the latest BOX release (24.3).

By 2025, all high value payment systems of all major reserve currencies will have moved to ISO 20022. But for now, the end of 2022 marks a big milestone for everyone involved, when ISO 20022 will come into action and run alongside MT (FIN) in coexistence until 2025.

Intercope joins the IBM Cloud for financial services ecosystem as a key technology provider

Intercope is excited to announce that the long-standing partnership with IBM will now also involve the financial services cloud. IBM has designed an industry-first platform, the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, collaborating with Bank of America and BNP Paribas as anchor tenants.

Some 30 technology providers joined the ecosystem around the IBM cloud for financial services to ensure customers receive the highest standards and security. In this highly regulated industry, IBM is counting on the ecosystem to fully unlock all the benefits of the cloud.

Intercope is proud to be part of this exciting development.

Read the full IBM press release and find out more about the ecosystem.

Intercope extends cloud capability to support Amazon Web Sevices

Intercope’s financial messaging solution, BOX Messaging Hub, has extended its offering through an additional cloud service – Amazon Web Services (AWS). BOX has successfully been deployed to the cloud solution and gives customers a secure, off-site and cost-effective solution, that will give significant advantages in time to market.
Given the speed and reliability with which new infrastructure and services are implemented on the cloud, it has become a viable alternative to on-premises solutions for transaction banking. Intercope can now run its BOX Messaging Hub – a multi-network solution for all inter-bank messaging – fully on AWS, or use a hybrid solution that combines AWS and on-premises data centres, to save time and money on hardware, while also improving security. AWS is one of the most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platforms. “Our relationship with AWS reflects the evolving infrastructure and technology footprint options that our community must be provided with to ensure continued growth and success. Implementing BOX on AWS is another step in our continued commitment to our customer’s technology and business road map,” says Daragh Kirby Head of Sales and Marketing at Intercope.

Intercope’s BOX available on Microsoft Azure

PRESS RELEASE

Hamburg. Intercope’s financial messaging solution, BOX Messaging Hub, has successfully been deployed to the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service. Making the software available through a public cloud solution is a big step towards providing customers with a secure, off-site and cost-effective solution while having a significant impact on time to market.

With the fast development in cloud infrastructures and technologies, the cloud has now become a viable alternative to on-premise options in transaction banking. Substantial cost and procurement time savings for the required hardware, as well as deploying to a secure data centre managed by Microsoft, are key to the value of using the cloud. BOX Messaging Hub is a multi-network solution for all interbank messaging. The impact on setting BOX up for business will significantly improve with the ability to stand up new test environments quickly today, while providing a future production deployment option off-site as customers’ cloud strategies evolve.

Microsoft Azure is a highly available, secure and agile open-cloud service with a global reach. The cloud service takes advantage of Microsoft’s state-of-the-art energy-efficient server facilities and a highly secure system while being linked by one of the largest networks in the world – spanning over 140 countries.

“This is a very exciting step for BOX and our customers. The tests for using Microsoft Azure as a public cloud platform have been very successful and we will be going live this year – in 2020”, says Olaf Grossler, Head of Implementation at Intercope.

BOX User Forum 2020 cancelled

In light of the global outbreak of COVID-19 and the associated challenges, Intercope has cancelled the 10th BOX User Forum, scheduled to take place in Germany from 25th to 27th of May 2020. This decision was made in line with current regulations and advice from the German health authorities.

We deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause. We trust you understand our decision. Everyone’s health and safety is our main concern and we hope that this situation will be behind us very soon.

We hope you and your families stay safe.

If you need further information, please get in touch with our event team.

Intercope launches BOX Academy

Training courses BOX solution

Interope has announced the opening of its highly anticipated BOX Academy, offering professional training classes for users working with or maintaining BOX at customer sites. The week-long training sessions – running from Monday to Friday – can be held at a customer’s choice of location or at the Intercope headquarters in the heart of Hamburg.

The Academy offers modules on BOX Installation and BOX Basic Configuration, enabling technical people to install, configure and operate a BOX environment. Attendees will receive thorough training including practical hands-on sessions on installing and configuring BOX with the support of the trainer. These modules are planned and arranged around customer schedules. The courses can run on consecutive weeks or with a break in between. Additional modules to cater for a wider audience and to support further stages in the work with BOX are in development.

Interested in the BOX Academy? Come and graduate with us!

Learn more about the BOX Academy here.

Intercope achieves ISO27001 certification in record time

 

The ISO27001 certification is setting standards to ensure information security is provided at the highest level. It is the golden standard to show that appropriate security processes are in place.

In order to meet customer requirements and future market standards, Intercope started the certification process in November 2018. The team worked through all requirements, improved existing processes where needed and put on-going training procedures for all employees in place.

Intercope received the certification in December 2019; making it through all set up stages and audits. “We set ourselves a strict target to finish the certification process by end of 2019 and were delighted that we managed it without any outstanding issues. This was possible within such a short timeframe because “information security has always been core to Intercope’s product development”, says Arwed Tschoeke, Compliance Manager at Intercope.

Intercope has a strong background in security related achievements. In December 2017, Intercope became one of the first SWIFT software vendors to be certified by SWIFT for CSP with completion of customer reference confirmation for FIN, FileAct, InterAct and RMA.

First BOX User Forum Americas was a great success

Intercope was proud to host the first ever BOX User Forum Americas in December 2019, welcoming 23 participants from 11 institutions. The Forum took place in the heart of New York’s financial district, just a stone’s throw away from Wall Street.

The goal of the forum was to bring Intercope’s current Americas customers as well as industry experts and other like-minded individuals from a number of Tier 1 institutions together to discuss the latest BOX and industry topics. The time was well spent on highlighting challenges being faced by financial institutions today, and how BOX could remedy a number of these challenges. One of the main points on the agenda was the move to ISO20022 and how BOX could mitigate the level of risk perceived as we move into the coexistence phase of MT and MX formats by using the translation services built within the solution.

A number of questions were also raised in regards to staying truly operational as we move into a world of instant payments and more stringent availability SLAs either in the cloud or on-premise. CSP was still at the forefront of attendees’ minds with discussion on how you truly secure the cloud and what BOX can offer in terms of a fully certified product attested to all mandatory and advisory controls.

To give attendees an understanding of Intercope as a company, the team showcased the different locations Intercope operates out of around the world today, and the size of the customer base in each region. This was followed up by showing how the User Forum in Europe is run to really bring the large customer community together on a yearly basis. In 2020, the BOX User Forum in Europe is celebrating its 10th anniversary, expecting over 100 participants.

This was then followed up with an overview of how Intercope provides a superior level of customer experience from case/call management through to relationship management on a daily basis, this was solidified by testimonials provided by CITIgroup and Commerzbank attendees.

A couple of highlights from the evening were the participation in the ISO 20022 translation demo which really showcased the power of the solution and the benefits it can provide to all institutions, also the fantastic meal and discussions that took place after the forum with a number of attendees and the Intercope experts.

Interope and the User Forum team are very excited to host the next event in 2020. Continuing the great discussions and providing Americas customers with face-to-face meetings beside the usual working environment.

99 % reduction of customer payment failure rates

Following the successful introduction of Intercope’s BOX product for all their FileAct traffic to ensure SWIFT CSP security compliance, one of the UK’s top 4 banks saw a large reduction in the number of customer payment failures.

Inbound file failures were down to 0.02%, and to less than 0.01% for all their EBA SEPA traffic – a 99% reduction from what they were previously. 

This significantly reduces the workload for the Operations teams at the bank and provides their customers with a better payments experience. 

BOX Messaging Hub as a platform for outsourcing of SWIFT infrastructure – Commerzbank and equensWorldline form a strategic partnership for Payments Processing

In a separate contract, signed earlier, Commerzbank will also outsource its Financial Messaging SWIFT Infrastructure to equensWorldline. This highly available, secure and scalable platform for Financial Messaging is based on a new partnership with Intercope and its BOX Messaging Hub. The Financial Messaging Service is fully CSP-compliant and can be used by financial institutions of all types and sizes. By outsourcing this sensitive and mission-critical environment to equensWorldline, Commerzbank is distinguishing itself as a frontrunner, tier-1 global bank.

Read the whole story on the Worldline Blog.

Fast security compliance through next generation financial messaging

Together with equensWorldline, a subsidiary of Atos, INTERCOPE created the first-ever fully CSP-compliant highly secure and scalable Financial Messaging Service for financial institutions of all types and sizes, including tier 1 banks.

Read the whole story on the Atos blog.

7th BOX User Forum hosted by DZ Bank in Düsseldorf

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