Belgian banking group Dexia is implementing liquidity management technology from New York-based Aleri to prepare its treasury and payment operations for the introduction of EU-wide real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system, Target2.
The bank will use Aleri's Liquidity Management System (LMS) to support intraday cash, liquidity and collateral management operational requirements across all entities and currencies.
Aleri says its technology automates time-consuming, manual processes to allow institutions to focus on cost-effective liquidity strategies that reduce operational costs.
Philippe Thonnard, head of control and support, financial markets, Dexia Bank Belgium, says Target2 should enable the bank to manage liquidity more effectively across the different entities of the group, but to achieve this the bank had to replace existing systems that are not integrated enough to be efficient.
He says the Aleri technology "enables a completely integrated management of the liquidity, up to and including the management of collateral at the central bank".
Hervé Lefèvre, sales director at Aleri, says banks are recognising the requirement for completely changing the way cash, liquidity and collateral need to be managed across the enterprise, linking more closely the treasury, payments and risk management operations.
"At the same time they do not want to undertake major changes of their payments infrastructure which are the results of decades of investments, which would result in projects which are too expensive and risky, and so incredibly difficult to business justify. This is exactly the equation that LMS has been built to resolve," adds Lefèvre.