Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC have signed five year outsourcing contract extensions worth a total of £315 million with the UK cheque and payments processing joint venture they jointly own with IT firm Unisys.
Established in 2000, Intelligent Processing Solutions Limited (iPSL) provides outsourced cheque and credit clearing services for major banks in the UK. Unisys is the majority shareholder, with Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC all holding minority stakes.
The venture provides large-scale, outsourcing services for the UK banking sector, covering cheque processing, image archive and retrieval, "lock-box" services, reconciliation and other related back-office functions.
Royston Hoggarth, chairman, iPSL, says: "By using a centralised, shared-services model that delivers significant economies of scale, iPSL enables our client banks to process payments with greater cost-efficiency than they could achieve individually."