Idea Bank, Poland’s most innovative bank supporting the country’s dynamic and vibrant entrepreneurial culture, announced its plan to fully integrate the Idea Cloud platform with e-administration systems, allowing customers to manage their company’s relations with the government online.
The first one, PUE ZUS, the social security management portal, has been integrated with Idea Cloud earlier last month.
The aim of the ‘Digital Gateway to Administration’ project is to enable entrepreneurs to contact various public administration offices via their bank account. This will be possible through the integration of Idea Cloud (Idea Bank’s e-banking platform) with e-administration systems: PUE ZUS (a platform by the Polish Social Security Institution), CEIDG (Central Evidence and Information on Economic Activity) and a tax platform.
‘Keeping in touch with public administration is a very important and time-consuming part of running a business. Entrepreneurs have a number of duties towards the state: they need to submit declarations and tax returns, pay their social security contributions - all in different deadlines and using different forms. We would like to support our clients in this communication with the authorities, making it possible carry out as many administrative duties as possible at a convenience of one’s home, with the use of e-banking’ says Jarosław Augustyniak, Idea Bank’s CEO.
In December last year, the Idea Bank has been licensed by Poland’s Ministry of Digitisation to be the only private company able to authorise the use of the so-called Trusted Profile, allowing for digital communication with the authorities. The free-of-charge service, along with the qualified electronic signature, are Poland’s only available systems of signing documents in the public administration systems.
Clients with Trusted Profiles can use Idea Cloud’s new tab: the e-services. It enables them to connect to PUE ZUS and download their social security report, which includes among others the information about the payer, insurance coverage, contribution basis, and reminds about next payments. The ZUS report is one of the documents qualified for use in official procedures when applying for a loan or participating in a public tender.
The target system will be designed to display certain information once the user logs in, e.g. remind him about due payments to ZUS or ZUS declarations and tax return one should file or submit. Importantly, if an entrepreneur is unable to make mandatory payments due to lack of assets, Idea Bank will automatically provide him with a suitable account balance.
‘This will not only simplify communication with public administration, but also increase business security. One day of delay in payment to ZUS results in losing one’s sickness insurance privileges for as many as three months. With our new system in place, we will help entrepreneurs avoid these problems’, says Augustyniak.
Idea Bank hopes that in next months Idea Cloud will become the third acceptable tool for confirming e-identity, next to the qualified electronic signature and the Trusted Profile. It means that confirming identity of a person connecting to any public administration system (such as PUE ZUS or CEIDG) would be possible through e-banking - the way online payments are authorized today (link-by-link).
‘We welcome the fact that the Ministry of Development and the Ministry of Digitalization are both very determined to fully implement the Digital Economy strategy. Using banking technologies to confirm citizens’ identity is one of its core elements. We believe that through productive cooperation with these institutions we will be able to quickly provide Idea Cloud users with subsequent tools. Our current and future clients find it very important to be able to register a company online’, says Jarosław Augustyniak. The Digital Gateway to Administration project was developed in cooperation with Poland’s leading IT solution provider, e-Point.
Idea Bank’s survey shows that SME owners are fully aware of the benefits associated with the ability to perform administrative duties online. 86% of them think that e-services help save time, but as many as 57% of the respondents have not yet acquired a Trusted Profile an authorised electronic signature. Only 3% of active companies have been registered online.
There were 1,15m ePUAP accounts in October 2015. These data includes all citizens, so most probably entrepreneurs have contributed to that number only partially. At the same time there were only 490,000 Trusted Profiles.
Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE:IDA), Idea Bank supports Poland’s dynamic entrepreneurial culture by offering its clients a 360-degree assistance on all stages of business development: from the registration of a new company with the authorities, to bookkeeping, and financial advisory in the first phases of growth.
The bank specialises in financial services for small-scale entrepreneurs and provides them with different tools that make it easier to run a business. The bank has come up with multiple innovations that were awarded and appreciated worldwide, such as the Mobile ATM, Idea Hub new branch model or Idea Cloud e-banking system that also serves as a small business management platform.