Contract extensions and new business with cantonal banks

A bank’s IT systems need to be highly available and secure as well as capable of rapid modernisation. At the same time, costs must be kept as low as possible and complexity must not detract from the bank’s core business. In response to these challenges, many Swiss cantonal banks chose to migrate their IT to the Avaloq or Finnova banking systems and outsource the associated business operations at the end of the noughties. These included the Cantonal Bank of Aargau, Cantonal Bank of Basel and Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank.

For more than 10 years, Swisscom has been running and developing the core banking systems for these three cantonal banks, as well as providing additional services, such as operating IT workstations and handling standardised business processes, such as payment transactions or securities processing. All three banks have now extended this long-standing partnership for another five years.

The Cantonal Bank of Basel and its subsidiary, Bank Cler, are also entrusting two new contracts to Swisscom. The first of these will see the bank relying more heavily on the Swisscom Enterprise Service Cloud for its IT infrastructure. The second will see Swisscom take on a large new business process outsourcing contract from 2021, alongside its securities processing function. Benjamin Hohler, Head of Banking Operations at the Cantonal Bank of Basel, explains this decision: “Swisscom’s high-quality service and customer centricity are impressive and make them the ideal partner for the Cantonal Bank of Basel and Bank Cler. I am also convinced that our collaboration with Swisscom will enable us to further develop our transaction processing going forward.” Swisscom’s long-serving Head of BPO Operations, Toni Di Domenico, is delighted at the news: “It is great that the Cantonal Bank of Basel and Bank Cler are returning to us. Our trading processing volumes will increase by 15 percent as a result.”

When it came to extending their contracts, the decisive factors for all three banks were the attractive, affordable overall package and their trust in a long-standing partner. “Thanks to Swisscom’s contribution, the Cantonal Bank of Aargau is now on a stable technological and organisational footing, ready to face the future challenges of digitisation,” explains Stefan Weber, Head of IT Services at the Cantonal Bank of Aargau. “Innovation safeguards our existence and secures tomorrow’s earnings. IT has a crucial role to play in this. Furthermore, a robust IT operation is the key to providing a reliable service to our customers,” says Patrick Sulzer, Head of IT at the Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank.