Easy Connections

Fides Brings Corporates Even Closer to their Banking Partners

When clients publicly acclaim a vendor for its work in an area that is nothing short of essential, it’s hard not to pay attention. The TMI Awards judges certainly found this to be the case when choosing Fides as the winner of the Bank Connectivity Award for 2021.

For Thomas Stäubli, Head of Group Treasury, Rieter, Fides is a business partner that has delivered in spades. The system itself, he says “is straightforward and practical”. Having implemented a completely new treasury IT landscape covering more than 30 subsidiaries globally, multiple applications meant bank reconciliation at corporate level was challenging. This is why, states Stäubli, “we are happy to have centralised our bank connectivity and payments with Fides as our sole middleware solution with connections to SAP”.

Rieter’s success is far from an isolated example. Between mid-2020 and mid-2021, the company onboarded and extended a total of 259 projects. For bringing together banks and their corporate clients in such a comprehensive and fuss-free manner, Fides is the well-deserving winner of TMI’s 2021 Technology & Innovation Award for Bank Connectivity, building on its 2020 victory in this category.

Industry connections

Fides, an independently operated subsidiary of Credit Suisse, works closely with every major bank, and partners with a wide range of TMS and ERP vendors, consultants and fintechs. In doing so, its bank connectivity solutions integrate with all the leading TMS and ERP offerings, or can be used as a stand-alone system. They are primed to eliminate hours of manual spreadsheet work and concerns around file formatting, multiple data sources, and regulatory compliance.

Fides Electronic File Transfer (EFT) for payments, and Fides Account Reporting System (ARS) for bank messaging, can both be managed by Fides, integrated with a TMS or ERP front-end, or accessed online as part of the vendor’s SaaS Fides Multibanking Suite.

Today, Fides offers virtually every payment and messaging format that a company could possibly need and is equipped to implement any additional formats required. For bank reporting, messages can be converted and made available in a variety of standard formats, with the full suite of payment formats on tap. In addition, Fides is the only provider to offer a hybrid service bureau set-up, allowing corporate customers wishing to use the SWIFT network the option of using its own BIC in place of, or in addition to, their own BIC.

In addition to extensive sanction-screening support, Fides runs a broad range of validation checks over all payment and statement types, ensuring the highest level of data integrity and security. All data contained within the Fides application is fully encrypted, with token support, file control, IP filtering, and digital signing applied for external transactions.

Any account

Fides ARS enables clients to quickly view overall liquidity and account statements at any time. By consolidating all account information, including balances, transactions, and booking texts, and providing it centrally through a set of user-friendly dashboards, manual processes are no more. The solution converts all messages into a standardised format, verifying account statements, offering format selection and options for data downloads.

Any message

Fides EFT serves as a central location to manage, execute, and monitor all payments across multiple banking relationships. It simplifies the global transfer of individual and bulk payments to banks, consolidating financial messaging, meaning any message can be sent and received through one portal.

Suite success

The modular Fides Multibanking Suite gives visibility into and control over bank connections and transactions with secure access from any location. Administration and approvals are controlled through a single tool. Dynamic grids enable customisations of user view and the easy application of filters through a mobile-optimised sign-off process, multi-linked visualisation of payment statuses independent of bank or channel, and more than 400 customer-specific improvements. This one-stop shop includes Fides ARS, Fides EFT and a growing ecosystem of partner solutions.

Progress assured

Fides continues to evolve the functionality, feature sets and UX of its products. The Fides Hybrid Model – a multi-network, dual BIC service option – is a case in point. Based on treasury requirements and communication channels, Fides will recommend, establish, and maintain the optimal multibanking connectivity configuration for clients.

Fides’ statistics remain impressive:

Straightforward, robust, consistent

It’s clear that Fides’ clients appreciate the delivery of straightforward and robust connectivity with their banking partners, giving them the visibility they need, exactly when they need it. It’s perhaps no surprise then that Fides has consistently grown its customer base, even during the pandemic. And it may also come as no surprise to this growing legion of clients that TMI is once again delighted to award Fides the Technology & Innovation Award for Bank Connectivity.

Commenting on the win, Andreas Lutz, Chief Executive Officer, Fides, said: “With Fides bank connectivity solutions, treasurers eliminate hours of manual spreadsheet work and concerns about matching file formats, compiling information from multiple data sources, and regulatory compliance. We’re thrilled to receive the TMI Technology & Innovation Award for Bank Connectivity for the second year in a row, as it demonstrates our commitment to continuously helping our clients achieve their goals.” 

Simon Kaufmann, Chief Revenue Officer, Fides, added: “We are very proud to be honoured with the TMI Technology & Innovation Award for our multibank connectivity solutions. Fides is committed to helping companies around the world obtain the cash visibility and management they need to run their business efficiently and productively. Whether it’s a company just starting out and not yet ready for a TMS, or a large multinational connecting to multiple banks and hundreds of accounts, we believe our clients deserve the best solutions and customer service, and that’s what we aim to deliver.”