Pioneering SEPA Migration

by Thomas Klein, Senior Consultant, International Cash Management, UniCredit, and Stefan Scheidgen, Head of Cash Management and Accounting, Deutsche Post AG Renten Service

Deutsche Post AG Renten (or Pension) Service is a major pension management outsourcing company based in Germany. Inspired by the German government’s commitment to the European Payments Council to be a frontrunner in SEPA migration, DPR embarked on a project to migrate its existing payment methods for making pension payments to SEPA instruments in 2009. This article outlines some of DPR’s experiences of implementing SEPA and its advice to other corporations and other organisations on how to do so successfully.

Although the project had a political motivation, DPR recognised that there would also be a variety of benefits to migrating to SEPA. For example, cross-border payment costs would be reduced, and in some cases, payments could even be processed same-day. In addition, legacy payment applications could be phased out, reducing the cost and resourcing required to maintain the IT infrastructure.

In November 2009, the project to migrate approximately 300,000 payments each month from DTA to SEPA through the Bundesbank clearing system was first conceived. By April 2010, DPS had designed a proof of concept to ensure the infrastructure, project and test plans met the project objectives.

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