Overview
Established in 2001, UBL UK is a UK regulated bank offering personal and business banking services including savings accounts, international money transfers, residential real estate mortgages and treasury services. With a customer base spanning personal banking, business banking, real estate lending, trade finance, treasury and money transmission, UBL UK specialises in serving customers with international financial needs. Processing around 100,000 payments each year, reliable and efficient Swift connectivity is a critical part of its operational infrastructure. The relationship with Aqua Global goes back more than a decade, through major milestones including the bank’s migration to ISO 20022, with the Aqua Global team on hand throughout to provide expertise and continuity.
Challenge
UBL UK set out to modernise its payments and reconciliation infrastructure as part of a wider digital transformation programme, looking to replace ageing, manual processes with a more scalable foundation to support ambitious growth targets. When the bank made the decision to move away from its existing core banking solution to Essence, an API first platform, modernising payments and reconciliation became a key part of the project. With around 100,000 payments flowing through each year, the bank needed infrastructure that could support it as it scaled, through greater automation, resilience and control, while moving on from the manual, file based Swift processes it had relied on.
The Solution
Aquila’s multi channel messaging solution modernises the payments and reconciliation infrastructure surrounding UBL UK’s new core banking environment, replacing manual, file based Swift processes with API first connectivity, automated IBAN and BIC validation and near real time payment processing. The platform delivered the following key benefits:
- Messaging, payments and reconciliation unified on a single platform, purpose built to scale as the bank grows
- Manual, file based Swift processes replaced with API driven connectivity
- Automated IBAN and BIC validation, reducing errors and helping the bank avoid missed cut off times and associated penalties
- Faster, more automated information flows between systems, laying the groundwork for future customer experience improvements as the bank expands its digital banking capabilities
- The Proactive Infrastructure Managed Service providing dedicated monitoring and expert support through the first year of operation
Sayful Ahmed, Head of IT, UBL UK
“When we made the decision to move away from our current core banking solution to Essence, an API-first platform, modernising payments and reconciliation was a key part of the project. We process around 100,000 payments each year, so we needed infrastructure that could support us as we scale through greater automation, resilience and control. Having worked with Aqua for more than a decade, we did not need to look any further. Moving from E2Gen to Aquila was the natural choice.”
Cian Fernando, CEO, Aqua Global
“Core banking transformation does not stop at the core. To realise the full value of an API-first banking environment, banks need payments, messaging and reconciliation infrastructure that can move at the same pace. UBL UK’s migration to Aquila shows how banks can modernise the critical last mile of payments, reduce operational risk and create a more scalable foundation for growth.”
