Welcome to the SMA Summer 07 newsletter. The last few months have been very busy for everyone involved with SWIFT and we therefore postponed our usual spring client seminar. We will be scheduling our autumn seminar just after Sibos, and hope to see you there.

You are part of an ever increasing SMA client base, and we are pleased to count you as an SMA customer. We have more than doubled the number of Bureau clients since last year, with new users and migrations taking the number of live customers on the bureau to over 60 at the start of July 07.

With this increase in work, and the Phase 2 migration, you may have noticed a few new members of staff at SMA. Our consultant’s team is still the world’s largest and most qualified of any SWIFT Service Partner. New consultants joining in the last 12 months include Eileena Lennox, Zainab Valiji and Michael Kibedi. We also have a products manager, Michael Edmonston (formerly of City Networks) and a new bureau manager, Robert Rule (who joined from HSBC). Our bureau team is strengthened further by Rob Marke (formerly our IT administrator). Christine Thompson and John Summon are our newest recruits in our internal admin and infrastructure team.

Nearly all customers are now prepared for the SWIFTNet Phase 2 migration with infrastructure upgrades completed. By popular request, we’ve included a guide to the next steps of Phase 2 in the following section. As always, we’re here to help with the transition, so please speak to your account manager for more information.

Customer demand has also prompted SIDE International to release a new SafeWatch product for Profiling. Profiling extends the reach of SafeWatch into full transaction and activity monitoring, providing you with a more sophisticated AML and risk management tool. Several SMA customers have been waiting for this new product and we recommend you take a look.

You may have read that SIDE International has recently been acquired by Eastern Networks (also a SWIFT Business Partner). SMA has a long and fruitful relationship with Eastern Networks, so we look forward to furthering the partnership with the new combined company.

Finally, our website www.sma.co.uk has had a long overdue update. If you have any feedback or comments on the new website, or on any of the topics in this newsletter, please let us know by e-mailing news@sma.co.uk

Best regards,
Guy Griffiths

With the infrastructure upgrades almost complete, we now look to the migration from BKE (Bilateral Key Exchange) to RMA (Relationship Management Application). The RMA will be activated to record your correspondent relationships in 2008, so do not delay; now is an ideal time for you to learn about RMA through SWIFT Education, Roadshows, and when an SMA consultant is on-site.
By your C2 date, you should be ready to demonstrate live RMA readiness, i.e. be able to send and receive messages using PKI authentication. Your actual live usage will depend on your correspondents’ readiness. Throughout 2008, both BKE and RMA will be used for authentication.

The first half of the year has been concentrated on ensuring all bureau customers migrate to SWIFTNet Phase II successfully and on time. I am pleased to report the upgrade was a success and completed as planned in May.
Alongside SWIFTNet Phase II, the opportunity was taken to refresh the Service Bureau infrastructure with new servers, an updated operating system and updated middleware – providing improved performance, resilience and security.

The number of SWIFTNet Services actively been used by clients has increased in 2007. In addition to SWIFTNet FIN, FileAct and Accord, SMA are proud to announce its first customers adopting SWIFTNet Funds and CREST on its fully managed infrastructure.

In addition to SIDE Safewatch, Reporting, Watchdog and Viewer, SMA has now implemented SIDE Duplicate Detection (DDA) on the bureau – providing peace of mind to subscribing clients that duplicates are not being sent or received.

The range of value-add services on the bureau has also increased in 2007. Microsoft BizTalk usage has increased, offering a range of date translation, transformation and enrichment services - improving STP for many customers without a SWIFT enabled back-office. We are rolling out SunGard Intellimatch to provide a powerful and flexible reconciliation option for bureau clients.

For securing file transfers, Sterling Commerce’s Connect:Direct has increased the options for back office integration as well as providing enhanced security. Similarly, secure FTP is due to be implemented on the bureau in 2007.

Two contingency tests have been successfully completed to date this year, for internal and external connectivity. Several more are planned for the remainder of 2007, and clients will be invited to participate.

Thanks & best regards,
Robert Rule
SMA Bureau Manager

SIDE has recently released an extension to their popular SafeWatch Filtering software. Profiling is a transaction monitoring solution which will complete the SafeWatch AML product suite. As financial regulations become tougher on customer transactions, SafeWatch Profiling offers a reasonably simple flexible application, with predefined import formats, business rules and reports at a reasonable price.

For customers already using SafeWatch Filtering, the detection interface is the same, and the analyser uses the same principles. Transaction monitoring works by building rules and setting up risk scoring against accounts and/or customers profiles. For more information, please contact your SMA Account Manager.