Helvetia Italia

Innovation and security, the duo for Treasury and Helvetia Italy

In 2008, Helvetia addressed Piteco with the need to optimize its finance processes to obtain an analytical forecast of collection and payment flows, control the banking conditions for the financial incomes and charges calculation, automate the transition to accounting by eliminating transitory accounts and manage the complexity of intercompany transactions.

Over the years, the increase of the banking operations volume – 1,420,000 in 2020 – determined the need to optimize the payment orders management processed by the Treasury and forwarded by various Offices, even so to govern the authorization flows on the basis of the powers of attorney and proxies in force.

The high volume of paper payment mandates handled at that time, required a use of specific and  latest generation applications capable of satisfying many different requirements of a single process player. The dematerialization of payments and their securing was an operational priority for an insurance company of international standing.

 

Franco Muzzolon, Head of Treasury Gruppo Helvetia Italia

From payment orders managing tool to a dashboard dedicated to global management of all disposal flows, to and from domestic and international banking systems: Piteco Corporate Banking Communication tool manages precisely and time-to-market the flows generated by different offices – Human Resources, Tax, Accounts Payable, Technical Accounting, Investments – each with its own specificities in terms of authorization management.
Furthermore, the solution’s flexibility allows an automatic management of the outcomes regarding the non-successfully settled claims (vital for an insurance company that must comply with settlement constraints established by the regulatory body), management of unpaid SDD flows, error alerts coming from the system and banks interaction that require an immediate Treasury’s attention and managing, automation of the daily account statements loading flows.
Communication with banking counterparties is also well managed by the CBC tool: Piteco enables Helvetia Group Treasury to manage multiple connectors at the same time: to the CBI proposing bank, to a provider dedicated to SDD management, directly to a passive bank, for backup purposes too.

To ensure the information protection within the processes of generating, authorizing and payment slips dispatch to the banking system, it was necessary to comply with the authorization, delegation powers and the security policies. Piteco CBC has met these requirements by digitizing and managing all payment procedures in a dedicated platform, guaranteeing compliance with company policies, and preserving the authorization powers of the involved departments.
The security standard chosen by Helvetia Group Treasury was at a very high level: avoiding the concentration of enormous responsibility activities in a single figure and avoiding of charts and sensitive data modification, for fraudulent purposes. Piteco has satisfied these requests by activating the “double administrator” function so that the operations carried out by the first administrator are put on hold until the second administrator validates or rejects them.

The signature books and paper supports are gone, the archive has been digitized and most of the repetitive manual activities have been scheduled: at 7 am the data can already be processed on the Treasury systems. My colleagues have benefited the most from this application, they spared time for activities with a higher added value: fine tuning, process control and anomalies management.

The great ability to customize the adopted solution has qualified Helvetia Group to implement new payment methods made available by banking institutions, and to offer a better customer experience. For example, the activation of the circular bank transfer – a flexible solution that also allows cash settlement – has made it possible to eliminate frauds while reducing bank charges. Besides, the B2P Bancomat Pay solution will soon be available, and will allow instant payment transactions – 24/7 – up to 10,000 euros using the beneficiary’s mobile phone number and tax code, with an even higher level of security compared to the normal Sepa Credit Transfer..

Thanks to Piteco’s solution, Helvetia’s Treasury will soon be able to use the latest innovations in terms of security of payments to third parties. It will be possible, through special APIs, to activate a call to the banking system for a real-time verification – for banks offering this service – the match between beneficiary’s IBAN data and tax code.
Finally, to guarantee compliance with the limits established by the liquidity risk management policies, both locally and at the Group level, and the control of the effects generated in terms of capital absorption (ref. Solvency II), Piteco will empower Helvetia Treasury to manage the daily account statements in Swift MT942 format, in addition to the usual CBI channel.