Month: November 2014

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

As we are not stuck on round numbers, this year we celebrate 16 years of Allevo. We invited our customers, our partners and our team members, in a word, our friends, to join us in these moments of rejoicing.

 

And we invite you now to join us for a few moments down on memory lane. Allevo started with a handful of intrepid IT specialists, armed with courage, patience and determination taking a road that will be neither short nor obstacle free. United by curiosity, interest in what’s new and innovative, they had the desire to bring something fresh and positive in the financial-banking industry.

 

In a man’s life, 16 years may not mean that much. But in the business world and, perhaps especially in the IT sector, 16 years of hard work meant for Allevo enough time to become a recognizable brand among specialists in Romania and abroad.

 

If we were to remember just some of the key moments in Allevo’s life, I would definitely think of:

 

• 1998 – Allevo is born with the goal to make a difference on the local financial market. At that time, we were called Business Informations Systems, a name we used for 13 years
• 1999 – we conclude business alliances with prestigious providers: IBM, SWIFT, Microsoft, Oracle, Infosys, Vision Solutions, Brokat and we become IBM Solution Provider and Microsoft Certified Solution Provider
• 2000 – we start the ISO 9001:2000 certification process and design FMA, a solution providing the real-time resilience of SWIFTAlliance servers
• 2001 – we launch FMA and qBC (a message routing middleware, qPayIntegrator’s precursor)
• 2002 – we obtain the ISO9001 certification under the marks of TGA, UKAS and RENAR and become IBM Premier Software Business Partner
• 2003 – Allevo achieves SWIFT Service Partner level, starts to provide SWIFT services in Central and Eastern Europe and designs qPayIntegrator (payment hub), initially used to connect banks and financial institutions to the national payments infrastructure. Not to mention it gains me as a member of the team 🙂
• 2004 – a very good year! We implement qPayIntegrator in 6 Romanian financial institutions to connect them to the national electronic payment system – REGIS, SENT and SaFIR (corresponding to RTGS, ACH and GSRS), design the AML filtering feature of qPayIntegrator, gain 14 new customers and we organize the first edition of Allevo’s user group
• 2005 – we launch ReconS, a real-time Nostro/Vostro accounts reconciliation solution, providing also a tool for exception management & investigation and become Oracle and MQ Software partners
• 2006 – we launch the liquidity feature of qPayIntegrator and provide services & assistance for SWIFTNet migration phase 2
• 2007 – Allevo launches both the Debit Instruments feature of qPayIntegrator and FMA v2; we also receive the FinMedia e-Impact Award for corporate-to-bank solutions – MACUG
• 2008 – qPayIntegrator becomes the first solution certified SWIFTReady SEPA and we become a first time exhibitor at Sibos, in Vienna
• 2009 – we design the Remit feature of qPayIntegrator, a cost effective payment solutions for remittances management, we achieve CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) Level2, receive the FinMedia e-Support Award for qPayIntegrator, a SWIFTReady SEPA solution, continue exhibiting at Sibos, in Hong Kong and start exhibiting at EBAday, in Vienna
• 2010 –  we launch qPayIntegrator version destined for a micro-financing institution (Dutch customer) and the qPI AML transactions filtering feature; the year we exhibit at Sibos Amsterdam and EBAday Luxembourg
• 2011 – is the year of Allevo official launch, after BIS’ rebranding process, started the year before was completed. This year, we also obtained the SWIFTReady Remit 2011 certification for qPI-Remit and receive the e-Service Award FinMedia for the same solution. We launche qPayIntegrator-T2 (TARGET2 connectivity), designe and implemente qPayIntegrator-TIPc (for corporates) and continue the exhibitor tradition at Sibos Toronto and EBADay Madrid
• 2012 – we receive the e-10 years FinMedia Award for excellence and global performances over the last decade (kind of the Oscar for lifetime achievements), we exhibit at Sibos Osaka and EBAday Edinburgh. But the most important, we launch FinTP and FINkers United, the open source project and the community around it that emerged as the result of more than 2 years of rethinking the Allevo business model
• 2013 – we organize the first two FinTP hackathons and take our new concept to Sibos Dubai and EBAday Berlin
• 2014 – we launch the FinTP code and more than that we sign the first FinTP customer. And as usual, we exhibit at Sibos Boston and EBAday Helsinki. And the year is not yet over.

 

 

 

 

It was also a good occasion to remind participants about the benefits of implementing other features like: SEPA Credit Transfer (Credit transfer transactions processing in SEPA format for RON) and SEPA Direct Debit (Direct debit transactions management in SEPA format for RON), Transaction Enrichment (ensures the transactions data enrichment based on application-defined lists – ex: BIC enrichment from IBAN -, complying with the SEPA Directive requirement), Corporate2Bank (ensures the processing of EUR payment initiation instructions compliant with SEPA rules and schemes, in the corporate-to-bank environment), Trez (allows the automation of treasury flows – FX and money market), ReconS (provides NOSTRO/VOSTRO automatic accounts reconciliation, intraday liquidity reports and integrated exception management) and AML (provides message filtering with detection of possible money laundering transactions), which also had a big track at Sibos this year. We also used the event to announce that, following last month’s MFI workshop, beginning of next year we are organizing a corporations workshop aimed at generating open discussions between the banks and corporations’ representatives.

The news about application updates in the reports and interface areas were very well received. The new FinTP interface will work with any browser and we plan to make it mobile friendly. And that’s just another reason for wanting to migrate to FinTP sooner. As Andreea, our Business Development Manager, said “We are glad you liked the new interface; that means that you will be eager to get FinTP”.

In the last part of the event, it was time for the BOOST project and the FINkers United community to be in the spotlights. And by presenting the advantages and benefits of adhering and participating to this open source community, like the ability to influence projects and development strategies, independence from any software vendor, better TCO and time to market, costs reduction, if I were to mention a few, we renew our invite for all financial thinkers to join.

 

 

 

By Ioana Moldovan, 20 November 2014.

 

This Tuesday, we organized the 25^th edition of Allevo’s User Group. This time, the discussions were focused on feature updates like CDD and RUM for 2015, application updates, Allevo’s interests, including Sibos in Boston and last but not least on our new project BOOST (Banking On Open Source Technologies) and the FINkers United community.

 

Read more impressions from the User Group on the blog.

Descriere

In this issue of our newsletter we invite you to take a trip down on memory lane with us, as Allevo reaches its sweet 16, to find out what FinTP has been doing this fall, to learn how open source changes the way institutions collaborate and accelerates the pace of software, to find out the differences between a digital bank and a traditional one. And these are just a few of the interesting topics we propose this month.

Interview with Allevo President, Sorin Guiman, for the special edition of Piata Financiara magazine “Romania after 25 years”.

Note: article in Romanian

Romania after 25 years – interview with Sorin G…