The Royal Bank of Scotland has successfully piloted electronic Bank Account Management messages and transactions with IBM, using Swift's eBAM Central Utility. The eCU is expected to be in full production by the end of 2012, with the test version currently under evaluation by other project partners such as BNY Mellon, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and seven corporates including BT and General Electric.

The eCU creates a single multibank platform for multinational companies and correspondent banks to manage their bank accounts electronically, capitalising on the ISO 20022-approved bank-agnostic XML standards that have been developed collaboratively under the auspices of Swift. A centralised database stores all the necessary bank and country specific account information from which eBAM instructions covering the opening and closing of mandates and so forth, can be produced. All instructions will comply with the agreed rules and standards and use Swift's 3SKey personal digital identity solution in an attempt to ensure strong access control and secure eCU transactions.

IBM created account opening and maintenance requests in the Netherlands and the US using standardised XML messages, during the recent pilot with RBS. The international technology firm and multi-national corporation signed these messages using digital signatures and sent them to RBS via the Swift eBAM web portal.

RBS was the only bank based in Europe to take part in the Swift pilot. It hopes the eventual full production version of the centralised utility will cut out the inefficiencies of paper-based account management processes and allow large corporates to connect to the bank directly and simply via the Swift communications channel.

Commenting on the test run, Stephan Vandewiele, head of global client services at RBS Global Transaction Services, said: "We are delighted with the success of the pilot. As a result, we are now defining the next steps to provide eBAM to our clients. The feedback from IBM has been very valuable and positive. They can see that, once in operation, such a service will allow them to gain efficiencies globally, which will also enhance the control and visibility of their accounts." 

As part of the pilot, RBS has also recently tested account openings in Germany, France and the UK - all of which have been successful - added Vandewiele.