In January 2019, a SWIFT direct connection project between Otis Electric Elevator Co. Ltd. and Bank of China (BOC) successfully completed the payment and reconciliation of Chinese inland suppliers, marking the new stage of cooperation between Bank of China and Otis's cash management business.
With the deepening of globalization, more multinational companies have concentrated their treasury management models and chosen to arrange the funds of the group through cash management services. SWIFT is an important way to achieve such management. The so-called SWIFT direct connection means that the bank uses the SWIFT platform to connect directly with the enterprise clients and sends and receives messages to help customers realize automatic payment and reconciliation. It provides a management service offering single-point access and global coverage.
Otis Electric Elevator Co. Ltd. is a Chinese subsidiary of the United Technologies Corporation of America. It is one of the largest subsidiaries in the world in terms of new elevator orders and the greatest number of elevators. It is also one of the world’s largest manufacturing plants, with 24 global R&D centers.
Otis is engaged across the research, design, production, and sales of elevators, escalators, and associated technology, and provides services including installation, repairing, maintenance, renovation and technical consultation. It has numerous business partners in China, with large trading scale and frequent revenue and expenditure. As a large multinational conglomerate, Otis’s parent company hopes to use the SWIFT platform to establish a unified standard SWIFT direct channel for its global companies and banks to achieve standardized and automated payment processing.
With the continuous expansion of Otis and the steady increase of its business volume, the transactions between enterprises and suppliers and manufacturers are increasing, and United Technologies was keen to roll out SWIFT direct connection for automated payment and reconciliation of its business in China, to help centralize and refine its management of funds.
In order to meet the business needs of Otis and improve the cash management service experience, BOC set up a special working group immediately. During the start-up, BOC offered its professional product knowledge and thoughtful business services to help set up online SWIFT connection, from the messaging about the service to the system docking, and from the demand transformation to the formal commissioning of the project.
Otis cooperates with BOC to apply SWIFT direct connection technology in cash management services and send and receive messages through the SWIFT platform. Clients can complete thousands of external payments at one time by simply operating within one financial system, which then updates the payment status in real time according to the feedback from BOC, and informs the relevant business personnel of the payment process to improve the payment transparency.
For reconciliation business, clients match the payment on the previous day with the MT940 reconciliation message sent by the BOC to complete reconciliation, which ensures the integration, centralization and efficiency of the customer’s financial management.
The comprehensive BOC SWIFT direct connection supports all kinds of in-row transactions, inter-bank transactions, cross-border transactions, and more. It maintains strong innovation, keeps up with various business developments, optimizes transaction processing methods and supports GPI remittances.
It also supports more than 10,000 transactions at the same time, helps enterprises to improve the business rate of automatic processing, increases cash flow visibility and efficiency of fund management.
Risk management is aligned with the complete business process of BOC, and the detailed emergency response mechanism guarantees that every business can receive timely response and processing. BOC's staff in cash management have profound product knowledge, strong implementation capabilities and business ethics, allowing them to offer full guidance support and meet the needs of clients, which has improved project quality and won the praise and wide recognition of customers as well as the market.
Over the years, BOC has been committed to the development of its global cash management business, providing corporate customers with domestic and foreign currency and integrating global financial services home and abroad. In the future, it will continue to adhere to the concept of “technology-led, innovation-driven” development, relying on leading technical support, professional service teams and talents to further enhance financial service capabilities and strive to become the preferred bank for cash management for customers.