Callataÿ & Wouters

News

June 2008Callataÿ & Wouters positioned in Gartner’s magic quadrant 2008
Gartner, a leading business analyst, has recently released its yearly publication of the “International Retail Core Banking Magic Quadrant”. The Gartner quadrants represent a positioning of vendors for a specific sector, based upon an in-depth analysis of the vendor’s solution, service offering and several customer interviews.

Callataÿ & Wouters is positioned for the first time in this report, and it is gratifying to be located in the Challengers quadrant, with a compelling list of strengths, and a high rating of our ability to execute.

Strong differentiators Gartner mentions include Callataÿ & Wouters’ market-responsiveness, especially in non traditional areas for core banking vendors (e.g. mainframe, pre-paid cards), our built-in regulatory compliance and our failure free track record. Furthermore the report emphasizes the excellence in customer experience we realize thanks to a process-oriented sales life cycle, including close follow-up from pre-sales through live production. The SAP partnership receives positive mention as well.

This endorsement of our strategy and execution motivates us to further fulfil our mission towards our customers and strive to provide excellent products and services.

May 2008Callata˙ & Wouters, SAP, and Leading Banks Launch Industry Architecture Community

The Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) – led by world's top financial institutions, industry software providers, and integrators – seeks to establish service-oriented architecture (SOA) that can help banks shorten the time to market for new products, adapt more quickly to changing customer needs, and reduce the cost and time for new IT implementations.
Certain that SOA can revolutionize the banking industry if it is built on a cooperative model with shared standards, BIAN has chosen an open collaborative structure that uses the combined knowledge and experience of community members to develop banking-specific standards. Callata˙ & Wouters is a founding member of this collaborative network – along with SAP, Microsoft, Swift, ING, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Standard Bank, and several other institutions. In the two years of preparation that preceded the launch of BIAN, the group has defined multiple standard business services and their building blocks.
Callata˙ & Wouters will feed the further results of this collaboration into its R&D department – pursuing innovation where the industry needs it most, while continuing to support industry standards.

September 2007SAP and Callata˙ & Wouters Collaborate to Provide Integrated Banking Solution

Partnership Focuses on Core Operations for Midsize Banks
SAP and Callata˙ & Wouters today announced a collaboration to offer an end-to-end core banking solution for midsize banks to build a business process platform, based on SAP software and technology. The solution is designed to help banks reduce complexity, increase flexibility, lower costs and leverage leading core banking functionality to unify business processes using an integrated platform.

May 2007Callata˙ & Wouters and Sterci put their expertise together

Callata˙ & Wouters has recently signed a strategic partnership with Sterci - the leader in STP solutions for financial messaging, application integration, reconciliation, and data management. Parties have agreed to embed the intelligent message builder STEFORM in THALER - the core banking system of C&W. This partnership aims at allowing THALER messaging module to leverage on the STEFORM standard messaging libraries in a service oriented architecture SOA.
This strategic evolution will enable C&W to adapt quickly to any market initiatives and new regulations, thanks to Sterci, with the evolutions of market format standards (SWIFT, FIX and SEPA). This will result, for the client, in reduced maintenance costs.
The first application is SEPA messaging that is generated through STEFORM. Both FIX and SWIFT will also shortly be available.
Besides STEFORM, this partnership gives encouraging perspectives: Sterci product portfolio also contains STEMATCH (reconciliation & exception management), STELINK (Financial messaging hub) and KEYDATA (multi-sources market data selection and acquisition) are quite natural extensions of THALER that are very interesting for C&W clients.

March 2007Callataÿ & Wouters displays brilliant results for 2006 and further reinforces its status as a global player in IT solutions for banking.

With a progression of almost 20% in turnover to over 46 million euros, a result before tax of 6,10 million euros, a rise of 11%, and a net profit at 4 million euros, representing a growth of 23% compared to 2006, Callataÿ & Wouters confirms it is in excellent health.
In all its locations, including New Zealand, Amsterdam, Paris and Dubai, its constant commercial activity has paid off: in 2006, no fewer than eleven new clients chose the Thaler software package. These are remarkable figures for this very specific business sector.
The full satisfaction of its existing clients is also part of the success of Callataÿ & Wouters. Numerous new projects have been carried out for these banks, illustrating their confidence in us, which in some cases goes back many years. This satisfaction is the result of an ongoing sense of commitment and our total respect of budgets, deadlines and quality.
Callataÿ & Wouters currently employs more than 400 people in 12 countries throughout the world.

February 2007Rabobank starts Bizner Bank in the Netherlands with Thaler

This month in the Netherlands, Rabobank launched a new internet bank aimed at SMEs. Bizner Bank, as it is called, is first in its category. It was launched in record time (in less then 9 months), thanks to the Thaler banking software package and the specialised consultants from Callata˙ & Wouters, to whom the Dutch group entrusted the task of implementing the new system.
This is not the Rabobank group's first experience with the Belgian software editor. Indeed, the group has chosen Callata˙ & Wouters as its strategic partner for all direct banking installations throughout the world. This new success is in fact the fourth in three years, and follows the launch of banks in Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.
No doubt this is a partnership that is not about to end, having made such good headway. So, keep watching this space ...

December 2006Callata˙ & Wouters and Clearstream Services launch a joint SaaS offer and announce their first common client.

Callata˙ & Wouters, Belgian market leader and specialist in IT solutions for banking and finance, and Clearstream Services, supplier of IT solutions for the financial sector, have signed a strategic partnership agreement for the launch of an integrated SaaS (Software as a Service) offer on the market.
The two companies now offer a full range of services, perfectly suited to the requirements of banks: implementation of the Thaler software package in Clearstream Services infrastructures; 24-hour monitoring of production; support for users; regulatory, operational and technical changes; Disaster Recovery Center.
Callata˙ & Wouters and Clearstream Services are both certified Professionals of the Financial Sector (PFS). This certification constitutes the sine qua non condition for proposing their services in the Luxembourg banking sector.
The first common client for the two companies has already been announced. No doubt this first success, achieved just a few weeks after signing their strategic partnership, will be the first of many in the banking world.

October 2006Callata˙ & Wouters steps up the pace of internationalization and opens a subsidiary in Dubai

In September, Callataÿ & Wouters, the specialist in banking software, took a new step in its international expansion process when it opened a subsidiary in Dubai. For the Belgian company, this step is an important strategic development, given Dubai’s pivotal position in the Middle-Eastern banking sector.
Callataÿ & Wouters has enlisted an experienced sales team to take charge of this new site. Their first task will be to develop the firm’s reputation, through sustained marketing efforts and intensive prospecting.
This decision follows a preliminary study, the results of which identified promising perspectives for C&W solutions, in particular the latest version of Thaler tailored for private banks: Thaler Wealth Management.

March 2006Rabobank chooses THALER to launch a new internet bank in New Zealand

After the very successful launch of the online savings banks Rabobank.be and RaboDirect Ireland, the Rabobank group decided to open a third Internet bank at the other side of the world, based on Callataÿ & Wouters' solutions. Since February 14th, RaboPlus New Zealand is running with Thaler and its Internet banking tool Kyudo.
Because of a low cost structure as a result of full automation and centralisation of shared services, Raboplus.co.nz can offer their customers the best interest rates in the market. The formula seems to work, after only four weeks more than 3500 new customers applied.
Despite of the distance and the fact that partners from all over the world were involved, the project was carried out in less than six months and within the estimated budget.   
This project once more underlines the choice of the Rabobank group to rely on quality packages to standardize the IT-systems of its International Direct Banking subsidiaries. It is actually Callataÿ & Wouters' sixth Thaler reference within the Dutch group that is using the software for several banking activities across the world.
This implementation clearly shows that Thaler can be adapted very easily to a new country. It is a powerful tool allowing international groups to very quickly roll-out new banking activities worldwide.

January 2006Delta Lloyd Bank Belgium chooses Thaler

At the end of 2005 the bank Delta Lloyd Belgium took the decision to use THALER – the back-office system edited by Callataÿ & Wouters – for its loan and cash certificate activities.
This choice confirms that the group is very satisfied about Thaler. Actually, the solution was initially implemented to deal with the different activities of the Bank Nagelmackers – the private banking subsidiary of Delta Lloyd bank that has been absorbed in the meantime.
This new project shows that Thaler’s large functional coverage allows to perfectly meet the specific needs of private and retail banks.