ABN AMRO has announced that it is to provide outsourced and white-labelled trade services to Groupe Caisse d'Epargne (GCE), one of France's largest financial services institutions.

Under the agreement, GCE customers will be able to access a version of the Dutch bank's MaxTrad trade portal, which amongst other things deals with several aspects of letter of credit (L/C) business.

White label

The agreement will, according to ABN AMRO, enable GCE to compete more effectively for trade business and build its market share by providing to its clients the state-of-the-art services the Dutch bank claims to have invested so heavily in.

MaxTrad will be white-labelled with a full French translation. This will enable GCE to retain its own brand identity while offering their customers online access to a broad and expanding range of trade finance products and services according to ABN AMRO.

With 4,700 branches and 55,000 employees, CGE is the third largest banking network in France. It has around 26 million customers. Group affiliates include Financière OCÉOR and Banque Palatine.

ABN AMRO's ambitions

ABN AMRO is clearly intent on developing its trade finance specialism according to managing director of the bank's transaction banking group, Daniel Cotti, who explains what he believes to be the benefits for the bank's latest large-scale outsourcing customer.

"Trade business is an area that requires significant ongoing investment and product innovation to maintain and grow market share. Groupe Caisse d'Epargne can benefit from ABN AMRO's long-term commitment to providing traditional and emerging trade services and solutions, whilst significantly reducing their fixed costs," he said

Outsourcing history

By signing major white label trade services agreements in 2004 with Allied Irish Bank and Barclays (DC World News 21 May 2004), ABN AMRO staked a claim to be one of the leading banks in this field.

The bank says however that its new MaxTrad portal responds to declining amounts of L/C business (DCWorld News 25 February 2005).

L/C functionality

The MaxTrad portal provides access to L/C and collections initiation, amendment, and reporting functions. According to ABN AMRO, users of MaxTrad can initiate import L/Cs faster and more simply and access a complete database of their L/C information.

Users can prepare L/C applications and electronically transmit them to the bank, as well as cutting and pasting information in a way that the bank says virtually eliminates re-keying errors.

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