Postgirot Bank has been appointed EUR clearing bank for the Eurogiro community

Postgirot Bank has been appointed EUR clearing bank for the Eurogiro community Postgirot Bank has in competition with several other European banks been appointed clearing bank for the Eurogiro community's payments in euro. - We are very proud to be entrusted with the responsibility to act as clearing bank for the Eurogiro community's payments in euro, says Per-Eric Skotthag, CEO of Postgirot Bank. For many years, we have invested considerable funds and resources to develop both the technical performance as well as the quality of our international payment operations. Postgirot Bank has for many years continuously invested in building an efficient and highly automatized infrastructure for international payments processing. The Eurogiro members have now decided to concentrate their euro clearing to one bank - Postgirot Bank. As a result, the 33 banks and postal financial institutions that are using the Eurogiro system will reap the benefits from economies of scale in their international payments area. - As a clearing bank, we are able to create considerable benefits for the customers, says Per-Eric Skotthag. The customers of the financial institutions which participate in the Eurogiro system will, as a result, get fast and efficient payments at competitive prices. Postgirot Bank becomes clearing bank for the payments in euro of the Eurogiro members effective 1 November 2001. Eurogiro is an electronic communications system for 33 banks and postal financial institutions in 31 countries and is used for private and corporate customers' cross-border payments. In 2000, the number of payments processed through Eurogiro increased by 40% to 12 million. Eurogiro started as a European cooperation for international payments between the members of Eurogiro but has today evolved into a business which connects four continents. For further information, please contact Ms. Annelise Jansson, Head of Staff, Communications, Postgirot Bank, tel. +46 8 781 5053 or +46 70 981 00 17. BACKGROUND NOTES FOR EDITORS: FACTS ABOUT POSTGIROT BANK Postgirot Bank - the international payments bank in Sweden Postgirot Bank was founded in 1925 and the first cross-border payment was sent in the same year. Since then, Postgirot has developed a very efficient infrastructure for international payments. Between 1995 and 2000, the international volumes more that tripled, amounting at present to 140 billion SEK. The growth is based above all on increasing SWIFT volumes, besides a favourable development in the volumes transmitted via Eurogiro. Almost 200 skilled and experienced specialists in payments, IT, product development, trade finance, foreign exchange, credit and risk and other functions are supporting the international area of Postgirot Bank. In recent years, Postgirot Bank has captured the commercial clearing business in SEK of several important international financial institutions. This is partly due to more focussed marketing efforts and partly due to the excellent quality of the international payments traffic processed through the Bank. In general, Postgirot Bank is able to achieve a straight-through-processing level of well over 90%, as evidenced by the quality awards which are issued regularly by correspondent banks. This is considerably above the average level of the international market. In 1999, Postgirot Bank made a 15 MSEK investment in the system supporting the international operations, resulting in a doubling of capacity and higher efficiency. Postgirot Bank is well prepared to handle even larger volumes in the coming years. At present, Postgirot Bank handles one of four international payments in Sweden. Margareta Eidensten is head of International since 1997. FACTS ABOUT EUROGIRO NETWORK A/S Eurogiro was created in the late 1980's by a co-operation of European postal organisations to offer their clients a high quality, cost efficient cross-border payment network. Based in Denmark, twenty minutes from Copenhagen, the network is owned by 16 postal organisations, and has cooperation agreements with over 30 financial institutions. Eurogiro links more than 100 million accounts and 150,000 bank and postal outlets and constitutes one of the largest and fastest growing cooperations in the payments market. The network now connects Europe, Japan, North Africa and the USA. Links into domestic clearing institutions and a number of strategic alliances, notably Deutsche Bank and Western Union, secures a virtual global coverage. Eurogiro works in partnership with Compaq, Equant, Datamann. ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2001/10/30/20011030BIT01010/bit0001.doc http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2001/10/30/20011030BIT01010/bit0001.pdf