LONDON, June 25 /PRNewswire/ --

- Research indicates innovation is key to off-setting compliance costs

An IDC report on the Single European Payments Area (SEPA) compliance
efforts across Europe has found that 'SEPA fatigue' is starting to emerge
across the financial services community, leading to increasing risk of
procrastination. According to the new report sponsored by Informatica
Corporation (Nasdaq: INFA), the leading independent provider of data
integration software and services and by Atos Origin, banks are warned that
unless they are innovative and seek to provide value-added services to
customers that leverage the SEPA infrastructure, they will fail to generate
return on their investment.

The first stage of SEPA went live in January 2008, but European banks
must still comply with the Payment Services Directive (PSD) and SEPA Direct
Debits (SDDs). One of the biggest challenges faced is dealing with a complex
system of 'disparate parts' across multiple formats, which isn't scaleable as
the industry becomes increasingly globalized. Banks therefore need to strike
a balance between spending less on processes but at the same time enhancing
them. A key enabler to achieving this objective is the effective management
of the data that sits across these platforms.

"With all the regulation that banks have had to comply with over the past
10 years it's not surprising that we're seeing the emergence of SEPA fatigue,
especially among the middle tier banks which have fewer resources available
to adapt their systems to the required changes. It is imperative that the
harmonization of payment systems across Europe is seen as a long-term
investment that can be used as a platform to generate future revenue. For
example, centralizing payment flows will result in more transparency into
customer transactions, which in turn will enable new opportunities to be
identified. In order to make this a reality banks must effectively address
data challenges. If they can't then their SEPA compliance efforts will be
akin to building a two legged stool," said Rachel Hunt, European Banking
Research Manager, Financial Insights an IDC company.

Whilst SEPA compliance may be daunting and costly to many mid-tier banks,
it will have its advantages in enabling them to extend their value add
services to customers. The European Commission is currently working on
standards for mobile banking as well as common European Electronic Invoicing
(EEI) framework, offering banks a long-term strategy for generating ROI. It
will be those banks that establish best practices for data integration and
data quality across multiple sources that will be best placed to take
commercial advantage of these developments.

"At the moment banks are concerned about the drain that processing
payments has on their profitability, but with the right platform in place
they can reverse the situation and make payments commercially beneficial,"
said Chris Boorman, chief marketing officer, Informatica. "Those that make
SEPA compliance part of their business strategy can leverage market
opportunities and eradicate budgetary inefficiencies common with regulatory
projects. Additionally, it is the banks that provide the lowest cost service
and in the most efficient way that will emerge as the market leaders in the
coming years. Those who fail to invest now risk being priced out of the
market."

"Data integration is an obvious area for ensuring the smooth transition
of payments, but it shouldn't be considered in isolation. Banks of all sizes
have to support a growing number of standards as the industry becomes more
international -- that means establishing best practices now to minimize the
pain at a later date. Also, the financial impact of sub-prime and recent
fraud cases highlight the importance of tightening risk management systems to
reduce business risk and target fraud," added Boorman.

"Whilst the first stage of SEPA compliance passed relatively unnoticed,
the second stage is a huge undertaking for banks and for the mid-tier
organizations especially as it is a daunting prospect. Survival in the
financial services industry is about the ability to innovate. Those
organizations that move away from the traditional model of simply throwing
people at a process and look at how they can be automated will undoubtedly be
the 'SEPA Winners'," said Joe Edwards, senior vice president, Sales and
Marketing , Atos Origin.

The IDC report entitled, Getting The Value Out Of Payment 
Infrastructures: Leveraging SEPA, is available for download by logging onto:
http://www.informatica.com/info/sepawpq208. The research was conducted during
April 2008 and IDC consulted with the majority of financial service
organizations across EMEA.

About Informatica

Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA) is the leading independent
provider of enterprise data integration software and services. With
Informatica, organizations can gain greater business value by integrating all
their information assets from across the enterprise. More than 3,200
companies worldwide rely on Informatica to reduce the cost and expedite the
time to address data integration needs of varying complexity and scale. For
more information, call +1-650-385-5000 (+1-800-653-9871 in the U.S.), or 
visit http://www.informatica.com.

About Atos Orgin

Atos Origin is an international information technology services company.
Its business is turning client vision into results through the application of
Consulting, Systems Integration and Managed Operations. The Company's annual
revenue is EUR 5.8 billion and it employs 50,000 professionals in 40
countries. Atos Origin is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for
the Olympic Games and has a client base of international blue-chip companies
across all sectors. For more information visit http://www.atosorigin.com.

About Financial Insights, an IDC Company

Financial Insights provides independent research, custom consulting, and
detailed multiclient studies on the technology issues and challenges facing
the financial services industry. Our global research covers topics of
strategic importance to corporate and retail banks, insurance carriers, asset
management firms, securities and brokerage firms. Our local practices in Asia
Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Canada add an in-depth regional viewpoint.
Financial Insights, an IDC company, is headquartered in Framingham,
Massachusetts, USA. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading IT media,
research, and exposition company.

Note: Informatica is a registered trademark of Informatica Corporation in
the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other
company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their
respective owners.

Web site: http://www.informatica.com
              http://www.atosorigin.com