Singapore, 18 May 2004 – StarHub, Singapore’s innovative info-communications provider, and Decillion Solutions, the official SWIFT¹ Business Partner for Asia-Pacific, today announced a collaborated offering that will enable banks and financial institutions to access banking/financial applications over SWIFTNet² without having to maintain expensive servers and communications links by themselves.

Instead, Decillion Solutions will manage and maintain SWIFT services over StarHub’s secured and reliable fibre-optic network infrastructure and telecommunications facilities in Singapore, offloading significant resources within financial institutions for better operational efficiencies.

The new secured and managed offering is called SWIFT Service Bureau. It provides users with a single “window” to access SWIFTNet applications such as FIX for settlement processing in the Securities industry; and MEPS Plus, Singapore’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for inter-bank payment in Singapore currencies. Other value-added SWIFT services include message transformation and anti-money laundering checks. Customers of the SWIFT Service Bureau will also enjoy 24x7 operations and state-of-the-art technology, which ensures full resilience, availability and operability.

“The key benefits of the SWIFT Service Bureau will be cost savings that our customers will enjoy when they outsource their SWIFT connectivity, without compromising operational efficiency, data security and business availability,” said Mr Thomas Lee, Managing Director, Decillion Solutions. “We anticipate annual savings of about 20% to 50% for institutions who sign up for the SWIFT Service Bureau.”

To date, over 10 financial institutions are using the SWIFT Service Bureau.

“This collaboration demonstrates StarHub’s capabilities in delivering secured and highly reliable services for the financial industry in Singapore over our advanced end-to-end fibre-optic network and telecommunications facilities,” said Dr Kaizad Heerjee, Head of Business Markets, StarHub. “The SWIFT Service Bureau simplifies the management and maintenance of the financial institutions’ own IT and communications infrastructure, offloading these operations to trusted and world-class service providers. Indeed, we are pleased to play a significant role in helping the financial industry improve their business efficiency over the long term.”

This announcement continues StarHub’s commitment to working with strategic business partners to deliver world-class services and solutions to business in Singapore.