Bank Muscat wins euro STP excellence award

MUSCAT: Bank Muscat, the flagship financial services provider in the Sultanate, has won a prestigious award from Deutsche Bank in recognition of operational excellence in the field of euro payments processing.

Bank Muscat was among a select group of regional institutions to receive the annual excellence award for straight-through-processing (STP) presented by Deutsche Bank for outstanding performance in euro denominated fund transfer and commercial payments.

Coinciding with the 35th anniversary of the bank, the award recognised Bank Muscat’s exceptional quality of SWIFT messages on euro payment to maintain an outstanding error-free rate for remittances.

The award was based on evaluation of the quality and accuracy of SWIFT payment messages Deutsche Bank.

The award cited the bank’s commitment to high standards of quality in meeting the stringent criteria for fund transfer.

The bank’s exceptional proficiency in the delivery of commercial payments and transfers, facilitated by a state-of-the-art in-house payment architecture which helps to consistently maintain high SWIFT standards for automated processing throughout the payment chain resulting in extremely high STP rates, was highlighted in the citation.

The bank’s Central Operations electronic payments department, Treasury back office and Global Trade Services department are handling fund transfer operations while the technical and security issues are routed through handled by the Systems & Procedures department.

The Financial Institutions Group, reckoned among the leading FI teams in the region, has established more than 500 correspondent banking relationships across the world.

Deutsche Bank is among Bank Muscat’s leading correspondent banks for euro payments.

Deutsche Bank representatives commended the operational teams involved in processing euro payments at Bank Muscat for the error-free rate maintained consistently throughout the high volume of remittances processed during 2016. A multiaward winning organisation, Bank Muscat’s STP performance has been consistently lauded by the international financial and banking community for several years.