Strategic partnerships at VP Bank

Strategic partnerships are a key component of VP Bank’s business model. These cooperative ventures make it possible to combat rising costs while increasing efficiency. VP Bank seeks to achieve synergies with other companies through these partnerships; they lead to the establishment of new business models based on alliances. To that end, VP Bank is constantly sharing experiences with other banks and service providers, in order to jointly use and optimise existing resources. Sharing know-how mutually benefits all participants. 

In the course of their daily business processes on behalf of clients, banks maintain extensive printing and mailing functions, e.g. in connection with sales campaign management or documenting payment transactions on client account statements. This requires an efficient solution extending from data collection, processing and storage to printing. 

Since 2010, VP Bank has worked with Liechtensteinische Landesbank (LLB) on printing and mailing functions as well as through a joint purchasing company. The third-party service provider Trendcommerce supports VP Bank for its printing and mailing of account and deposit statements, quarterly and annual reporting and all types of bulk mailing requirements, all while maintaining the highest quality and security standards. 

The outsourcing of printing and mailing to a professional partner provides significant long-term cost savings for VP Bank, increases the flexibility of the process through the use of the most modern printing technologies and enables the secure processing of sensitive data through the use of state-of-the-art technical and environmentally friendly infrastructure.

The requirements for an up-to-date IT system include continuously optimising the complexity of the basic infrastructure operations while creating a sound foundation for future development and requirements. A decade ago, VP Bank faced a situation where it could no longer keep pace with future requirements while operating four data centres at different sites and the related complex networking between them. 

As data centre complexity grows, potential simplifications through technological advances are partially offset by growing IT regulatory requirements.

VP Bank therefore sought out a strategic partnership with LLB, in which its business processes are supported through flexible, stable and effective IT and logistics services. As part of this co­operation, a new data centre was built at LLB’s head office in Eschen (Liechtenstein), where VP Bank began leasing space in 2012. Through this partnership, the high leasing costs under the old arrangement were reduced while the groundwork was laid for increased future capacity requirements.

The technical aspect of this project involved integrating the new facility into the networked system and developing all of the required basic infrastructure, systems platforms and components at the new site. The choice of this new site required major overhauls to the technical infrastructure and the site had to be equipped with secure and effective communications and data services. 

Today, VP Bank occupies one floor of the LLB data centre. The building was constructed as an energy efficient data centre. This successful partnership features the most up-to-date solutions and efficient data management. 

Speed, integrity and reliability are key parameters that banks, as providers of financial news in a competitive environment, must weigh on a daily basis. In virtually no other industry does timeliness play such a critical role. The availability of current economic and financial news provides the vital information edge that is crucial for investment decisions. With flexible access to global financial market data, financial information systems provide advisors with efficient support for their daily work processes. They serve as the foundation for an efficient advisory process and well-founded investment decisions.

In 2011, VP Bank together with LLB founded Data Info Service AG in order to pool their financial information systems purchasing. VP Bank also decided that year to outsource the management of its financial information systems to Information Performance AG, which specialises in cost optimisation and process advisory as well as application management in the banking IT sector. The company currently provides a broad range of IT services for 80 banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein as well as for numerous asset managers. 

All processes such as operating and contract management, reporting and support can be optimised in this manner. The cooperation with Information Performance AG includes support on various projects such as the switch in financial information providers for trading operations , which significantly reduced the licensing fees and internally generated IT costs. Other joint projects included the implementation of a Group-wide optimisation project as well as the transfer of existing contracts as part of the integration of Centrum Bank within VP Bank. 

Through this partnership, VP Bank has been able to lower its annual costs in the financial information systems area in recent years despite steadily rising costs for data collection and preparation. 

With a new partnering concept, the systematic outsourcing of products with leading asset manager and successful niche providers is continuing apace. VP Bank looks for close cooperation with selected partners in order to offer its clients tangible value added in the product segment. 

The partnering concept gives clients an advantage in terms of price and performance while offering state-of-the-art products. This concept also enhances efficiency and reduces annual costs. The partnering concept was launched in 2016 and will be implemented over the course of 2017.