Secure banking communication from a single source: DZ BANK Group relies on Retarus

As a central bank, DZ BANK AG’s mission is to support the business of independent cooperative banks worldwide and to strengthen their competitive position. The range of services includes traditional and innovative financial products as well as trading and sales in the equity market. As an international commercial bank, DZ BANK also supports companies that require a supra-regional banking partner. The financial institution therefore sends a large number of fax documents and e-mails to customers, partners, the stock exchange and the press worldwide every day – and the trend is rising. For example, in the order business and securities trading, information relevant to the stock exchange must be transmitted punctually and reliably by transaction mail worldwide and, in the context of investor and press relations, a large group of recipients must be informed about important developments within the shortest possible time using the preferred communication channel. However, the previously used fax server quickly reached its limits during peak loads or increasing data volumes. It was also cost-intensive and maintenance-intensive and required a great deal of administrative effort.

DZ BANK needs an agile communication platform that can also be used to easily map new requirements in the course of digitalization at any time. The platform must be able to be flexibly connected to existing systems and continuously adapted to current requirements. In accordance with strict data protection and compliance requirements, the financial institution must always ensure that the transmitted data is protected. In addition to the stable and trouble-free transmission of sensitive data, the solution must also enable compliance with regulatory guidelines, such as MaRisk or the requirements of BaFin. The aim was also to establish a central mailing solution with which, for example, stock market news to the press, event invitations for customers or internal information as part of employee communication can be managed via a single platform. This must not only offer professional mailing functionalities, but must also be centrally manageable and enable immediate success monitoring. In addition, it should be possible to integrate other DZ BANK Group subsidiaries with little effort and employees should be able to access the IT infrastructure from any location via a flexible authentication solution.

In addition to the stable and trouble-free transmission of sensitive data, compliance with regulatory guidelines was essential for DZ BANK. These include the regulations of BaFin (German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) and MaRisk (Minimum Requirements for Risk Management). For security and compliance reasons, it was also important to DZ BANK that data processing was contractually guaranteed to take place in Retarus’ own data centers within Germany.

DZ BANK uses Retarus Services throughout the Group for a wide variety of scenarios: The fax services are used, for example, in the order business and in securities trading, where the legally verifiable delivery of documents is essential. Retarus Enterprise SMS services are used to send passwords directly to users for the secure and fast authentication of bank employees in the corporate network. In addition, the bank uses the Retarus WebExpress dispatch platform to inform a large group of recipients about important developments via email, fax and SMS as part of its investor and press relations activities. Thanks to Retarus ‘ flexible APIs, new scenarios can also be mapped within a very short space of time in the future.

• Intuitive operation directly on the PC
• Integration in e-mail clients and SAP
• High data security
• Compliance-compliant data processing (in accordance with BaFin and MaRisk requirements)
• Data processing in German data centers (GDPR-compliant)
• Detailed reports

The cooperation between DZ BANK AG and Retarus has existed since 2014 and is characterized by stable, audit-proof processes without any relevant findings. Retarus has evolved from a pure data transport service provider to a partner for the digitalization of complete business processes. Efficient, automated processes are already being implemented today with the Intelligent Capture Services. DZ BANK AG will continue to rely on Retarus in the future and plans to further digitalize fund and share order processes, among other things.