ACE Software Solutions Inc – Pelican

Corporate Overview

Set up in 1991 to provide end-to-end STP solutions based on Artificial Intelligence techniques, US-based ACE now specialises  in message processing and STP solutions for financial institutions. Claiming around 30 clients worldwide, ACE now has overseas offices in the UK and India. Pelican is ACE's flagship platform and within this there are two principal messaging solutions (Pelican for SwiftNet and the Pelican Payment Messaging Hub) and two payments processing solutions (Pelican for Payments and Pelican for SEPA). All products are about 90 per cent the same, the difference between them being the business rules.

Summary History

1991 – ACE established.
2007 – ACE repackages its Pelican offerings to include new industry-specific solutions: Pelican for SEPA, Pelican for SwiftNet and Pelican for Corporates.

Overview

Pelican for SwiftNet provides a Swift gateway for low-end messaging. A dashboard is available for Pelican for channel management, which is aimed more at larger financial institutions which have multiple back office systems to be managed.

The Payment Messaging Hub is intended to provide visibility and end-to-end transaction tracking of the different types of messages. This allows users to see which messages are stuck, which need priority and so on. This hub is aimed at high-end financial institutions, which need control of the messaging aspect of Swift and payments. The vendor also states that the hub allows an institution to consolidate its messaging infrastructure, including domestic and cross-border and both high- and lowvalue.Parth Desai, president and CEO of ACE, claims that, while many systems allow the same type of visibility, ACE's platform allows users to act on information, to take corrective action. This should reduce operational risk and lower cost, Desai believes.

Pelican also offers a number of different functionalities such as automatic repair (used by Crédit Agricole for the last twelve years or so), which Desai claims will solve between 60 and 80 per cent of problems for international payment messages. This relies on fixing the addresses of destination banks. Another piece of functionality is a BIC IBAN module, which links BIC and IBAN codes.

Pelican for Payments is aimed at mid-sized banks, and is used mostly in the Middle East and Asia, often as a connectivity module between various networks, as well as to do AML, OFAC checking and so on. Examples of customers are State Bank of India, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Bank of Baroda.

Pelican for SEPA was launched in 2007 to provide a low risk, cost effective solution aimed at achieving SEPA compliance. Then, in January 2009, an agreement was announced whereby Pelican for SEPA would be offered by Capgemini in the Netherlands on a SaaS (Software as a Service) basis. Clients are able to send a file to Capgemini and receive a converted file in return. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) was the first customer to go live with this solution, for Amsterdam and Paris, in July 2009.

Product Suite 

Pelican runs on Windows Server, using an Oracle 10g database. It is written in Java and C, with thin client (browser-based) user interfaces.
Swift connectivity is provided via Swift Alliance Access and Swift Alliance Gateway; connectivity to other clearing houses is via a directory interface.
Pelican handles all types of payments – high/low-value, bulk messages, future value date etc. It is used to provide a bureau service in the Netherlands and France.

Pelican business functionality includes:
- Routing, repair, re-format and validation of payment messages
- Built-in financial EAI and STP functionality
- Support for the complete transaction life-cycle
- Modular and configurable to support high-value and low-value processing environments through messaging workflows and business rules
- Reporting of repairs/violations
- Multi-institution, multi-branch
- Exception processing
- Administration and monitoring