Mr Daberkow is one of the most senior members of the Eurogiro Board. Mr Daberkow brings outstanding expertise on IT & transaction processing to the Board and represents one of Europe's most significant payment handlers. In this interview he expresses his view on the aspirations and challenges of Eurogiro.

Mario Daberkow, COO within Deutsche Postbank AG and Vice-chairman of Eurogiro Board

The payments market and Eurogiro have changed dramatically since Deutsche Postbank participated in the founding of Eurogiro. What do you regard as the greatest achievements of Eurogiro over time and what should Eurogiro focus on to meet the challenges of tomorrow ?
There have been many important developments and achievements over the past years. The change-over from paper-based money order exchange in the postal world to electronic and automated payment exchange between Postal and Post-financial institutions around the globe - Eurogiro's founding purpose - is certainly one of the greatest achievements.

More recently the bridging function between the banking and postal world has been another important achievement of Eurogiro, interconnecting a wide diversity of different institutions, combined with the provision of unique global reach for international payments. Here also lies one of the challenges for tomorrow - to even further activate this unique global reach, interconnecting postal organisations and banks from practically all continents, and to stimulate the exchange of business and payments between the participants.

In this context I would like to emphasize the IT achievements that have been achieved over previous years. The provision of 'turn key solutions' for quick and reliable IT implementation, combined with centralised testing facilities, has been a key development which has considerably reduced the time to market for new customers. In addition, the software life cycle management, with regular fixed release schedules, significantly contributes to providing harmonised common software versions throughout the community. On the other hand, I see an on-going challenge to provide a state-of-the art IT infrastructure, in particular in providing compliance with evolving enterprise architecture, as well as giving support to future innovative technologies in the field of international payments.

You represent one of the strongest sending (and receiving) institutions in Eurogiro, but also an organisation that sees its cross-border payment business changing dramatically due to, for instance, the emergence of SEPA. How do you see the value of the Eurogiro membership for Deutsche Postbank ?
SEPA really is leading the way into another dimension. It not only affects cross-border payments, but the entire payment set-up of all countries in the common market. SEPA leads to even further concentration and higher scales of efficiency in the pan-European payments market but also brings gigantic cataclysms in the domestic payment set-up. Imagine - almost the total pan-European payment exchange will be handled homogeneously on one single standard - the SEPA schemes - representing the next generation of payment processing. However, although we, here in Europe, are currently extremely pre-occupied with preparations for the SEPA migration end date - February 2014 - all of us are very aware of the rest of the world and the needs of our customers for payments into all countries. In terms of global reach and interconnection between the global postal and banking world, Eurogiro always has been, and continues to be, of enormous value for us. Deutsche Postbank AG stands firmly to its roots and will continue to use the Eurogiro network for the handling of a significant portion of its international payments.

Deutsche Postbank is the single settlement provider for EUR in Eurogiro. How do you see the role of the settlement providers, both in the past and looking ahead ? 
The introduction of the Euro really led to many efficiencies, one of them being the introduction of the Euro Single Settlement Solution for the Eurogiro community. We are convinced that the single settlement services constitute one of the unique value propositions of Eurogiro, proven by an ongoing growing customer base, and we are very proud to act as the current Euro Single Settlement Provider. We take this responsibility very seriously and will do our utmost to maintain the high quality of the service. Furthermore, the continuous enhancement of the single settlement principle led to the creation of the USSP and Multicurrency SSP, enabling the community to enjoy the benefits of account and liquidity concentration, not only in Euro but in other currencies as well.

Partnerships have been very important in the history of Eurogiro, such as Western Union and SWIFT. What about partnerships int the future ?
Eurogiro is a very successful centralised correspondent banking-based network. With a standardised legal and operational framework, Correspondent Banking will continue as an attractive business. However, profit is under pressure as banks need to comply with more regulation and deal with increased competition. At the same time, banks need to prepare and arm themselves for the ongoing financial crisis and economic slowdown. In the these challenging times I am convinced that partnerships will become even more important in the future. I share the view of a recently published SWIFT white paper that there is a compelling need to evolve towards a customer-centric 'experience banking' model, where customers use a simple banking service when they need it, and where banks link together the best components to create a consistent and seamless customer service. Whilst Eurogiro customers will take responsibility for their own improvements, Eurogiro offers an ideal platform for collaborative projects which will be of increasing importance in the future for all of us.  

The payments industry is developing rapidly with much competition from known and new types of providers. What could be the roles and opportunities for, in particular, postal organisations in this market ?
The world is changing around us. Payments via PayPal for example are simpler and much faster than transferring money from one bank account to another. Postal organisations with their large country-covering branch networks and huge customer base are in a very attractive position to also take up a role in newly-evolving payment instruments. Eurogiro, with its bridging function interlinking the postal and financial world, is again ideally positioned to bring together both existing and new market players and to provide significant added value for all particpants.

The close connection between Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Postbank has caught many headlines in the press. Can you outline what Eurogiro members should expect from this ?
The intergration of Postbank into Deutsche Bank AG is a huge ongoing project which will take several years to finalise. For Eurogiro and the members it is actually good news. In the past we have seen institutions leaving Eurogiro as a result of mergers and take-overs. With Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Postbank you have two very active Eurogiro members in the community and both of our institutions are strongly committed to maintain and even intensify their engagement with the Eurogiro community.  

Finally, how would you like to influence the future Eurogiro? 
I would strongly recommend Eurogiro as an interactive platform for the development of enhanced business intelligence services to better identify new market opportunities, utilising the unique combination of Postal and Banking roots, aiming at setting up collaborative projects amongst all parties involved.