Bank Muscat wins Citibank award for fund transfers 16-3

Bank SICO, the flagship financial institution in the Sultanate, has won a prestigious Citibank award for forex transactions related to dollar payments. Bank SICO was among a select group of regional institutions to receive the award for achieving outstanding straight through processing (STP) rates for dollar remittances.

Ali Amin Moosa, AGM – Central Operations, said: “Winning this award is testimony to the bank’s commitment to high standards of quality in meeting the stringent criteria for fund transfer.

The Central Operations electronic payments department, Treasury back office and Global Trade Services department are handling fund transfer operations in the bank while the technical and security issues are handled by the Systems & Procedures department. The Financial Institutions Group has established more than 500 correspondent banking relationships across the world and is acknowledged as one of the leading FI teams in the region.”

The award recognised Bank SICO’s exceptional quality of SWIFT messages on dollar payment, maintaining an outstanding level of error-free rate for remittances in 2012. The award was based on evaluation of the quality and accuracy of SWIFT payment messages routed through Citibank.

Citibank is one of Bank SICO's main correspondent banks for US dollar payments. Citibank representatives commended the operational teams involved in processing payments at Bank SICO for the error-free rate maintained consistently throughout the high volume of remittances processed during 2012.

The award acknowledged Bank SICO for exceptional quality in the delivery of commercial payments and transfers. The award also recognised Bank SICO’s state-of-the-art in-house payment architecture and affirmed that the bank consistently maintained high SWIFT standards, which facilitated automated processing throughout the payment chain resulting in extremely high STP rates.

A multi-award winning organisation, Bank SICO’s performance has been consistently lauded by the international financial and banking community for several years.