OREANDA-NEWS. BNY Mellon, a global leader in investment management and investment services, has been recognised by Celent as a Model Bank for its work in Legacy and Ecosystems Transformation on its global payments infrastructure. Celent is a global research and advisory firm for the financial services industry.

BNY Mellon's global payments infrastructure went live with its first payment in January 2014. The ultimate goal of the new infrastructure is to process payments company-wide on a single platform, regardless of currency, value, initiation method, settlement mechanism or geographic location.

"BNY Mellon's new infrastructure is core to our strategy of leveraging our US dollar payments strengths across other currencies," said Michael Bellacosa, head of global payments product management for Treasury Services at BNY Mellon. "Our infrastructure has significantly enhanced operating efficiency and straight-through processing rates for clients. It also enables us to bring in-house transaction processing previously outsourced to correspondent banks, which streamlines payment processing, reduces third-party risk and gives us more control over cut-off times."

The Model Bank Awards were presented at Celent's annual Innovation and Insight Day event, held this year at Carnegie Hall in New York. The awards are judged on whether an initiative meets a bank's business objectives; technology and integration excellence; and the degree of innovation in terms of improving sales or service results, reducing risks or costs, and improving business processes.

"The judges were impressed by the use of payment services hub technology at BNY Mellon to deliver such an important strategic initiative" said Gareth Lodge, Senior Analyst at Celent. "Furthermore, the bank chose to build the right infrastructure for the future, rather than just replicate what it currently had. This approach not only allows the bank to roll out new countries and currencies significantly quicker and more efficiently than before, it allows new services to be rolled out globally with minimal changes to the new infrastructure."

This award was one of many received by BNY Mellon's Treasury Services business over the last year. These included Best Trade Outsourcing Bank by Global Trade Review; Best Transactional Bank for Financial Institutions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa from EMEA Finance; Best Bank Trade Services Provider from Trade & Forfaiting Review; and Best White Label System Provider for Treasury & Cash Management Services from Global Finance magazine.