Gulf Daily News - 29/4/2006

The Allied Engineering Group (AEG) has launched its third service bureau in the GCC by opening a site in Bahrain. The bureau, with three centres in Beirut, Manama and Cairo, is said to be the largest of its kind in the world.

It has SWIFT connectivity for 190 banks in the Middle East and Africa using different connectivity methods with high-level security for exchanged data.

Certified and highly-qualified engineers of the company ensure full support to the AEG and to its member banks to guarantee operability 24 hours a day seven days a week.

AEG is the SWIFT business, service and solution partner looking after Middle East and Africa region.

Through its office in Bahrain and its service bureau, it aims to offer local banks high quality professional services in the SWIFT field, especially support, on-job training, consultancy, integration with their back-office systems and help implementing the changes announced by SWIFT under SWIFTNet Phase2 migration.

The company will offer the Bahraini banks reliable and cost-effective connectivity to SWIFT using local leased line or frame relay between the bank and the new AEG office.

The firm was recently chosen for the Real Time Gross Settlement system (RTGS) project launched by the Bahrain Monetary Agency.

The main responsibility will be to help ordering, implementing, integrating, training and supporting the necessary SWIFT component for the project.

It is considered one of the most important RTGS projects in the world, allowing Bahraini banks, financial and government institutions to join RTGS, where transaction settlements for high value payments is performed in real time within seconds.