Its core business in Securities Services is clearing, settlement and custody. However, Cecabank also offers other complementary services, such as the comprehensive management of tax claims. An area where it believes it offers "a lot of added value" and thanks to which it has experienced strong growth in recent years.
In this context, the bank has entered into an agreement with WTax, a division of the VAT IT group, a global leader specialised in tax recovery services. This agreement aims to transform, accelerate and enhance the efficiency of processing tax refunds in European markets where CJEU case law applies.
In practice, Cecabank will jointly analyse with WTax the position of its customers (fund managers) to assess in which situations it is possible to recover a higher amount of withholding tax at the source based on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. This will lead to a significant increase in profitability for customers, a reduction in recovery times and less operational burden for the back office departments of the fund managers. With this, Cecabank seeks to offer a service that sets it apart in the industry and to comply with its function of looking after the ultimate interests of its stakeholders.
Commitment to digitalisation
According to Alberto Pilo, Securities Services Tax Manager at Cecabank, the idea "arose from listening to our fund manager customers, seeing their needs and turning them into a business solution". Thanks to artificial intelligence and robotics, the procedure is completely automated: the documentation required from the depositary is collected via SFTP or Secure File Transfer Protocol accesses and made available to WTax to initiate the claim procedure digitally.
To this end, the bank has relied on technology, digitalisation, innovation and process automation. One of the bank's other strategic priorities for the past five years. "Depositary is a scale business with very tight margins. And it is essential to commit to innovation and technology", says Aurora Cuadros, Corporate Director of the Securities Services Division at Cecabank.
With little room for innovation in traditional services, the bank seeks to "offer differentiated services within the Securities Services value chain. And taxation has always been an added value that we provide to our customers in our capacity as a depositary", says Cuadros, who argues that "routine and totally administrative procedures can be carried out by robots and automatic processes while people focus on those tasks in which they can provide added value".
To date, Cecabank has already been offering double taxation services such as the exemption of foreign source dividends and the standard refund service. This new service facilitates the recovery of an even greater amount of withholding tax through administrative channels, and increases the range of services that Cecabank offers to fund managers depositing with the bank.
