UPA (Unicredit Produzioni Accentrate) runs administrative and book-keeping systems and basic technical school for all Societies of Unicredit Group.

UPA was born in 1999 in order to centralize technical capacities of Italian Banks merged into Unicredito Italiano. Its mission is to assure synergy and effectiveness to the costs and to internal procedures.

UPA belongs to GBS (Global Banking Services) Division, whose chairman is Mr. Paolo Fiorentino: GBS comprehends also bearing business functions such as HR, IT, organization, logistic, real estate.

CEO of UPA is Ms. Tiziana Bernardi. Up to 31st May 2006 Italian employees were 1.837.

UPA is now also settled in Romania, with a Branch which mainly handles Foreign Department. In Bucarest employees are 375 (75 are in training).

Industrial Project 2004/2007 states that Romanian employees will be 500 at the end of this period of three years. According to expectations this threshold could be easily overcome. In this case the Branch in Bucarest will grow as big as Milan’s Branch or even bigger. UPA will probably be the sole Italian society in the Group which will have the most relevant Branch abroad.

On 22nd of November, a new project has been shown. It concerns all the back-office employees in Unicredit Group: approximately 7.000 employees.

The new project picks out 8 business trans-national lines: Payments, Trade Finance, Loans & Mortgages, Core Banking (done in Germany, Czech Rep., Austria, Romania, Italy); Finance & Treasury ( done in Germany, Czech Rep., Austria, Italy); Cards (done in Czech Rep., Austria, Romania, Italy, Turkey, Poland); Italian Public Administration e Technical School (done only in Italy ).

The 8 business lines will have 8 different European head chiefs in charge and will have a landmark point in an Operational Group Back Office Committee.

Its purpose is finding out the best practices in order to standardize and to reengineer the procedures, realizing synergies and savings, handling the risk.

But, first of all, Eurosig, the unique information system, will have to be accomplished.

Beyond Eurosig system, the Committee’s task will be very difficult. Different Banks in different lands have actually different organizing models. In Italy and in Austria there are two specific external back-office Societies (UPA and AS) but in Germany back-office is settled into the Bank. In Czech Republic there is an external back-office Society (BTS) which belongs to BA.CA.

It is not known yet if the different business lines (which maybe will be more than 8!) will be handled in 8 different competence centers, each making a unique line, or rather they will be all handled together in cross-road centers

Information system models about main processes and applications are, following decision in Unicredit holding, the italian ones through Eurosig, covering the four most relevant entities: Italy, Germany, Austria, and Poland (about 70% of the volumes, intended as transactions); morevoer Core2 system (austrian system which covers about 20% of total volumes) and Iflex (bulgarian operational system, which covers about 10% of total volumes) will be used.

Local processes and applications can be used if best operational practices at lower costs will emerge.

Up to date Italy, Germany, Austria and Poland use indipendent information systems and also Bulgaria uses different procedures.

Germany: on July 2007 HVBIS (HVB information system company) and UGIS will be merged; a UGIS branch in Munich will be opened (deploying about 900 workers) and in Hamburg too (about 300 workers). Release of Eurosig applications, if it’ll be all right, is forecast on October 2008. HVBIS, which is the result of merger between applications company and IT company (Info and System companies), originally had 1800 employees, whose 400 has been moved to another company controlled by IBM and they’ll work for the next two years for HVB in outsourcing.

Austria: situation is more complex and the rationalization is delayed at the next industrial plan, i.e. after 2008. A UGIS branch in Vienna could be opened before of this term, in order to put together workers on BA-CA applications (about 700, now in a company called WAVE); IT part now is managed by a company owned at 63% by BA-CA which works for other entities (not only banks) not included in Unicredit Group. All the Eastern Europe banks are managed by this company through an information system platform called Core2. This one consists in an efficient software, but seemingly it’s not able to manage very big volumes. It’s to be decided if it’ll be more convenient change it with Eurosig or put a front-end between the two systems.

Poland: UGIS opened a site in Lòdź, working on all competences of all intranet and Normanet (this one for the internal documents providing procedures, technical or not). 50 employees will become totally operationally autonomous before 2008. About Bank Pekao, the only news is that it’ll be the last entity to migrate, because of big volumes which need previous experiences.

Czech Republic: Živno was the first bank to migrate on new operational platform Eurosig. There will be also a merging between UGIS (ex- Živno) and HVB Praha during 2007. Workers will be moved from the bank to UGIS branch in Praha, applying italian model.

Other countries: ICT Department, responding to Mr. Quilici (UGIS president) and Mr. Fiorentino (Global Banking Services CEO) will overview everytime the informatical best practices and eventually choose them if more companies are present in Unicredit Group in a country.

Every project now is frozen in every country and when an integration is done in a country, it will be migrated in Eurosig (the last one, turkish system, is forecast before 2016).

The strategy provides the opening or using every site for every commercial product (eg. single customer account will be managed only in one site) depending on the right know hows, moving the workers from a single bank, which gradually migrate on Eurosig platform, to UGIS, so granting “virtuous paths” and limiting redundacies in the staffs.

The final forecast is to have 5500 employees totally in Europe in the information system company, instead of the actual 7000 ones.