Westpac purchases ACT risk-management unit.

Building on a six-year relationship with ACT Financial Systems, Australia's Westpac Banking Corp. purchased a module to provide control and risk management for its currency positions.

The system, which is designed to help the $71 billion-asset company manage the risk of the currency positions, acts as a centralized control, checking messages, authorizations, and releases.

The module will enable users to produce and transmit messages in real time vvia a variety of formats. The bank will be using the system -- which will run on Digital VAX 6410 computers -- to help automate all confirmations with the International Swap Dealers Association.

Westpac currently uses a number of other derivative modules from ACT Financial Systems. The subsidiary of ACT Group PLC has offices in New York, London, Sydney, Paris, Tokyo, and Frankfurt.

Westpac has also licensed mainframe credit card software from FBS Software of Atlanta. The bank will use the system for the card processing, collections management, and merchant processing. The conversion of the 2.5 million card portfolio will take about 18 months.

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