A centre of excellence

By Alfred Kupferschmidt, head of Documentary Business and Guarantee Department, Bank Austria Creditanstalt, Vienna

In June 2002 Global Finance Magazine awarded Bank Austria Creditanstalt Best Trade Finance Bank 2002'. One part of Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG is the documentary business and guarantee department.

With its staff of about 100 employees this department is headed by Alfred Kupferschmidt who possesses a wealth of expertise. The documentary business within Austria is currently centralized and handled in Vienna.

The department deals in:

n documentary credits

n documentary collections

n back-to-back letters of credit

n letters of credit transfers

n independent guarantees

n documentary advance payment guarantees

n bills of exchange.

The organizational scheme of the department is customer focused, meaning that the customers have contact with a limited number of employees only, which enables the department to give a lot of personal attention to the customers.

Bank Austria Creditanstalt plays an important role in documentary business. The traditional links to eastern European countries enhance the role in the field of documentary business. This is a big advantage for our customers and our correspondent banks which have no direct access to this region.

Bank Austria Creditanstalt has about 2,500 correspondent banks worldwide. As a member of HVB Group it maintains subsidiary banks, branches and representative offices in the world's major financial centres. Bank Austria Creditanstalt is responsible for the CEE subsidiaries and their activities.

Our location in the centre of Europe and with more than 100 years of expertise are particularly valuable for our customers.What is a collection, and what is a documentary credit?

The documentary collection is one of the instruments used for setting foreign trade payments. Having despatched the goods, the seller instructs his bankers to send the documents as per contract of purchase to the buyer's bank pursuant to the provisions of the collection order. The buyer's bank advises the buyer of the receipt of documents and informs him under which conditions the documents are to be delivered to him. On the basis of this information, the buyer can check whether all documents have been enclosed as stipulated in the contract of purchase to the collection order.

The seller and buyer know each other as reliable partners who have always met their obligations. The economic...