37

August 2015

Summary

37

August 2015

MANAGEMENT COMMENT.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Another milestone in the corporate protection
REPORT .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Always on the lookout to protect our customers' interests
Beauties and torments of measuring work performance
Your feedback for better customer feedback
THE WORLD OF SECURITY .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 9
How to manage strictly confidential information
IN THE FOCUS .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
The story of Inserter
MEET THE TEAM .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12
Clearing and reconciliation team
TRAINING AND EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Personal improvement in the service of the company
STANDARD SPOTTING ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15
Corporate template for PPT presentations
EVENT ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 16
Happy campers

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Whisper
Internal newsletter of Intesa Sanpaolo Card
Editorial Board: Ana Zvonari, Ante Grkovi, Doris igon, Gordan Krianac, Ines Prkain, Iva
Penezi, Janja Savi, Kate Miljkovi, Marjeta Melan, Marko Marijanovi, Milan Medi, Nikolina Maras,
Sta Dvornik, Vedran Klanac, Zlata Jelovac, eljko Jurin
Graphic design by Unex Group, Croatia, Zagreb
Newsletter reserved to the staff of the Intesa Sanpaolo Card
Available on Intesa Sanpaolo Card intranet
Cover: The Inserter room, taken by Iva Penezi

Another milestone
in the corporate
protection

M an agemen t c o mm en t:
JAS NA F U MAGALLI,

Head o f C o mpl i ance Di vi si o n

Compliance, certification, security, trust... these are all the buzzwords that some poeple associate with
the adjectives: crucial, protective, prioritized but also with the not so favourable attributes like difficult,
nuisance, boring...overrated?
In reality, many of you know that the word "compliance" enters in our focus especially in the period
between July and September, due to the annual on-site audits and re-certification against PCI DSS,
Personalization Bureau and Verified by Visa. Almost as a rule of thumb, each year these standards
become more demanding and challenging for any organization. Also, the regulation is rapidly changing,
with inevitable threats of fines - there are ever more cases of organizations paying high price for noncompliance (like Target paying Visa card issuers up to $67 million for data breach in 2013).
You have all probably heard of the two huge security
data breach cases that occurred recently - Ashley
Madison and Uber - with consequences that are still
to be understood and paid for. We can also notice that
manufacturers are rushing to put just like connectivity
into electronic devices, whereas hackers are rushing
to show that theyre designed with a disregard for the
most basic security principles, which endanger all users,
both physical persons or companies.
Suma sumarum, this is very challenging time for those
who work in the field of compliance and risk reduction
in general.

SIEM is a clustered, highly available system, that

continuously processes all machine generated data, be
it from logs or rows from databases. All this information is
stored on the central system in real time and analyzed by
dozens of predefined rules. Each rule monitors different
security relevant aspects, starting from failed logins on any
IT asset, over change monitoring of critical configuration
files to automated analysis of network communication
with known malicious sites or sites used as Command
and Control centers by hackers.

Security professionals are bound not only to rethink the tools, systems and processes they use for
combating advanced threats but also to use their creativity in creating alerts and rules for combating
security treats. The use of security relevant data in as much context as possible is a must to understand
what is normal and what is not. Our log management system produces as many as 2500 alerts per
minute so it is obvious that we had to make a further move in order to process these data. Therefore
we have successfully implemented a SIEM product (Security Information Event Management), based
on Splunk, that allows the security office a unique and full insight into security events generated at
massive scale on all IT assets.
Whenever a security issue is detected, the system generates an alert in its internal ticketing system and
allows to our team to quickly inspect and analyze what caused the alert. This further allows fast incident
response and the ability to detect and respond to known, unknown and advanced threats.
As the whole system is implemented on a scalable and flexible platform, this is just the first step in
bringing the security of Intesa Sanpaolo Card to a higher level the more machine data the system
processes, the better the detection of advanced threats will be.
This step is a new milestone in ensuring that our Company is better protected and that threats by external
or internal attackers are detected faster and resolved more effectively. However, the technology is not the
weakest link here, but there are three sore spots: people, policies and procedures. That is why I would
like to thank to all of you that are contributing to the improvement of our every day security posture,
and helping us to successfully pass audits. Finally, let me invite all members of our community to take
an active role in preserving client trust and, in a nutshell, in preserving our Company and our jobs!

3 WHISPER

REP ORT

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT TO PROTECT OUR

CUSTOMERS' INTERESTS
Check out how did go the pilot project of the Advanced
Fraud Management conducted this summer for Banca
Intesa Belgrade
Grozdana Mari, Head of Decision Science / ad.int. Fraud
Management Department
Ksenija Krstin, Head of Customer Operations

What is Intesa Sanpaolo Card offering?

Controlling payment card fraud becomes and remains one
of the single biggest challenges and opportunities in the
payment card industries.
Intesa Sanpaolo Card is committed to support our Clients in
managing card business and was able to recognize the opportunity to improve the balance sheets of the banks in the
cost of doing business area, by providing a service that greatly
decreases financial loss related to card fraud.
To be more specific, we are offering the service of Advance
Fraud Management and by using our Fraud Case Manager
(FCM) application, perform alert management and temporary
card blocking in suspicious cases of fraud, based on previously
agreed Key Risk Indicators.
The service is provided during normally non-working hours:
on working days overnight (16:00-8:00) and on weekends
and holidays (full day - 24 hours) by our vigilant colleagues in
the Call Centre Unit.

DID YOU KNOW?

71% of fraud occurs in
non-working time, that is,
in the period other than from
8-16 on weekdays.

Proof of concept pilot in Banca Intesa Beograd

Advanced Fraud Management was piloting in Banca Intesa
Beograd (BIB) in the period June 17th July 17th and continued
in the next period as well.

The benefits of Advance

Fraud Management for
our clients
Reduction of fraud losses
by detection fraud earlier,
with fewer false positives
Improvement of operational
efficiency through added
value functionalities
Minimization of cardholder
impact on operational costs
Decrease of chargeback
expense
Reduction of charge-offs
Detailed analysis of the pilot service efficiency has shown that
the results are good both from the KPI and operation perspective, and are in line with the projections we have made.
Some of the results we have experienced:

74 cards were blocked, i.e. 2,47 cards per day

27 % cards are confirmed as compromised
reduction of create to open KPI is from 25 hours
to less than 2 minutes
69 % is the percentage of confirmed approved
fraud in non-working comparing with approved
fraud during the day (in historical data it was 71%,
so trend is confirmed)
Amount of prevented fraud depends on the thresholds in
High risk rules. Lowering the thresholds within rules, will
result in a higher amount of prevented fraud, but share of
false positives would significantly increase.
4 WHISPER

REP ORT

Teamwork
As with any great service, teamwork is a crucial part of it. In case of Advanced Fraud management
service, in addition to Fraud Management Department and Call Centar Unit, there is a number of
other organizational units that have contributed in launching this one: Intesa Sanpaolo Card Belgrade
Branch Office, Organization department, Extended Services Team, Tax Team, Legal Department,
Service Management Department and Business Performance Management Department.

Advanced fraud
monitoring has started
to roll thanks to this
great team that makes
sure our clients are
safe 24/7

REP ORT

BEAUTIES AND TORMENTS OF MEASURING WORK

PERFORMANCE
Every year at the end of summer we are talking about
Annual Performance Appraisal. Lets go together through
the APA 2014 most important effects and results.
Jelena Kuani, Human Resource Department
More objectivity in less time
APA process for 2014 happened to be very interesting and
challenging process for all included. There are several reasons
for that. One is the fact that the whole process was performed
through HR.plus portal. We worked hard to do this as best it can
be. Still, we are aware that there were some bugs and issues.
Thank you for your patience with these. Needed corrections
were done and we hope that next year everything will be better.
Another important thing is that self-evaluation and evaluation
process were done in parallel (or at least should have been).
This decision reduced the time needed for the process to
be done. But, more importantly, we believe that it increased
objectivity in the evaluation process.
Finally, the fact that we put additional information inside the tool
(like 2014 quarterly stimulation data on average evaluation and
amounts received) opened interesting questions about importance of feedback. We believe that it will help us to improve
feedback habits in our company. Also, this APA managed
to foster several really honest performance interviews. Both
managers and employees used this tool to increase awareness
about their own contribution, expectations and to define next
step regarding someones career.
Self-evaluation vs. evaluation
Now lets take a closer look at the results. We calculated results
by the following key: Never=1, Occasionally=2, Usually=3, Of-

ten=4, Always=5. From these calculations we got that average

evaluation results are lower compared to the self-evaluation
results (except People management dimension), which also
happened last year, as visible on the graph.
The graph also demonstrates that difference between selfevaluation and evaluation is growing! One of the explanations
for this probably resides in in the fact that both processes
(evaluation and self-evaluation) were done in parallel. In that
way, managers or delegated appraiser were not affected by
self-evaluations which are usually higher than evaluation.
Other explanation for this result is possibility that appraisers
increased their expectations and objectivity. Also, we believe
that up to certain point, the increase of self-evaluation results
means that people are looking more positive about their work
performance and are more confident. Anyhow, we can conclude
that employees are signaling that they are working harder and
better. But, at the same time, superiors are increasing their
expectations.
13% of employees constantly exceed expectations
Another interesting thing is that the evaluation results on People
management increased and now are almost the same as selfevaluation result in that domain. This means that team leaders
and service/solution managers and their superiors have pretty
much aligned expectations related to this subject. For all of
you who want to compare your own results with companys
average, keep in mind that the total average evaluation is
3.87; while average self-evaluation result is 4. 01.
Finally, we should mention that, according to your superiors,
13% of you constantly exceed expectations. Congratulations!

6 WHISPER

REP ORT
Will APA increase your salary?
Probably all of you are interested in the use of APA results.
One of the most relevant for you is to support salary increase
requests. This doesnt mean that good result itself is enough for
a salary increase, but it is necessary information in the moment
when HR receives request for your salary increase from your
manager. Also, we are extracting those who possess some
key knowledge in order to ensure knowledge sharing and to
avoid having too many single points of failure. Another effect of
APA is improving APA itself. Every year we prepare a detailed
report for Management Board and then is discussed which
are implications of results and what can be further improved
in the process.

LONG STORY SHORT FOR NEWCOMERS

If this whole APA thing leaves you bewildered
since youve been with us very shortly, heres a
brief explanation. Every year we perform Annual
Performance Appraisal in which we evaluate 3
to 4 performance areas: Operational efficiency,
Problem solving, Client orientation and People
management (for Head of units, Solution/Service managers/Team leaders). APA consists of
two separated process: self-evaluation (done
by you) and evaluation done by your 2nd line
managers or delegate (usually Head of units).
Who is eligible for appraisal? All employees
below the level of Head of department who
are employed in the company for more than 6
months in the pertaining business year (after
July 1st, 2014). That means that you will do
APA next year.

WHY DO COMPANIES USE STACK

RANKING SYSTEM IN THE
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL?
Microsofts stack ranking system in performance appraisals was often criticized by their
employees. It is a system in which units are
forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers,
average performers, etc. Depending on the
ranking, management decides about bonuses
for employees. Facebook, Yahoo and Amazon
are examples of companies that are using
the same system. Although this system can
provoke competitiveness and negative atmosphere in the office, we should take a look the
other side of the medal. All bonuses and salary
increases are related to the budget. And since
there is no fairy to create gold as much as we
want, budget has its limit. And so do bonuses,
which mean that only certain percentage of
employees can be awarded. That is why big
companies have stack ranking systems. And,
no, ISP Card does not use it.

Since we are constantly trying to improve APA process, we

invite you to send your comments (if you already havent) and
tell us your opinion about how we can improve the process
further. You can send your answers on hr@intesasanpaolocard.
com. We cant promise that all your comments and suggestions will be implemented, but it will help us to understand
other side of APA.

7 WHISPER

REP ORT

YOUR FEEDBACK FOR BETTER CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

Dear colleagues, thank you for helping us improve our
Partner Satisfaction Survey. Your participation in the
pilot of a new survey resulted in the tool that will enable
us to get more relevant feedback from our customers.
Sanja Bra, Marketing Communication and Customer
Experience Department
Last autumn brought us some novelties in the survey field,
like the inclusion of our customers from Activa Group into
the survey, resulting in the expanded respondents pool
and consequently, more representative PSS results. This
autumn is going to bring us even more refreshments in the
PSS area. Before we reveal them all, let's take a snap shot
over the last six years:

to approach our customers efficiently and professionally we

invited 85 of our colleagues to take a part in testing of the
new tool through a pilot survey. The selected employees,
majority of whom have been already been part of the PSS
process up before, were asked to assume the role of our
final customers and answer the questionnaire, providing us
a critical point of view for the whole user experience. You
played that role perfectly and sent us valuable feedback
which will help us to fine tune the application before going
live to the final customer. Thanks to you, our attention
has been drawn onto the couple of points that have to
be upgraded in the application, in order to achieve good
customer experience.
For example, since you asked for the back button, from
now on the respondents will navigate through application
in both ways: next page or previous page depending on
the needs.
Furthermore, the name title will be emphasized while special
attention will be paid to the security issue, since some of
our colleagues could not even approach to the survey. That
means that the communication with some of our customers
within PSS process, like ISPBA for instance, will have to
be handled separately.
Your feedback also made us realize that the application will
not work properly on some old internet browsers so communication with respondents will be adjusted accordingly.
Finally, 85% of you confirmed to us that we did a good
job. After fine tuning the application based on your suggestions we hope to increase this number to 100%! Keep
in mind that it can be used for different kinds of research
so use our tool for your own needs and be advocates for
Customer centric culture.

IMPORTANT
Without a doubt, these are some impressive figures. Nevertheless, we wanted more so we started a new concept
of conducting surveys with a new tool, called Oracle Right
now solution, that will enable PSS to have more flexibility,
transparency and a wider spectrum of possibilities within
the same budget range.

The Oracle Right now solution has a

wide range of possibilities and, besides
PSS, can be used for various kinds of
research. If you think this application may
be beneficial to your own work, please
contact us at CustomerCare@intesasanpaolocard.com and well help you how
to make the best use of it.

The first official survey to be conducted with this new tool is

planned for PSS within ISBD in the autumn 2015. In order

8 WHISPER

THE WORL D OF SE C U RI TY

HOW TO MANAGE STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

We, employees of Intesa Sanpaolo Card, are the weakest link
in the security chain and the only way to change that is by
changing our behavior. Thats why were starting a regular
section aiming to help you help the Company in the following of important security rules. Lets start by highlighting the
significance of the proper handling of confidential electronic
and hardcopy documents.
Prepared by: Security Office

Through the obligatory process of classification of the information, The Company assigns a special value to information, which
is, in many aspects, the most important asset of our organization.
In our Company we assign three categories to the information:
strictly confidential, significant and normal. (Detailed information
on classifying information can be found in the respective rulebook).
The protection of information is based on the principle that information
is protected by adopting effective and efficient countermeasures in
proportion to the value that the same information has for the company. In this article we would like to list the measures that should
be applied when dealing with strictly confidential information, which
also encompass the documents life cycle.

Labelling documents and media

Clearly write the wording: highly confidential on each page

of the documents in both electronic format and in hard copy
and/or directly on the media containing the same information
or documents (e.g. folder, ring binder, CD, ...)
Keeping documents and media
Remove documents and media them from visible positions
and place them in locked cabinets and drawers even when
temporarily leaving your workstation
Saving / Backup
Make a backup copy in network folders prepared by the
Company.
Make an additional backup copy on a removable medium and
store it suitably (see keeping documents and media) as far as
possible from the original.
Distribution/ transmission and sharing
Only distribute and/or share the documents and media with
people who actually need to use them.
If sent by traditional mail: use sealed holders (e.g. package,
envelope, etc.) and make a backup copy before sending them.
Use double sealed holders indicating the level of classification
and ascertain their receipt by contacting the recipient.
Reproduction / printing
Only reproduce the quantities strictly necessary and avoid
that abusive copies are made by promptly removing the
originals from photocopiers or scanners and the documents
from printers.
Destruction
When possible, empty the PC's bin as soon as the files are
deleted (destroy hardcopy documents so that they cannot
be reconstructed).

Company information must be protected

through the methods selected according
to its level of classification, and each copy
of the same information must be ensured
the same level of protection agreed for
the original.
In particular, it should be noted that, where
a specific measure is not indicated, the information shall be classified as significant.
For detailed insight, check the Group rule
regulating this area.

9 WHISPER

IN THE FOCU S

THE STORY OF INSERTER

The room where once a legendary Inserter machine
was folding and inserting thousands of envelopes addressed to cardholders, is our new get-together place
for constructive escapes from Radnika.
Ana Zvonari, Internal Communication
Old room with a new purpose
A chronic lack of meeting rooms in Radnika is an old sore
spot of ours. (So is a chronic excess of meetings, obviously).
But from now on your Outlook calendar offers you an alternative option when looking for a location for a meeting the
Inserter room. And this alternative option is alternative both
in the terms of location and appearance.
Slightly dislocated from the Green Gold, Inserter is situated in the basement of our good, old home, Lastovska
23. Once used as internal mailing factory, the space has
been recently renovated to serve as a get-together place for
whatever purpose - meetings, trainings, workshops, parties
you name it.
With a surface of approximately 70 m2, plus an extra adjacent
room of 15m2, Inserter is capable of hosting bigger groups.
For the time being, the room is equipped with the basic
conference equipment: several tables, approx.30 chairs,
two white boards, coffee machine, Wi-Fi connectionQuite
modest beginning, but moving into a new home usually
means starting off with basics, right? With time (and budget
allowances) also Inserter will grow into a more comfortable
and better supplied meeting place.

For the time being, the room is equipped with the basic conference equipment: several tables, approx.30 chairs, two white
boards, coffee machine, Wi-Fi connection

Why Inserter?
In tribute to the former subtenant, this room was named
after the inserter, a machine for automatic mail processing
that found here its last asylum, before the entire operational

task of mail folding and inserting, together with the machine,

was outsourced to a third-party in 2012.
But its not the machine itself that made this room so special.
Its the people by whom the machine was operated and
the cheerful, yet hard working atmosphere that had always
surrounded it.
To scratch a bit below the surface and find out more about
these good, old times, including even pre-Inserter period,
we talked to some of our colleagues who were the main
protagonists of this era. They all agree on one thing: Inserter
was a special place to work in.
Before inserter, even a CEO was inserting card reports
in the envelope
Darko Habu, nowadays Head of Data Processing and
Datacenter Operations Unit, is certainly the most referent
person when talking about Inserter, as hes been closely related
to its system operability throughout its entire existence, as
the first responsible for inserter. Darko is also well-versed in
the entire development of card processing in our Company
as he was among our datacenter pioneers, ever since Atlas
American Express times. Together with Bojan Toni who
was IT director at the time, Darko was the first to enter new
Lastovska data center on the New Years Eve in 1989. There
were 37 processors that composed the first data center. For
storing 1 GB of data one cubic meter was needed. To process
the present quantity of data with that technology, wed need
the entire Savica area covered with computers-says Darko.
In the first years of American Express presence in Croatia
back in 70s, the Amex members were so few that the card
invoices were written on the typewriters recalls Darko.
Later on, the numbers from credit card slips were entered
manually, processed elsewhere, printed out on endless A3
sheets and then equally distributed among all employees.
Until 1987 when NCR technology was introduced, literally
everyone took part in manual folding and inserting of SOC/
ROC reports (summary/record of charge) in envelopes, including CEO and cleaning ladies!
The boom of marketing with the first mail processing
machine
The NCR technology for data printing that entered in practice
in 1987 dispensed inserting process, as it was based on
printing of sheets ready-made for mailing. Still, this method
proved very costly resulting in its replacement with the first
inserter machine based on laser technology, which arrived
from England in 1993. Besides lowering the costs by 50%,
Inserter marked the beginning of an entirely new era: inclusion
of marketing materials alongside card reports! Logically, it
didnt take long for the boom of marketing to happen just like
it didnt take long for a second, upgraded version of inserter
to land in Lastovska. The third machine acquired in 2000,
two years after PBZ took over the Amex franchise, represented the most cutting-edge technology in automatic mail
processing, having been the first of the kind in Croatia. Many
10 WHISPER

IN THE FOCU S
of our business counterparts wanted to get acquainted with
the machine with the capacity of 3500 envelopes per hour representatives from ZABA and Croatian Post Office rushed
to Lastovska to check out the wide range of Inserters possibilities in the automatic preparation of materials for mailing.
During all that time Inserter was operated en passant, that is,
without a dedicated team, but with employees who jumped
to the aid alongside their regular jobs, under organization of
Darko Habu.
Logically, with constant growth of cardholders the daily mail
volumes were also increasing, requiring an organized team
operating in shiftwork. Robert tipak, currently Head of Risk
Portfolio management, was appointed the team Inserter team
leader, having run the unit since 1998 with strong support of
Aleksandar Iri and Radojev Rora, who was in charge of
technical maintenance. From 2002 till the end, Inserter was
operatively led by Aleksandar Iri, under supervision of Darko
Habu, with a number of other employees including Zoran
Kralj, Franjo Marku, Drako Sadak, Vid and Vlado
Soleniki, Nemanja Iri, etc. This team has also welcomed
the last version of Inserter machine that arrived from Sweden
in 2006 and soon got popularly nicknamed veo. In its entire
existence, in the period from 1993 -2012, the four versions
of Inserter processed more than 180 million of various paper
units, all neatly folded and inserted in 85 million envelopes!

William Montgomery, the US ambassador in Croatia, was

impressed with Inserters technical performance during his visit
to Atlas American Express in 1998. Robert tipak and Radojev
Rora are in the background.

The last photo with veo taken on the day of its departure,
January 2nd 2012, when inserting process was finally outsourced.
First row, from left to right: Vid Soleniki, Darko Habu, Ujo (!),
Mislav (from CityExpress). Second row: Drako Sadak, Aleksandar Iri, Mihael Hini

Hardworking cowboys
Whenever our management hosted important guests, theyd
bring them to see the inserter. Still, for as much as it was great
show-off, this machine gave us a lot of headaches. Shortly
after the arrival of the last and the most sophisticated inserter,
we detected several deficiencies on it. All the advice from the
factory experts and many hours spent on conference calls
proved useless. Finally, Rora, Saa Iri and I decided to fix
it our way, both hardware and software wise, and managed
to set it right. The most valuable lesson we got from Inserter
is the ability to improvise - recalls Robert tipak.
He also keeps many great memories from these days.
The superiors conceded us a lot of independence in our
work which was largely appreciated. We used to work
endless hours, including nights and weekends, all to meet
the strict deadlines. But then we also knew how to indulge
ourselves after hard work loud music accompanied by
smell of good food was usually coming out from our room.
Those were real cowboy days that brought us many
good laughs; we were always playing pranks on each
other. The atmosphere in the Inserter room was always
fantastic. concluded Robert.
(Actually, he didnt conclude his story with that but with a
number of juicy anecdotes, but that will have to remain off
record. Take any of the inserter people for a coffee and you
may find out!).
In any case, the Inserters story is weaved around collegiality,
hard work and fun. Yes, occasional disagreements happened,
but would soon be overcome by the good spirit of Inserter.
May that very same spirit remain in Inserter room forever and
possess all of you who enter it.
11 WHISPER

MEET THE TEA M

CLEARING AND RECONCILIATION UNIT

Find out what clearing and reconciliation actually stand
for and who makes sure they are impeccably executed
Maja Munjak Haramini, Customer Operations
Department
Once upon a time, between the era when messages were
exchanged by pigeons and the era of e-mails and SMS,
the mankind used postal services for exchanging letters,
things and even money.
Everything was quite risky. A man could suffer loss because
of a letter lost and not
delivered; it was more
difficult to bear loss
caused by a lost envelope with money in
it. Its always about the
money, right?
Since sending money
was very unsafe, a
man knew that something had to be done.
The process of money transfer evolved in
many directions and
today, among all, the
mankind has at its disposal a wide palette of payment cards guarded by an entire
army of security elements and supporting technologies.
In banking area, it is a common knowledge that making
transaction with any kind of MasterCard, Visa or Amex
card does not correspond to an instant movement of
funds between two institutions a card issuer and a card
acceptor (acquirer).
Once the transaction is authorized and confirmed, only a
commitment of payment is accomplished.
The path from such a promise of payment leading to the
actual money transfer from one bank to another, starts
with packing of all necessary details about transactions
into packages-files.
In the case of above mentioned cards, the exchange of
these files between two final endpoints - issuer and acquirer via MasterCard, Visa and GNS payment schemes,
is called clearing.
During the process of clearing, it must be assured that data
of transactions performed and exchanged are mutually
reconciled, ensuring that the money leaving an account
matches the actual money spent.
Packing and exchanging of packages must be thoroughly
and carefully undertaken because it represents basis for
movement of funds called settlement.

Its needless to emphasize how finances are a delicate

and serious matter. Therefore, all the mentioned activities
must be executed on a regular and ongoing basis fitting
prescribed timeframes to enable final endpoints fulfil their
further obligations. In case one of the packages is not
delivered on time, or gets delivered with inaccurate data
or is not delivered at all, the financial consequences are
possible.
In a company oriented to card business like ours, one of
the units in the Customer Operations Department is taking
care of clearing and reconciliation whereas settlement is, in
general, under banks`
domain.
What does it mean to
take care of clearing
and reconciliation?
Well, in our Clearing
and Reconciliation Unit
seven employees supported by an external
associate are in charge
of operational handling
of clearing and reconciliation process, controlling and supervising
daily transaction batch
processing cycle per each Bank - more than 130 files,
exchanged between ISP Card and card schemes (MasterCard, Visa, GNS). Also, they are monitoring declined/
rejected transactions and performing data corrections when
necessary (meaning quite often since card schemes reject
approximately 200 transactions every month).
They provide first line of support in resolving banks inquiries about daily transaction batch processing, error,
returned and rejected transactions (with more than 40
tickets per month!).
Given their vast experience in the clearing process, they
also support mandates management from the analysis to
implementation phase, participating in setting parameters
in clearing and reconciliation and chargeback application
systems. Their activities also include providing support
to business, processing and development teams, in testing, installations, file transfers and archiving definition
and implementation, certifications with global networks,
housekeeping servers, writing documentation.
For legacy reasons, the Unit also performs financial operations such as account booking, payment preparation etc.,
that is, all the tasks that are still performed on ISP Card side.
Lots of activities and lots of tasks to handle
12 WHISPER

MEET THE TEA M

Main activities of the Clearing and

Reconciliation Unit:

Clearing & Reconciliation controls

Implementation of changes, mandated by card

schemes
Improvements of the process

Operational tasks
Chargeback team and application support
Certications
+ some specific inherited activites:

GL accounting
GL reporting open positions
Authorizations of merchant payments
Quarterly reporting to card schemes (MC/VI)

Drawing the line under all of that, as a permanent and

ongoing process, great efforts are made by the Unit to
improve, optimize and automate processes which very
often include different kind of development. We believe that
results of these efforts are additional particles that make
us stronger and stronger link in the chain in our Company.

Main tools of the Unit:

Pre-Edit
Edit Package
Sopra InterPel

CMS

ZMS
Exact
UC4
BKScan

Gregor Boi, Head of Unit, about his team:

Our unit is located both in Koper (Nada Bauman-Lenari, Sonja Hrvatin, Kristina Smrdel and Gregor Boi)
and Zagreb (Mira Leki-Kneevi, Samira Crnoli Dragini, Luka Rakamari and Danijel Popovi replacing Domagoj Paunovi). Different persons composing the Unit come from different areas of expertise: finance and
accounting, chargeback, IT development, business design and other. Such a versatility of knowledge and skills is
the most important and valuable asset of the Unit. Based on the variety of tasks the Unit comes across, it is very
important to know not just how clearing and reconciliation processes work, but also to have a good knowledge of all
the surrounding activities inside Intesa Sanpaolo Card. This is the only way to support the clearing and reconciliation
processes without having negative impact on all other existing flows.

From left to right: Kristina Smrdel, Nada Bauman-Lenari,

Gregor Boi
Missing: Sonja Hrvatin

From left to right: Luka Rakamari, Mira Leki-Kneevi,

Gregor Boi, Samira Crnoli Dragini, Domagoj Paunovi
(replaced by Danijel Popovi)

13 WHISPER

TRAIN ING AN D E DU CATI ON

PERSONAL IMPROVEMENT IN THE

SERVICE OF THE COMPANY
Second time better! The first Targeted Development Program (TDP) was ambitiously started with over 30 keen
colleagues in 2012/13. Another 30 followed in the second
edition of the program in 2014, including all the good things
from the previous edition, and improving some sore spots.
Currently all colleagues passed the Personal development
module (remember Chris Haines!) and Change Management (remember Jon Thedham!), while the HR department
is helping them choose a training of their own choice for
third module Professional Excelling: under assumption
that something that is good for them personally shall by
default be good for the company. Some choose technical trainings (related to Agile, or expert English language
courses), some chose conferences (travelling to Berlin,
Budapest, London) and then there are soft skills trainings,
from NLP (neurolinguistic programming) to communication
and project leading. Magda Stojkovi shares with us her
experience from attending the course aimed at development
of management and leadership skills, in the organization
of the education center Berlitz.

Trust is the pillar of good

communication
Magda Stojkovi, Service Management Department
The TDP offered the participants a great opportunity: for the third
module of the program we were able to attend a training of our
choice. Soon we realized that sky is not a limit on this one, as
good trainings can be very expensive. But nevertheless, by joining forces, Marko Mlinar, Domagoj Petoi and myself had a
wonderful experience.
As we learned a lot during the first two sessions, we wanted to
expand our soft skill learnings and put them in practice. Berlitz,
a Japanese education company, prepared a customized three

day education on employee communication and management. Our trainer was Daniel Hirschler, an ex-journalist from
Germany that is now an experienced consultant, trainer and
moderator specialized in organization, communication, teambuilding and leadership.
The training was just for the three of us, which gave us enough
opportunity to actively engage, to focus on specifics that are
relevant to our company, our departments and, of course, us.
It was a great opportunity to get to know each other better,
bond and exchange experiences as we are based on three
locations - Jankomir, Radnika and Koper.
We started the education by finding out that trust is the pillar of
good communication; starting on the standpoint that Im ok
and youre ok enables a successful communication. This was a
concept that the three of us really took on board as we are aware
that often we judge people or have low self-esteem in certain
situations. During the exercises it was amazing to see how these
states of mind affected the message that we wanted to get across.
We learned that every communication has four sides: factual
(facts and figures), appeal (the speaker declares what the listener
should do), relationship (express sympathy and antipathy) and
self-revelation (self-disclosure of the speaker). Being aware of
those sides and adjusting your message to the context is the
key to be successful in communication.
We also learned about leadership styles, which styles are we
comfortable in and how can we adapt to other styles. As all
three of us are heads of units this will be very helpful, as well
as the conflict resolution tips that we received. We even had
the opportunity to discuss actual conflicts in our work lives
and find out our own conflict styles. We did some exercise on
active listening and negotiations. We also learned some new
things about motivation and culture.
Overall, I feel we really made a step forward on everything that we
already learned in the first two sessions of the TDP and received
great hints and practice tools for the future. Its now our
responsibility to try to put as many of those in practice.
Our trainer admitted ours was not a common form of
training (having only three participants), but nevertheless we had the opportunity of having a coach
for three days! I would heartily recommend this
training to anyone.
This experience was really priceless to me. In
our everyday rush we tend to forget to think
about how successful
we are as communicators, facilitators,
leaders, listeners
But being mindful of
the environment and
relationships that we
create and affect could
really help us to achieve
our goals.
14 WHISPER

STANDARD SPOTTING

Corporate template for PPT presentations

As announced in Whisper 35 and mid-May on the intranet, new Groups communication strategy
brought the new graphic format and consequently new corporate template for presentations.
A transition period for adoption of the new template was June 1st, and from that day on new
version should be used, both in internal and in all external presentations.

DO NOT USE

USE

Filed on intranet, Communication

site, Presentation template web part
15 WHISPER

A memory from the

excursion to Eternal city

EVEN T

HAPPY
CAMPERS!
The favourite summer escape for the kids of the
employees from ISBD continues to be Follonica
camp, a sunny children resort in Vilaggio Marino
di Follonica in Italy, situated on the Tyrrhenian
coast. This time five children of ISP Card
employees spent wonderful two weeks in Italy.
As could be expected, most of them singled out
the visit to Aqua Park as the most remarkable
event of the camp, whereas a day visit to Rome
and seeing the most important landmarks of the
Eternal city got also stuck in their memory as
a highlight.
There were many wonderful moments in the
camp, but what intrigued me and couple of my
friends the most, was our special hide-away
place within the camp complex. We found a
table and a bench carved in the stone, hidden
in the woods and used to go there and hang out
imagining were knights and princesses from
the past said Leon Grdini.

Leon Grdini proved to be an expert in water battles

Paula Perok, up close!

Another Leon also loved the international

experience: Besides Aqua Park, I really liked
hanging out on the sandy beach and building
sand castles he said.

THE GREAT FIVE:

LEON GOLUBI, son of Janja Savi

LEON GRDINI, son of Vesna Klarica
MARTIN AND KATARINA PETROVI,
son and daughter of Ivana urkovi Petrovi
PAULA PEROK, daughter of eljka Perok

Racing on the beach towards fizzing

waves, who can beat that?

The entire
Croatian crew
on the beach

Love from Follonica!

WHISPERcampers
16 Happy

TEAMWORK
IS MAKING THE
DREAM WORK

1st

in the world

2 nd

in Europe

Implementation of the
HCE pilot and commercial
launch for Visa with
VB Banka

Implementation of the
HCE pilot and commercial
launch for American
Express with PBZ

1st

in South-Eastern
Europe, CIS countries
and the Serbian market
Implementation of the HCE
pilot for Visa with Banca
Intesa Belgrade

EVERY GREAT ACHIEVEMENT WAS

ONCE CONSIDERED IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL
THE RIGHT TEAM CAME ALONG

INTERNATIONAL&INNOVATIVE
www.intesasanpaolocard.com