Financial and insurance services

Tender description

The purpose of this PIN is to inform market operators of the department's intention to hold a supplier engagement event October 2019. This is in preparation for a procurement to seek a sponsor bank to support the short term payment contingency service. Short term payment contingency (STPC) provides the department with a means of continuing the outflow of regular benefit and pensions by converting BACS payments into faster payments and can be invoked when the department determines there is a risk to timely delivery of the customers’ payments. The Sponsoring Bank is a key component to deliver STPC. Without a Sponsor Bank, STPC is unable to be invoked and will impact on the departments ability to make payments to customers on the expected due date. The sponsor bank will be required to support UK payments on behalf of, but not limited to, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Department for Communities (DfC), Defence Business Services (DBS) and Scottish Government (SG) The supplier must: — have direct corporate access, — have the ability to work with and engage with the faster payment scheme, — be able to pay the customer the correct amount at a time determined by the department until the service is revoked, — ensure the service is available 24/7, — ensure the complete end to end solution is available for use no later than 1.7.2020. The department anticipates the future contract duration to be 1 year + optional 1 year extension. The department currently makes circa 2 500 000 payments a day and pays over 3 000 000 000 GBP a week in benefit and pension payments.