Provision of Banking Services

Item Description:

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) (referred to below as the contracting authority) is planning to award the contract(s) resulting from this procurement procedure. The procurement documents consist of the contract notice, the invitation letter, the draft contract(s) and tender specifications with their respective annexes. All documents are available in the attached ZIP File.

Objectives

The authority has to manage an annual payment budget of EUR 119 million for the 2021 financial year and it supposed to increase in the next two years to 144 million.

This call for tenders aims to conclude a direct service contract with one SEPA compliant bank where several current accounts in EUR will be opened for the execution of its payments.

The contractor will be expected to assume the following tasks:

• to carry out payments in EUR and in foreign currencies from the bank accounts of EFSA to beneficiary holding bank accounts with the Contractor or with other banks.
• execution of internal transfers between the EFSA bank accounts established with the Contractor.

Most of the EUR payments instructed by EFSA will be directed to beneficiaries holding a bank account within SEPA Area. A small proportion of the payments instructed by EFSA will be for beneficiaries outside the SEPA Area. The selected bank shall process other transactions if specifically requested by EFSA (i.e. foreign exchange transactions, manual payments, internal transfers between EFSA bank accounts).

Payments instructed by EFSA which beneficiaries are Italian public administration entities (central and local public administration entities, and other bodies such as public companies, schools, universities and local health authorities), need to be executed through the system PagoPA. PagoPA is an electronic payments system, available throughout Italy and designed for all transactions directed towards Italian public administration entities.

Letter and cheque payments may occur only in exceptional circumstances.

In 2020, the overall volume of payments instructed by EFSA sent to its bank, was approximately as follows:

1. Payments in EUR
   • Number of payments within SEPA Area: 17 300
   • Number of payments outside SEPA Area: 200
   • Total related amount in EUR: 95 million
2. Payments in other currencies
   • Number of payments within SEPA Area: 100
   • Number of payments outside SEPA Area: 10
   • Total related amount in EUR: 100.000

The average daily bank account balance during 2020 was EUR 12.5 million. The number of transactions and related amounts mentioned above are approximate and serve only to indicate the most probable scenario.

EFSA has its own SWIFT code for the execution of all financial transactions, which will be communicated to the successful tenderer upon signature of the contract.

Technical meeting to clarify any points on the contract implementation: in case of contract award, the successful tenderer must participate to a technical meeting with EFSA, at EFSA premises, prior to the contract signature. The exact date and time of the meeting will be communicated to the successful tenderer together with the award letter. The successful tenderer must bear the expenses for participating to the technical meeting.

Download all available documents in: [ZIP]