Société Générale has launched its new innovation hub – The Dunes – a 126,000 square-metre building complex in Val-de-Fontenay, a suburb of Paris. The firm says 5,000 of its employees “working in technology” will be based there and the hub is “at the heart” of its “digital transformation”. But it’s doubtful the building will transform […]
Commerzbank has firmed up plans to lay off nearly 5,000 people. Around 3,000 job cuts will be across the bank’s branch network at home in Germany. Another 1,900+ jobs will be eliminated outside Germany and across Commerzbank’s subsidiaries.
Symphony Software Foundation has launched an open developer platform. The foundation hosts open source development, bots, apps and integrations on the Symphony platform. It will also provide community contributors and foundation member organisations with access to the Symphony API, as well as development tools. Gabriele Columbro, executive director, Symphony Software Foundation, says open source “fuelled […]
Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions has launched electronic document submission (eSubmit) for account opening. The service is available in “select” Western European countries and allows clients to complete the account opening process by returning electronic versions of documentation rather than paper. Sabine McIntosh, global head of account services product, Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions, says […]
More than 60 of financial institutions around the world (including many top-tier banks) are involved in the R3 consortium, with considerable financial and resource commitments. The international consortium promises to build a common blockchain-based platform – called Corda – but the end-result is still a number of years away.
BNP Paribas has selected Fidessa’s derivatives trading platform to underpin the bank’s futures and options agency trading business. The platform will support the workflow requirements across Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America. It will also provide BNP Paribas with a suite of specialised derivatives algorithms, including benchmark algos and advanced synthetic order types to normalise trading […]
Friday’s not the best for NatWest. Today (14 October), there have been some issues with its debit card payments and its customers are unable to make purchases. The bank says it is “aware of some issues” and is “working hard to fix them”. On Twitter, customers are either confused or venting their fury. We’re aware […]
Goldman Sachs has unveiled Marcus, an online platform offering unsecured personal loans to consumers. Named after Marcus Goldman, one of the firm’s founders, the platform provides consumers with a way to “consolidate their high-interest credit card debt”. Borrowers can apply for fixed-rate, no-fee personal loans of up to $30,000 for periods of two to six […]
Make it lean, keep them keen. A round-up of events in the payments space. Nordea is leaving the Swipp collaboration and partnering with Danske Bank’s MobilePay platform in Denmark and Norway. The shared payment solution’s plan is a reaction to “new international players” who “regularly appear in the market”. Danske says it will begin converting […]
Lloyds has confirmed 1,230 jobs will be cut as part of its continuing restructuring plan. The jobs will go from group operations, retail, customer products and marketing, finance and risk divisions. As Banking Technology reported in April, Lloyds revealed it was to cut 625 jobs – part of its 9,000 job reductions and 200 branch […]
Niamh de Niese, a new director and head of BNY Mellon’s EMEA Innovation Centre, shares her views on diversity in fintech, Ada Lovelace (often regarded as the world’s first computer programmer) and how to encourage more women into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions.
Lloyds says it is set to become the “first” organisation in Europe to introduce new fraud prevention technology, helping protect its 30 million customers from telephone fraudsters. The patented “Phoneprinting”, developed by call centre fraud firm Pindrop, creates an “audio fingerprint” of each call by analysing 147 unique call features – such as location, background […]
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is withdrawing the merchant bank status of Falcon Private Bank’s Singapore branch for “serious failures” in anti-money laundering (AML) controls and “improper conduct” by senior management at the head office in Switzerland as well as the Singapore branch. MAS is also imposing financial penalties on DBS Bank and UBS’s […]
Christian Westerhaus, Global Head of Product & Strategy, Institutional Cash Management, Deutsche Bank, talks about the future of correspondent banking.
“We have the licence, we have the technology, now we have the card.” New UK challenger bank Starling has got its first batch of debit cards as it continues to build its infrastructure. Like some kind of shopaholic’s symbolic frolic, the bank detailed its London shopping adventure with a blog post. This had a point […]
Lloyds has launched selfie technology to enable customers of its subsidiary, Bank of Scotland, to open a current account online.
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place!
“Transaction banking will undergo a change of character,” states the global banking giant.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has installed advanced “human” artificial intelligence (AI) to help its staff answer customer queries. The bank says a two month trial has been “successful “and the AI, known as ‘Luvo’, is to be rolled out more widely to support employees, and perhaps bring some tender loving care (TLC) with it. […]
Erik Zingmark and Peter Hupfeld, Co-Heads of Transaction Banking, Nordea, talk about how a changing world is changing banking.
There’s glee and a spending spree for HSBC as over $100 billion in mobile payments have been made by its corporate customers. The bank says the $100 billion sum was authorised globally through the HSBCnet mobile corporate banking platform since its launch in 2011. The total transaction value of mobile payments has more than doubled […]
This time we have a genuine Uber moment in fintech. Standard Chartered and Uber are partnering to offer the bank’s credit cardholders cashbacks on Uber rides. This is the “first ever multi-market partnership” for both of them. The deal is for six markets – Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, India and the United Arab Emirates – […]
Citi is to offer direct custody and clearing (DCC) services to clients in Denmark from the fourth quarter of this year. The new offering will expand Citi’s proprietary DCC network to 63 markets globally and 36 markets across Emea. Citi will partner with VP Securities, a provider of securities and investor services in Denmark. VP […]
Tanya Andreasyan, editor of Banking Technology, talks to Sibos TV hosts about various collaborative efforts within the financial services industry, innovation and disruption, and banks’ newly-found love for fintechs. Hug a fintech!
More collaboration is required among members of the correspondent banking community, despite the progress that has been made through efforts such as the Global Payments Innovation (GPI) initiative.
“First they think it’s stupid, then they think it’s obvious. Blockchain has passed the first test.” These are the words of an economics professor (quoted, but not present) on revolutionary ideas, and perhaps a succinct evaluation of where blockchain is right now. In a packed conference room on the Monday afternoon (26 September), the panel discussed “Blockchain 2020 – what next for adoption by the financial industry”.
Blockchain and distributed technology have been hot topics at Sibos this year, with a raft of announcements from banks and fintechs alike. One of the areas identified as of most promise is trade finance – an area of banking that is rife with paper-based processes.
Standard Chartered Bank has entered into a One Belt One Road (Obor) strategic alliance with China Merchants Bank (CMB) to accelerate the Belt and Road initiative and help promote economic growth and regional cooperation for countries along the Road. Obor is a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily […]
The single euro payments area is up and running and has proved to be a catalyst for change in the payments industry. We look at the story so far.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, transaction banking was considered a reliable source of income for global banking groups. But nearly a decade on, multiple factors are putting pressure on transaction banks’ revenues. This year’s World Payments Report suggests banks increase their investments in digital solutions to offer more compelling propositions to their corporate treasury clients.
The payments industry faces a perfect storm with immediate, open and context-based changes emanating from new technology, regulation and infrastructures set to “transform the landscape”.
Udayan Goyal’s vision for the future of money revolves around seamless, instant micropayments being made continuously between autonomous apps and services all triggered by thoughts and actions of humans as they go about their daily lives.
Digital innovation has the potential to radically transform the payments arena, through solutions that enhance end-to-end speed, efficiency, transparency, security and cost effectiveness. Anthony Brady, global head of business strategy and market solutions, treasury services at BNY Mellon, discusses how banks are being spurred to drive forward new technology initiatives – with collaboration at their core – to deliver an enriched global real-time payments experience to clients.
Read our first Daily News at Sibos edition of the Sibos 2016 conference in Geneva – all the latest news and analysis from Swift’s premier event of the year.
Momentum is building behind the T2S securities settlement system as it gains critical mass. While expected benefits and outcomes have not fully materialised, the unexpected benefits have captured the imagination of the post-trade industry.
The UK’s existing Faster Payments scheme could be consigned to the slow lane as researchers at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) claim to have demonstrated blockchain supporting a new banking industry clearing system. In a ten-page technical paper, “Proving Ethereum for the clearing use case”, RBS’s innovation engineering team says it has created a clearing […]
Overly manicured beard. Check. Clothes that betray blatant narcissism. Check. Holier than thou attitude. Check. Welcome to the world of hipsters as HSBC is looking for office space in trendy tech-focused London neighbourhoods. According to Bloomberg, the bank is seeking to “bolster its fintech capabilities” and has hired real estate broker CBRE Group to find […]
Catch up on Banking Technology’s top five fintech stories of the week – all in one place! Harrods Bank in search of new core banking system EXCLUSIVE. The FIS Profile project is dead. Long live a new project! Deutsche Bank GTB builds new payments platform EXCLUSIVE. Dovetail to deliver? Misys unveils Platform-as-a-Service strategy Opens up […]
Deutsche Bank says it is building a new “state of the art” payments platform for its global transaction banking (GTB) business. It will be rolled out across the bank’s operations worldwide, supporting trade finance, securities and cash management businesses. The software is supplied by a specialist payments provider – Banking Technology understands this is Dovetail. […]
The number of branches operated by major banking groups in the UK has halved over the last 20 years. In fact, Britain’s banks closed more than 600 branches across the UK between April 2015 and April 2016. This is hardly surprising as more and more people move online, often mobile-first, to complete most of their […]
