The bailout of Espirito Santo Bank brings back unwelcome memories of the events of the last financial crisis and raises the spectre of moral hazard returning to the financial services industry both in the UK and abroad. But how far have we really come since those dark days of 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how far do we still have to go? A quick look at recent events gives us a good indication.
Europe now represents 10% of total Renminbi payments in value worldwide and is leading adoption beyond Asian countries, with four European countries in the top 10, excluding China and Hong Kong, according to Swift. Overall, the RMB strengthened its position as the seventh most used global payments currency and accounted for 1.57% of global payments.
As the global banks grapple with tides of regulation, fines, and a myriad of other post-crisis issues, local Asian institutions are tooling up and stepping in to fill the gaps.
Standard Chartered Bank’s New York business has been ordered to suspend US dollar clearing services to retail clients of the bank in Hong Kong, following an investigation by the New York State Department which determined its transaction monitoring system does not meet anti-money laundering requirements.
One of the most distinguishing features of the current wave of financial innovation is how the innovators are often not banks, but small fintech firms often led by former bank employees.
The European Commission wants to bring down the barriers to cloud computing in a move that promises to revolutionise the way transaction banks can serve clients.
Standard Chartered has launched a mobile wallet in the Philippines through a partnership with Globe Telecom, in a deal that will tap into demand for mobile money in one of the world’s strongest remittances markets.
The mobile wallet is having a transformative effect on people’s lives in developing countries, bringing safer, faster, easier financial services to the people who need it most
Nordic financial services group Nordea has gone live in Frankfurt and London with a web-based trade finance solution, which it says will help to strengthen its international trade finance business.
Essential parts of the UK retail banking sector lack effective competition and do not meet the needs of personal consumers or SMEs, according to government body the Competition and Markets Authority, which is now planning to launch a full investigation that could last 18 months.
Current account holders in the UK are switching between banks more often than before – but with some customers struggling to see the difference between banks, more needs to be done to make switching worthwhile.
A lesson learned from the global financial crises was how critical free cash flow can be for corporates, their customers, and their suppliers. As businesses seek to unlock cash flow from day-to-day operations, savvy treasurers have discovered vendor payments as a means to extend payment terms while improving vendor health, writes Chris Bozek, Managing Director, Head of Global Trade and Supply Chain Products Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The explosion of data in the securities and capital markets industry – more than 30% CAGR – is rapidly becoming a problem for market participants and managing that challenge will require a disciplined approach to the development of new data architectures.
The outsourcing of middle and back office functions by banks and brokers is now the norm, with nearly all firms outsourcing at least part of their functions to specialist providers such as custodian banks.
A new generation of trading venues is competing their way into the European securities markets with plans to make trading more efficient. But will they bring benefit to banks and investors?
Reporting on the management of intraday liquidity risk will start on a monthly basis from 1 January 2015 to coincide with the implementation of the liquidity coverage ratio reporting requirements. Christian Goerlach of Deutsche Bank, takes a closer look at some of the issues facing global banks.
Citi has chosen the ‘headliner’ finalists for its mobile innovation competition in Latin America, the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, which aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
Citi has launched a new set of trading features and transaction cost analysis tools on its Citi Futures and Options Execution platform, which it says will help clients to gain clarity from their futures clearing merchants.
Citi is hosting a major new mobile innovation competition in Latin America. Called the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, the competition aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
HSBC has installed free Wi-Fi in 650 of its UK branches, bringing the bank into line with Barclays, which introduced free Wi-Fi in February 2013. Both banks signed deals with BT to provide the connectivity, which is managed by BT as a white label service.
Santander is emerging as the main beneficiary of the battle to attract UK current account holders while NatWest and HSBC are losing ground, according to the monthly TNS Current Account Switching Index data for April.
The work corporates are doing to streamline cash management processes should not end with SEPA implementation, says. Indeed, the principles and ideas underpinning SEPA can inform progress even in the most challenging markets.
In one of the highest-profile tech hire in recent years, Barclays has poached Commonwealth Bank’s Michael Harte as chief operations and technology officer, filling the gap left by the surprise departure of Shaygan Kheradpir last autumn.
The purpose of the European Central Bank’s T2S project is ill-defined and taking so long to deliver that it is being pushed aside by other projects according to speakers at the Swift Business Forum in London.
US clearing body the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is pushing a move to shorten the settlement cycle for the US markets to T+2, claiming support from industry bodies and firms including JP Morgan.
Buy-side block trading venue Liquidnet has appointed former Wells Fargo Securities equity trading boss Bob Garrett as its new head of technology, based in New York.
Citi has launched an electronic block pricing tool via the Bloomberg App Portal, marking the first time a major tier one broker has ever used the Portal to deploy an application around the world.
Banking Group Santander has added m-commerce to its mobile banking and payment app, in a development it is claiming as the world’s first ‘superwallet’.
New EU regulations on market making and dark pools could be damaging investor choice and forcing participants to make decisions that are not in their best interests.
Europe doesn’t need more trading venues – instead, it needs more innovation, more fairness, more competition and better enforcement, according to panellists speaking at the Trade Tech conference in Paris.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has launched a new service that lets corporates manage up to 18 local Chinese bank accounts through a single global electronic banking platform.
Managing cash in stores remains a major challenge for retailers – trapped cash hinders working capital management and is unavailable for investment, debt repayment or business expansion. But new ways are being developed to manage store cash …
Banks should be wary of jumping the gun and assuming that SEPA implementation is a done deal. Far from being over, the task of learning to live with SEPA is just beginning.
With a revolution in consumer payments happening at the point-of-sale, online and increasingly through the mobile channel, there is a need and an appetite for change across every aspect of the payments industry.
Why are different parts of Africa experiencing widely different levels of success with mobile banking, despite years of experience in Kenya? Panellists at the IPS conference in London offered a range of explanations
The banking industry is complex by its nature but banks and bankers should look up from their budgets, listen to their customers, stop whining about regulations and collaborate on industry issues.
UK consumers have doubled the amount of transactions they make on their mobile phones over the last year, according to new figures released by the BBA.
Fixed income is a bit like the tortoise of Aesop’s fables, while equities is unquestionably the rambunctious hare. While equities finished the race towards an agency trading model many years ago, fixed income is just plodding onto the starting lines now. But a little outsourcing may provide the rocket boost the industry needs to push ahead, according to Carl James, managing director of dealing services UK at BNP Paribas.
Post-trade services institutions Clearstream, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Intesa Sanpaolo and BBVA have formed a tie-up in Europe, which they say is aimed at better asset servicing n Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain under the ECB’s forthcoming T2S project.
The mobile payments system planned by the UK Payments Council will be branded Paym. The Council says that it will announce the go-live date next month and final testing is on track.
