The launch of Apple Pay, the re-launch of PayPal as a separate company and the move to allow mobile operators to add payment for goods to phone bills across Europe are all threatening the hegemony of banks. But is it going to be as disruptive as many outside the banking world hope?
Besides mounting enthusiasm for Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, momentum is gathering to develop the infrastructure needed to turn what some see as a technology into a universally accepted currency.
With attention increasingly focusing on mobile payments and mobile banking, Fiserv is urging banks to look more closely at how to use mobile to not only deliver services to customers, but also as an up- and cross-selling channel.
The rise of an emerging middle class in Africa is transforming the continent as a group of 11 African nations power past the $1 trillion GDP mark. With tens of millions expected to rise out of poverty in the next decade, it is also providing compelling new opportunities for banks, according to Standard Bank of South Africa.
Microsoft has begun a joint pilot project with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (FS-Isac) to tackle financially-motivated cyber crime attacks, which are estimated to cost $100 billion a year in the US alone.
A range of product and service announcements during Sibos show Swift becoming ever more tightly integrated with customer and vendor systems.
Warsaw-based Polish central securities depository (CSD), KDPW, has launched a negotiated securities lending and borrowing system in co-operation with KDPW CCP, the country’s central clearing counterparty. The system is designed to prevent or eliminate suspension of settlement of transactions and ensure the return of securities loaned in the automatic lending system.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of World Payments Report. In this extract from the report, which was launched at Sibos this week, the impact of innovation on payments is examined.
The rise of Facebook has been one of the most striking cultural phenomena of the past decade. In January 2007 the site had around 25 million users. But by July 2014, Facebook had reached 2.2 billion users; a number equivalent to one out of every three people on this planet. Meanwhile, Twitter had emerged as the platform of business and news, with 500 million posts ‘tweeted’ daily by its 271 million active users.
A lack of available collateral to meet demand has become a global problem, with various models being deployed to ensure financial institutions meet the changing regulatory requirements.
Increased sanctions, tighter anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) controls, plus client demands for a quicker, better all-round service in the cloud and the move to shared service platforms present client onboarding challenges to banks. But there are also opportunities, said Karen Braithwaite, BNY Mellon’s global head of client service, treasury services.
The debut of SAP’s Financial Services Network at Sibos last year led many to see it as a threat to Swift’s plans for corporate connectivity.
New York, NY– October 1, 2014 – marcus evans, the world’s largest event management group, will host the Economic Capital Modeling and Management in Insurance 2014 Forum on November 18-19, 2014 in New York, NY. As risk assessment strategies become more aligned with business objectives and regulators grow increasingly interested in that integration, risk management executives and actuarial professionals alike have been tasked with designing frameworks capable of holistically managing enterprise risk.
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and Euroclear have taken the first steps towards the creation of a global collateral processing utility with the announcement that they plan to create a UK-based joint venture, DTCC-Euroclear Global Collateral.
While banks want to root out fraudulent activity as much as governments do they “need to take the temperature down”, said Bob Werner, global head of financial crime compliance and group general manager at HSBC. Speaking at a panel session on trends in financial crime compliance, Werner said: “Every time something goes wrong we don’t need the scalp of a regulator or the scalp of a banker.”
Argentina’s Banco Macro will use the Mambu cloud as the basis for a new business unit, which will offer loans to micro-enterprises and small businesses. The aim is to provide a lifeline to areas that have historically lacked access to financial services.
Rising political tensions and the increasing use of sanctions are making companies think twice about relying on long global supply chains, said John Calverley, head of economic research at Standard Chartered. Firms may decide that rather than hedging their bets with production, they will keep it closer to home, he said during a roundtable session yesterday.
The threat of banks de-risking and exiting regions and businesses in fear of sanctions-related fines is upon us, said Juan Zarate, the ex-deputy national security advisor for combating terrorism to US President George W Bush. Zarate was speaking at a Standard Chartered session yesterday morning about his new book, Treasury Wars: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.
While the average bank heist averages $6000, a cyber-thief can make off with millions. Last year 552 million identities were breached, while every call about a compromised credit card costs a bank $4.
In a recently published white paper on intraday liquidity reporting*, Swift urges financial institutions to initiate programs now to address serious challenges with regard to data availability, centralisation, aggregation and interpretation in meeting Basel Committee guidelines. Greater industry collaboration will also help to accelerate moves towards cost effective and sustainable models and solutions.
Banks can reduce the headaches associated with cost pressure, tough new regulation, legacy business complexity and changing customer demands by outsourcing non-core areas of business. That is the idea behind two new corporate actions products launched by financial technology vendor SunGard.
The consumerisation of technology is driving the development of new services in wholesale banking as much as it is in retail, as customers demand real-time access through mobile channels.
The US Federal Reserve Banks have begun planning for a faster payments system in the US, following research that found US consumers favoured such a system and would be willing to pay more for it.
Societe Generale Securities Services (SGSS) has launched Global Broker-Dealer Services, an outsourcing solution aimed at institutional brokers, mid-tier banks and broker dealers. The fully integrated global service includes middle-office services, back-office processing and post-trade services.
The growth of peer to peer lending demonstrates that there is an alternative to the traditional lending model of banks. But can crowd funders ever replace the incumbents and do they enjoy long-run advantages or face being co-opted?
Changing trade patterns and attempts to ‘de-dollarise’ international commerce are changing the landscape of trade finance, as new partnerships emerge.
The original concept of the ISO 20022 was to create a repository of data used in financial messaging to communicate business information of any type – and to be able to add any types of data that might arise in the future. There has been a lot of focus on the use of the standard in payments and securities messaging roles, this has obscured its current and potential use in other areas.
The financial industry must work with regulators, market infrastructures and among itself to address the major issues it faces says Jamie Forese, co-president of Citi and chief executive of Citi Institutional Clients Group, during the opening plenary address at Sibos in Boston: “Perhaps the most important issue on which we must work together is encouraging regulators to build a coherent, consistent and unified regime of global financial regulation. We can’t build it ourselves; our role must be as advocates and as advocates we need to speak with one clear and consistent voice.”
Collaboration between international financial market infrastructures (FMIs) and the development of industry utilities will be a key factor in removing systemic risk and reducing costs for industry participants.
The competition that will be introduced by the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) Target2-Securities (T2S) project among CSDs is an “opportunity” said Jesús Benito, chief executive at Iberclear. In simplifying the post-trade infrastructure of Europe, T2S is prompting new competitive forces, market entrants, challenges and even creating new words.
More than two-thirds of delegates who attended the Demystifying Regulators and Regulation session yesterday said they had to file reports with six or more regulatory agencies and of those, a third report to north of 11 agencies.
Growth is returning to the payments industry and new market entrants are poised to take a share of that growth away from banks, according to a clutch of payments-focused white papers released at Sibos today.
Misys has launched the Misys FusionBanking Corporate FrontOffice, which it said integrates the corporate to bank relationship more fully. It provides banks with a tool that can aid client onboarding and functionality while enabling end use treasury customers to get commercial lending data, trade finance and payment information – and prices – out of their bank much more easily.
When a new payment system such as Bitcoin arises it tends to be successful “in areas where a need is not being met”, Gottfried Leibbrandt, Swift chief executive told delegates yesterday. He said his fascination with Bitcoin – “both a currency and an innovation” – had not changed in the past 12 months.
Data loads at financial institutions are expected to increase significantly, according to a poll of delegates attending yesterday’s technology forum session on big data.
Sepa Consultancy has launched the Intraday Liquidity Simulator, a liquidity dashboard solution that provides a timeline of events, outcomes and actions in multiple currencies.
BNP Paribas Securities Services has launched Liquidity Access, a solution designed to help banks and broker dealers manage and monitor their liquid assets. The launch comes as various regulations, including Basel III and Dodd Frank, require market participants to hold more liquid assets, closely monitor their liquidity ratios and anticipate the evolution of their liquidity positions. Intraday liquidity management and reporting is likely to be a hot topic this week as the January 2015 deadline for Basel intraday liquidity reporting looms.
