Digitally enabled supplier finance networks and alternative lenders now pose a significant threat to every part of the commercial lending business, with 84% of banks seeing pressure on the pricing of loan products as a challenge.
Historically, the large banks have been Lords of the Manor, between them owning every scrap of land as far as the eye can see. However, times are changing: invaders offering services the banks cannot provide as competitively have begun to disrupt the peace and take small pockets of land for themselves. Likening the march of the fintech new entrants to a land-grab by an invading force, the disruptors began with a neglected allotment here and there, then moved to take a meadow and now some are on the verge of swallowing up villages and small towns …
Thomson Reuters has added foreign exchange trading capabilities for corporate treasurers to its financial markets desktop Thomson Reuters Eikon, linking it to FXall QuickTrade, a request for stream service.
Two-thirds of top-tier financial institutions have established reconciliation centres of excellence following a recent wave of consolidation of the reconciliation function – but more than half of firms say their reconciliation technology platform was at least five years old, and a quarter of respondents use platforms more than nine years old.
A ‘Babel Fish’ for financial messaging has been launched by Volante Technologies with the intention of simplifying corporate-to-bank integration and removing obstacles to on-boarding. Like the fictional universal translator from Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, the system translates incoming message formats into something that the receiver can understand.
The ‘digitisation’ of banking provides an opportunity for banks to improve their treasury service offerings as they face a second wave of digital expectations from key corporate customers, according to a report from analyst firm Celent.
Corporate users are increasingly adopting mobile payments, according to figures from HSBC, which expects usage of its HSBCnet Mobile corporate banking platform to double over the next 18 months, reaching $100 billion in payments.
Karla McKenna has been named head of standards at the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation on a year’s secondment from Citi, where she is director of market practice and standards.
Whatever label you use, instant, immediate, faster or real-time payments have moved to the top of the agenda at every payments-related event so far this year and are sure to be high on the agenda when Swift’s annual Sibos event lands in Singapore in October. Nearing the halfway mark for 2015, here’s a roundup of the stories so far …
The window of opportunity to harmonise international real-time payments implementations is rapidly closing as plans for domestic systems move ahead according to panellists at the EBAday conference this week.
Regulation has the potential to accelerate the payments innovation sparked by the evolution of internet and mobile technologies. By giving customers the reassurance that payments can be made safely and efficiently, regulation allows providers to develop new and exciting ways to serve customers
Global interoperability of real-time payments systems will require harmonisation of market practices and standards. A group of international clearing houses, banks, vendors, payments associations and other parties have proposed setting up an activity to look at how to deliver this under the aegis of the International Standards Organisation – and set an ambitious target of collating an initial variant of ISO 20022 usage guidelines for real-time payments before the summer.
ABN Amro plans to implement the Temenos WealthSuite integrated wealth management platform for its international private banking business. It will also be able to extend the use of the T24 core system to its private banking and diamond & jewellery business, giving it one platform with one operating model across multiple business lines.
Customer driven innovation is powering change in the payments industry. Real-time Payment infrastructures (RTP) – whether they are called Faster Payments, Immediate Payments or same-day clearing – are now a reality, with many countries having implemented RTP functionality, and others actively considering the imminent roll-out of RTP projects in their domestic market.
At the Recent Payments International conference in London, Patrick Griffin, EVP Business Development at RippleLabs talked to Banking Technology editor David Bannister about the technology and puts paid to some misconceptions about the Ripple protocol.
The inaugural meeting of the Open Forum on Pan-European Instant Payments drew 77 representatives from 55 payment service providers, technology providers and other stakeholders to Frankfurt this week to kick off discussions about requirements and collaboration on infrastructure services to support instant payments at a pan- European level.
As international regulators demand more detail from banks on payments to individuals and companies, the first order of business is to ensure compliance with mandates. Migrating Swift MT payment formats to ISO 20022 will allow the industry to shape the transformation of payment messaging standards rather than have others shape it – but there is a need to set timelines for implementation or cede control.
Arising out of developments in standardised messaging, eBAM is one step towards the future of more accessible, safer banking
Deutsche Bank and Hewlett-Packard have announced a 10-year, multi-billion dollar agreement that will see parts of the bank’s global IT systems rationalised and migrated to HP platforms10
Technology consultancy Capgemini has formed a global alliance with First Data to develop payment software based on First Data’s VisionPlus and AccessPlus solutions. The pair say that they expect to begin delivering new solutions in the second quarter of this year.
Yantra Financial Technologies, an electronic payment systems developer, has integrated its latest system for risk scoring of payments with the Ripple real-time settlement protocol. The integration means that institutions using the Ripple protocol can analyse transactions in seconds, including what other payments the customer recently made and potential concerns regarding a specific transaction. Risk levels can be assigned to certain transactions based on pre-determined criteria.
RBS has confirmed that it has hired Marion King, formerly president of UK and Ireland at MasterCard, in the newly created role of director of payments in the New Year.
Corporate treasurers are increasingly looking beyond traditional of finance to a wider range of alternative funding options that support their working capital requirements, including supply chain finance, trade receivable securitisation and factoring.
While a great deal of attention has been given to Lloyds Banking Group’s retail operations as its various elements are split up, less has been given to its activities in transaction banking, where it is “one year into a three-year journey” to transform itself and its customer offerings to create“the best global transaction bank in this region”.
Regulatory mandates call for the financial services industry to collaborate and rethink its data supply chain to tackle systemic risk and improve transparency. Looking at how the retail industry manages its supply chain could hold the key.
The increased globalisation of business has opened up new challenges – and opportunities – for companies and the banks that serve them. Corporate treasurers and finance professionals face complexities in the payments arena that range from inconsistencies in local payment processing to new regulations, emerging payment clearing systems and the need to manage geopolitical risk in an ever-expanding array of countries. To address these challenges for their clients, and for themselves, global banks need to invest and innovate to make sure they have the solutions to meet business needs today and in the future.
Corporates want easier connection to their financial institutions – is Swift the answer or do other options exist?
As delegates finalise their plans to attend Sibos in Boston this month, Chris Church, chief executive Americas and global head of securities at Swift, discusses what they can expect
The UK Government is to examine the potential of digital currencies as positive force in the wider economy and as a means of encouraging innovation in financial services.
The rise of new technologies is drastically redefining both the responsibilities of chief financial officers and the way they work, providing the ability tomake better organisational decisions with faster, accurate and more reliable data.
In a landmark ruling, the US Supreme Court has ruled that the intermediated settlement of financial exchanges is an abstract idea and therefore not patent-eligible. David Puth, chief executive of CLS, which won the case in question. discusses the implications of the ruling.
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 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.
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 …
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.
Banks don’t really understand the needs of corporates and are often so busy focusing on selling that they forget basic customer requirements, according to speakers at the IPS conference in London this week
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.
BNY Mellon says a global overhaul of its payments infrastructure will position it for “a new era” in payments and fundamentally change its relationship with customers and other financial institutions internationally.
A group of major international banks have agreed to jointly develop and use the centralised Know Your Customer Registry announced by Swift at the start of the year.
Ten years ago business-to-business payment options were pretty limited: cheques dominated, and organisations only had the option of 3-day BACS payments or expensive CHAPS transactions for high value, same day payments.
