Cashfac Technologies, a specialist market leader in bank-to-corporate cash management solutions has launched Cashfac Analytics, a real-time data analysis and reporting module that enables banks and corporates to better understand their cash movements.
The fact that London’s financial services sector is also a hot spot for technology innovation is not news. In 2014, investment in financial technology firms grew by 136%. Earlier this year, George Osborne identified London’s financial technology sector as a particularly bright spot in the recovering economy – not surprising when you consider the transformational effect that information technology continues to have on the industry
Banks in the UK are increasingly shifting jobs away from London, with the result that while the overall number of banking jobs fell 0.5% between 2013-14, 77 local authorities in the UK saw the number of banking jobs grow faster than in London.
Several new entries appear in the shortlist of vendors whose products and services have been voted for by Banking Technology readers – and several previous winners re-appear under new ownership following acquisitions.
Banks from around the world are among the candidates on the shortlist for the Banking Technology 2015 Awards, announced today, showing the continuing competitive edge regional institutions are gaining over the large international players through technology.
More transparency is urgently needed to restore trust in the FX industry, according to a new report by foreign exchange MTF LMAX Exchange – but to make that happen, the industry will have to collaborate.
SIBOS Interview: Benoit Desserre, Global Head, Payments and Cash Management, Societe Generale
Erik Zingmark, Deputy Head of Transaction Products, and Head of Cash Management, Nordea
Bruno Prigent , Head of Securities Services and Mathieu Maurier, Global Head, Sales Management at Societe Generale
SIBOS Interview: Dr Darryl Twigs, Head of Product Management, SmartStream
Technology has infiltrated every facet of our lives, fundamentally changing our behaviour patterns and our expectations of what constitutes a good customer experience. The banking sector has not been immune to these changes; the industry has been forced to drastically transform its business processes and services in order to keep up with customers’ expectations. Today, customer satisfaction is judged not by the smile on the face of a cashier, but on the speed with which one can gain mobile access
Competition from financial technology companies and regulatory changes are forcing banks to adopt APIs to provide access to client information, which has many implications across the industry.
A lack of information in securities messages creates problems for financial institutions screening them for regulatory compliance. But if the audience in a session yesterday is representative, only around half of them are screening anyway.
Banks have been quick to participate in the China International Payment System (Cips) and Sibos has provided the perfect opportunity for them to boast of their involvement. The payments infrastructure, which was launched on 8 October, was described as a “milestone” by Helen Yun, managing director and head of financial institutions China, Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Speaking during the Developing your transaction business with China session on Tuesday, she said the launch came at the right time, just a few days before Sibos opened.
While much of the focus at this year’s Sibos has been on China, today’s ‘Asean day’ highlights the emergence of the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). Many had expected the region’s trade integration to falter during the global financial crisis amid falling export demand. However a new report from Australia’s ANZ bank said the region had “defied the detractors and proved a resilient base for a new cohort of international banks”.
Sluggish economic growth in developed nations means attention is still focused on the growth markets of the Brics nations. As intra-regional trade grows, local knowledge is becoming a valued commodity.
Swift was keen to point out that the newly-launched China International Payment System (Cips) is not a competitor. Prior to the launch of the Chinese payments infrastructure, details of the system were scarce. On Tuesday at Sibos, Philippe Dirckx, managing director, head of markets and initiatives, Asia Pacific, at Swift said he wanted to clear up the idea that Cips was a competitor to Swift.
Disruptive innovation in banking and payments was overwhelmingly coming from China. Established global banks had better watch out or they may soon not have a future …
Working capital and supply chain finance topped the list of concerns for corporate treasurers in an audience poll at The future of corporate banking session yesterday.
Regulatory pressures, millennial customers demanding different services and the impact of digital giants such as Google and Amazon are making innovation an imperative for banks and financial services organisations. But banks are not very innovative on their own, being risk averse and focused on their balance sheets.
From its tentative early steps to open the Swift network to corporations, Swift has been steadily building its corporate membership. Swift membership is increasingly an option for not only large multinationals, but also medium sized companies. Daily News at Sibos looks at the current status of Swift for Corporates.
The rise of real-time payment infrastructures in the UK, Singapore, Poland, Australia and elsewhere in the world can help banks fight the disruption they face from alternative payment service providers (PSPs) and financial technology newcomers
Tom Brown, Senior Vice President, Financial Services, LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Compliance obligations are increasing for financial institutions. A utility approach to the issue is gaining favour …
Trade finance plays an important role in helping to grease the wheels of the global economy. A largely paper-based process, effort is being put into finding ways to automate and improve processes for banks and corporates.
Larger banks are turning away payments business from smaller banks as regulatory and cost pressures bite. More than two-thirds of delegates in yesterday’s compliance session, Big Banks and Small Banks, said they had been victims of de-risking by larger banks; 68 per cent said larger banks had withdrawn from doing business with smaller banks. In addition the audience poll found that 67 per cent of respondents had experienced reduced services from their larger correspondent banks during the past three years.
Correspondent banking business models will continue as they are but adapt to changes in customer needs rather than replace existing infrastructures with new technologies such as blockchain.
There is no longer an issue of whether to offer real-time payments but rather how to offer them, according to the panellists in yesterday’s Real time: how fast is too fast? session. And now the demand has stepped up a gear from peer to peer payments to the corporate world.
Despite the hype proclaiming that the blockchain will solve everything including the common cold, the reality is more prosaic, according to panellists at the Securities market infrastructure innovation: the next frontier session yesterday. Instead, the reality may be that capital markets innovation can only really take flight when the market infrastructure gets involved.
Trade finance is one area of wholesale banking that is set to be transformed by the internet of things. At yesterday’s The internet of things and banks’ core platforms session most of the discussion was about the wider issues of banks’ digital transformation. But when the panellists were asked by Cathy Bessant, Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s chief operations and technology officer, where the concepts could be applied to wholesale banking, it was trade finance that was highlighted.
SmartStream has extended the capabilities of its Trade Lifecycle Management suite with the launch of an adaptor. The adaptor will provide a full lifecycle of trading messages for the non-clearing OTC derivatives market and TLM Cash Management module for the front-office, which will provide a global real-time view of cash positions across all settlement channels […]
The financial crash has had many repercussions, but one unforeseen consequence has been that trust in banks and financial services among millennials – that’s anyone too young to remember a Sibos pre-2000 – is almost non-existent. And banks have to adapt if they are still to be relevant to the next generation of consumers.
It seems that at each Sibos, certainly since the financial crisis of 2008, a regulatory deadline is looming large. This year’s model is the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s (BCBS’) 11 principles for effective risk data aggregation and risk reporting (BCBS 239), with which globally systemically important banks (GSIBs) must comply by 1 January 2016. However, a report on the progress of adoption reveals a lack of preparedness.
Real-time payments systems and infrastructures are being rolled out globally. What impact will they have on financial institutions? How fast is too fast? Daily News at Sibos asked delegates where the trend is heading …
Oracle has launched the Oracle Banking Digital Experience, which it describes as the end result of a five-year project to build the ‘next generation’ of banking platform. Ashwin Goyal, group vice-president and general manager at Oracle Financial Services, said banks would not have to make “major changes” to their core systems as a result of the new platform.
Swift has launched an analytics service that provides users with a deeper analysis of their payments and letters of credit (LC) data over Swift. Watch Banking Analytics Premium is a part of the Watch for Banking services range, a set of online reporting and analytical tools that allow users to look into their institution’s message content to better understand the value behind messaging activity.
