Standard Chartered has named Michael Gorriz as group chief information officer, replacing Jan Verplancke, whose departure was announced earlier this year. Gorriz is currently vice president and CIO at Daimler.
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.
The financial services industry faces a daunting task as the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation draws close to its final deadline, and grave concerns about inconsistencies in the rules and the pressures of meeting it remain.
At lunchtime on the African savannah, you needn’t be the fastest zebra to survive –you need to avoid being the slowest. You can only be sure you’re not the slowest zebra if you can see what the rest of the herd are up to. Efforts in software security to share information on attacks, responses, and best practices are important to understanding what the herd is doing …
The Citi Mobile Challenge, which seeks to unearth innovation and developer talent in some of the most far flung reaches of globe in a bid to get the best talent to help change the way the world banks, has extended its registration deadline to allow more people to take part.
Fixed income markets have historically been a bastion of high-touch trading, with manual processes, large tickets and little standardisation. But as recent years have seen inventory slashed and balance sheets cut in face of rising regulatory pressure, finding liquidity has become more of a challenge. A group of banks are hoping to reinvigorate the market though a standardised messaging system.
Tungsten Bank can now provide banking services in Germany, France and Italy following approval from the UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority
Lloyds Bank plans to invest £1 billion in digital banking capability over the next three years, re-investing a third of the savings it hopes to make in its drive to become ‘simpler and more efficient’.
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
Citi has opened the doors to entrants for its Citi Mobile Challenge in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, an annual competition that invites developers from around the world to build innovative financial services based on Citi’s digital platform.
The UK’s Payments Council has selected Swift to build the country’s new central infrastructure platform in preparation for the next phase of SEPA regulation in 2016, through the provision of an automated central infrastructure platform for collection and maintenance of UK-specific SEPA routing data.
London-based Orwell Group, founded in 2005, has launched a pan-European current account called Ipagoo in the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The product aims to take on services provided by traditional banks, using open architecture software and promising consumers greater choice and less hassle.
Lebanese commercial bank Al-Mawarid has begun a bank transformation project focused on mobile and online banking using the FusionBanking Essence Digital software from Misys.
Italian banks are preparing for T2S, as Europe seeks to reform its cross-border trading infrastructure and bring down barriers between EU countries. The preparations are driving smaller regional banks to make deals with larger global banks as they prepare for implementation in June.
BNY Mellon and State Street have announced a collaboration with Eurex Clearing, the subsidiary of Deutsche Börse Group, to enhance the Eurex service to meet the needs of beneficial owners, and explore expanding its geographic reach into the US.
Several of the UK’s major banking brands are losing customers to rivals such as Spanish bank Santander and building society Nationwide, according to figures released by the UK Payments Council – while competitor bank Nationwide continues to add customers.
RBS’ global transaction services business is exploring collaboration with a number of startup companies as a way of combining its own services with the innovation provided by smaller companies, through API agreements. The move comes as banks around the globe increasingly seek to bring products to market faster and reap the rewards of innovation.
Jan Verplancke is stepping down as chief information officer and group head of technology and operations at Standard Chartered, as is Richard Goulding, chief risk officer. The news of their departure comes as the banks announced further restructuring, including the closure of its institutional cash equities, equity research and equity capital markets businesses as part of a strategic plan to ditch “non-core or underperforming businesses”.
When first reports of an integrated communications project that had attracted a $66 million investment from a consortium of banks led by Goldman Sachs appeared last year, there was an element of cloak and dagger about the enterprise. The truth is both more prosaic and more interesting according to David Gurle, chief executive and founder of the company behind it.
The big four high street banks lost ground in the current account market in the first year of the UK Payments Council’s current account switching service, mainly through poor customer service. But the guarantee did not accelerate the pace of account switching, according to an independent survey of bank customers.
Widespread use of fingerprint authentication for financial transactions on mobile devices could start taking off from early next year as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Google, Samsung, Lenovo, Microsoft, Alipay and others adopt a new authentication standard through their joint project, the FIDO Alliance, which has just published its specifications and launched its first server.
For banks, a race to remain relevant is on. In the past few weeks, Lloyds Banking Group has announced its intention to double-down on digital banking, closing branches and cutting costs. In the US, BBVA Compass announced that its agreement with startup Dwolla to offer real-time payment facilities to customers makes it the first mainstream bank to open its technology platform to digital developers like Dwolla
The replacement of business processes based on paper documents with the exchange of information in electronic form is a highly beneficial global trend, and the competitiveness of Europe’s economic activity will benefit from this migration.
The volume, speed and power of technology has transformed the Financial Services industry into one the most sophisticated data driven sectors in the global economy, allowing for the execution of complex global transactions at the push of a button. From high frequency trading to eCommerce to mobile banking, the financial sector is generating a huge amounts of data – in fact, almost too much data. Like individuals, institutions are facing an information overload that is limiting the promise and opportunity of technology.
Barclays has launched a new video banking service on smartphone, tablet and computer, which it says will allow customers to have face to face conversations with the bank anytime, anywhere, without having to visit a branch.
Monitise plans to raise £49.2 million through extensions of its relationships with Santander, Telefónica and MasterCard. The money raised will be used to ‘support the development and accelerated roll-out of its global platform capabilities’.
Market participants are worried about data and are deeply concerned about their ability to monitor transactions following a string of major fines to global financial institutions, according to a new report by NICE Actimize.
It has been a busy week for the banking industry. The first big news was the publication of a comprehensive health check of 130 large European banks by the European Central Bank, which was commissioned in response to the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone. Brussels lauded the latest investigation as the most intense scrutiny that European banks have ever been put through.
As Bob Dylan, famously sang, The Times, They Are A-Changin’. Once, the tools required to carry out a bank raid usually comprised a shotgun, old stockings and a bag labelled “swag”. Today, it’s a laptop, computer programming skills and patience. And the nature of the crime is changing too – previously, the goal was often to get away with a few thousand pounds, before lying low for a while. Now, the “prize” sought may be the theft of millions or the personal details of thousands, to be then sold on.
JP Rangaswami has been appointed as chief data officer at Deutsche Bank, a newly-created role in which he will “play a key role in standardising the bank’s processes, tools and governance around information and in supporting its digital strategy”.
The Financial Stability Board is proposing a new minimum standard for total loss-absorbing capacity, which is designed to provide confidence that systemically important global banks can absorb losses without upsetting financial stability and the wider economy.
Standard Chartered and Clearstream have implemented a new service to help customers in Singapore make more efficient use of collateral, as tough new financial regulations drive investor fears of an impending collateral shortfall.
The challenger banks are coming of age. Aldermore, the UK’s fastest growing bank, is rumoured to be preparing for its IPO, just like OneSavings Bank, which was the first bank to list on the stock exchange since Bradford & Bingley in 2000.
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.
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”.
It is essential for banks to ensure they have the right strategies and technology in place now, if they are to retain their position as market-leading payment providers in the future, writes Saket Sharma,chief information officer, treasury services, BNY Mellon.
Banks and brokers in Europe are bracing themselves for ‘double witching day’ on Wednesday, in which two days’ worth of trades are expected to settle on a single day, as 25 European nations move to T+2 settlement for the first time.
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.
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.”
