The Chinese renminbi continues to gain ground internationally as more banks adopt the currency, propelling its position into the top five global payment currencies worldwide, according to the latest batch of data from Swift.
Challenger UK retail bank Atom has received its licence from the Bank of England, meaning it will now be able to go ahead with plans to launch later this year. The bank will add competition to the UK retail banking sector, which until 2010 had not seen a single new entrant for 150 years.
There is a nuclear revolution going on in banking and payments with new digital challenger banks like Atom and Starling seeking to displace established banks that are themselves turning to real-time payment infrastructures to retain customers and under regulatory pressure to open up to FinTech competition from mobile players and payment service providers (PSPs). Crypto-currencies, cyber-security and other tech challenges were also addressed at the Banking Technology Forum 2015
Target2-Securities, the European Central Bank project to harmonise Europe’s post trade infrastructure, has finally gone live after nine years of preparation. Italy’s Monte Titoli was not part of the first wave.
If children trust Google more than they trust a bank, tomorrow’s customers may well hold their money with digital companies instead of traditional banks. That thought worries senior banking industry speakers speaking at the BBA conference in London on Thursday.
Swift has brought the management of its Americas, UK, Ireland and Nordics units under one head following the decision of Chris Church, chief executive of Swift Americas and global head of securities, to leave after seven years with the industry consortium.
London has been selected as the host city for Sibos 2019 following a successful bid by ExCeL London and London & Partners, the official promotional company for the city.
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.
Banking by mobile phone and tablet has become the primary way UK customers manage their finance, according to new research published by the British Bankers Association.
TABB Group forecasts global compliance spending among capital markets firms will some increase 7.5% to 8% in 2015, reaching $2.592 billion , and growing at a similar pace for 2016, driven by global regulations that require institutions to expand coverage, enhance existing capabilities and standardise compliance solutions and processes.
For the new banks now is the chance to disrupt the banking industry. No legacy systems or existing processes or old thinking – they can jump straight to the new. Except, of course, those new banks that are being spun out of existing banks, where that infrastructure, IT and operations are supported by the current systems of the existing bank …
Regulators should not define how markets are structured when it comes to innovation and open access to clearing. Instead, it should be left up to the market to define how services are provided, according to speakers at the IDX FIA Europe conference in Europe this week.
Citizens Bank is moving its back-end technology infrastructure to a managed services environment following the signing of a five-year IT services agreement with IBM.
As the European Commission’s MiFID II legislation moved towards implementation of technical standards, some of Europe’s national regulators are seriously worried that mandatory open access to CCPs may not be such a good idea. Concerns about the ability to manage risk and the ability to effectively handle data were highlighted by speakers at the IDX FIA conference in London yesterday.
Financial services has come under huge pressure in recent years particularly since the financial crisis. Competition, silo’d business units, efficiency in operation, compliance are just a few key issues being raised. With efficiency and competitiveness hand-in-hand and customer service as a bi-product of this, business process management (BPM), has shown just how this solution has driven cost efficiencies and overall resource efficiencies down.
Swift has formally launched a new business intelligence solution for securities market participants following the completion of an early adopter programme. Watch for Securities is “ready for full scale use” by local and global custodians, investment banks, asset managers and broker/dealers, allowing them to monitor and gain business insights from their network traffic.
The Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect link has made significant in-roads in the opening of China’s capital markets to international trading but barriers to participation, including restricted trading strategies, introduce risk and create operational complexity. The long-term success of the venture hinges on removing these barriers, according to a study carried out for the DTCC.
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.
Industry association FIA Europe is calling on regulators to make changes to derivatives laws, including amendments to Basel III and MiFIR, as well as EMIR reporting obligations. The association argues that without the changes it is advocating, the viability of some of the new rules will be at risk.
Apple Pay will be available in the UK from next month, with eight of the UK’s most established banks and the major credit and debit card networks supporting it – along with Transport for London.
Demand for improved customer service and new mobile banking and payments services is driving increased hiring in financial services in the UK, with employment prospects 16 percentage points higher than a year ago, according to Manpower Group,
Irish bank Permanent TSB has chosen a regulatory reporting platform from Wolters Kluwer as part of its measures to cope with Basel III. Belgian bank Banca Monte Paschi Belgio, the Belgian branch of Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, has also chosen the same OneSumX regulatory reporting solution.
As consumer adoption of mobile devices and social media increases, banks can’t really rely on standard details such as income, age and geography to serve customers better than their competitors, according to a new report by payments company TSYS and software firm FICO. Instead, they may need to recognise the different kinds of customers based on how they interact with digital technology and tailor their services accordingly.
The increasing dependence of financial services on technology provides huge opportunity for IT vendors, but it also increases the supplier risk that these firms will carry, so it would be reasonable to expect the procurement process to become more rigorous.
What does this mean for vendors trying to sell into banks and other financial services businesses?
Treasury and capital markets software specialist Calypso Technology has developed “an industrialised blueprint for reducing complexity and cost in banks”. The Calypso Bank-in-a-Box was developed in collaboration with a group of global banks to consolidate and document their processes and systems in the face of market and regulatory changes.
MCO Europe, exclusive distributor of the McObject high performance database financial markets in the UK and Europe, is raising investment through Crowdcube, the UK’s largest crowdfunding site, to fund growth and expansion. McObject’s eXtremeDB Financial Edition high-performance database is used for trading and risk management by banks, fund managers, brokers and data vendors.
Nearly half of smartphone users do not want to use their device to make contactless payments, mostly over fears about security, according to a survey.
Financial information company Markit has agreed to acquire Information Mosaic, a software provider for corporate actions and post trade securities processing. Information Mosaic’s enterprise software will allow Markit to extend its corporate actions service to support the full corporate actions trade lifecycle and enhance Markit’s asset servicing solutions. Michele Trogni, managing director, cohead of Solutions […]
In the digital age, banks must adapt to new processes and customer expectations quickly. Yet many banks still operate legacy batch systems and have not yet transformed their ITO infrastructure. In association with SAP, Banking Technology is conducting a survey of the number of different systems banks have, and how long it takes for various transactions to occur.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is in talks to acquire a 10% stake in Borsa Istanbul to support Turkey’s efforts to reshape its capital markets.
Swift is extending its Know Your Customer compliance service into the securities area, making it available to fund distributors and custodians.
Deutsche Börse plans a joint venture with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and China Financial Futures Exchange to develop and market Chinese-based financial instruments to investors outside mainland China.
According to Cisco there are 15.5 billion devices connected to the internet, ranging from routers to telemetry devices, power grid controllers, smartphones and perhaps the odd toaster. Other than in retail situations this so-called Internet of Things does not immediately seem to have much to do with the financial services industry. John Bates thinks otherwise, and sets out why in his recent book Thingalytics.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s study into competition in investment and corporate banking will focus on choice, transparency, bundling and cross-subsidisation in debt and equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and acquisition financing. It will also consider links between competition in these primary market services and related activities such as corporate lending and broking, and ancillary services.
Improve your customer’s experience with Hybrid IT Banks must compete fiercely for new customers and to hold onto the ones they have. That means consistently meeting customer expectations, which is no easy task given the speed with which those expectations are evolving, particularly in terms of Internet and mobile interactions. Banks need to deploy technology […]
Leeds Building Society is to revamp its customer engagement tools through a ten-year deal with HP Enterprise Services, which will encompass a number of independent software vendors working on different parts of the business. The deal builds on the earlier deal between the two firms in 2013, which focused on the building society’s core banking platform.
Japanese investment bank Daiwa Securities has transferred its Hong Kong business onto a new post-trade processing platform built by specialist vendor Torstone. The bank says the move is part of a long-term plan to revamp its back-office technology in the city, as Hong Kong steps up its role in the integration of China’s capital markets into the global mainstream.
The Banking industry is at a digital crossroad as it faces both a wave of technology companies poised to disaggregate every facet of the business and a changing consumer that is increasingly demanding that banks products match the state-of-the-art digital services they are receiving from other industries
Three-quarters of market participants use the FIX protocol for confirmation and affirmation of their transactions, according to a new survey released by financial industry standards body the FIX Trading Community.
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 …
