BankingTech


New Bank Payment Obligation standards launched by Swift

Swift and the Banking Commission of the International Chamber of Commerce have introduced new legal and technology standards for the new Bank Payment Obligation payment instrument. The BPO allows buyers and suppliers to secure and finance international trade transactions.  It provides the benefits of a letter of credit in an automated and secured environment, and […]

TradeTech panellists see politics riding roughshod over regulation

Discontent with regulation cast a cloud over delegates on the first day of the TradeTech conference in London, as senior industry executives pondered on the politicisation of the debate and the perceived failure of regulators to deliver efficient markets.

Angry TradeTech delegates clash over HFT

A session at Trade Tech in London fell into chaos earlier today, as furious delegates hurled accusations across the table and members of the audience sparred aggressively with panellists.

Regulate to innovate?

Bankers can seem a little bit schizophrenic when it comes to regulation – much of the time they complain about the sheer weight of the regulatory burden they face, but at other times they talk of regulation as an opportunity. It could well be that as they have finally realised regulation – and plenty of it – is inevitable, some banks have decided to make a virtue out of it.

Fidessa plans ASEAN trading network

Trading technology company Fidessa has partnered with Asian brokers CIMB, DBS Vickers, Maybank Kim Eng, OCBC Securities, Philip Securities and UOB Kay Hian as part of a plan to create a one-stop trading service for all ASEAN markets.

US banks Heritage and Central Valley adopt Fiserv tools

US banks Heritage Bank and Central Valley Bank have adopted an account processing tool called DNA from financial technology provider Fiserv. Parent company Heritage Financial says the platform’s flexibility will help the banks grow.

Spain: the next generation of payment technology?

The world is embracing digital technology in every area of economic and social activity, including those that appeared impossible to convert to a digital format completely, such as payments.

IPS 2013: SEPA benefits hard to see for corporates

As the February 2014 deadline for implementation of Single Euro Payment Area compatible instruments approaches, focus is moving from banks to corporates – and the increasingly clear picture is that few European corporates see any great benefit from adopting the standards involved.

Beyond a joke

A journalist, a politician and a banker walk into a bar … sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it? Feel free to submit a punchline: personally, I’m starting to think that it would be a very sour joke. With banker-bashing now an established national pastime, the press having spectacularly fouled their own nest […]

State banking: reforming the UK infrastructure

At the beginning of March, George Osborne travelled to the English seaside town of Bournemouth to make a speech at the JP Morgan operations centre there. It wasn’t Henry V’s St Crispin’s Day speech, but it may well go down as a watershed moment in the history of the UK financial services sector. Osborne is […]

Dealing with Generation Y

Banks should pay attention to the needs of a new generation of consumers if they want to secure their business lines for the future, according to Mark Hale, head of payments at KPMG.

Mobile will kill the traditional bank branch says Brett King

Disruptive digital technologies such as mobile and the internet will destroy the established retail banking business models by removing the physical product and replacing it with a digitised bank account, according to Brett King, speaking at the IPS show in London today. “In the old days there was a physical product, and a physical store,” […]

Corporate treasurers demand bank attention

Banks are not good at communicating industry change to their corporate clients, according to a panel of senior industry representatives speaking at the IPS conference in London today.

Competition regulation will stifle payments innovation

Proposed policies intended to promote competion in payments could stifle innovation and standardisation in the payments and transaction banking sectors, according to a partner in a leading law firm. Dermot Turing, partner in the international financial institutions and markets group at Clifford Chance, told delegates at the International Payments Summit in London that moves by […]

State banking

Banking is too important to be left to banks – can governments do any better Also in this issue: Profile: Grand designs – Arun Jain, founder of Polaris Financial Technologies Same day, same settlement: same day payments are being adopted worldwide. What does that mean for D+1 settlement in Europe? Riding the OTC rollercoaster: new […]

Citi sets out segregated collateral service

As tough new rules requiring the collateralisation of OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and the US, Citi has retooled its OpenInvestor investment services to include segregated collateral custody accounts – a move the bank says will help mitigate counterparty risk and improve collateral efficiency.

Grand designs

Arun Jain, chairman and chief executive of Polaris Financial Technology, is a great believer in the power of design to transcend ordinary development work and deliver superior results – results that pay. Banking Technology caught up with him at the opening of the firm’s new design centre in Chennai.

North America drags feet on big data says Celent

Despite its potential, the vast majority of financial services firms have still not implemented big data tools, according to new research conducted in North America by analyst firm Celent.

Riding the OTC rollercoaster

As new rules for OTC derivatives take hold in Europe and in the US, banks and asset managers face a complex cocktail of mandatory clearing, reporting and increased collateral requirements.

Chi-X Australia appoints Fildes CEO

Australian alternative trading system Chi-X Australia has appointed John Fildes as its new chief executive, taking over from Peter Fowler on 1 May.

Nasdaq OMX acqusition targets US bond market

Nasdaq OMX Group is to acquire bond platform eSpeed from BCG for $750 million in a move that highlights the increasing tendency for large stock exchanges to diversify as capital markets revenues from equity trading continue to decrease.

Competition stirs ATM revolution

A new generation of ATMs that offer customers more personalised services will provide a core tool for increasing levels of banking competition, according to a new report by business consultancy Navigant.

PFM: looking after the pennies

Personal financial management tools have spluttered in and out of fashion, but a combination of mobile, tablet and internet banking uptake may mean their time has come, Recent years have seen the emergence of a plethora of PFM tools, each of which purports to be the best way to keep track of your finances.

Banking on the real economy

Asset finance has had a lower profile than other types of loan. But the overall squeeze on lending and higher business loan rejection rates have led to an increased demand for leasing arrangements by SMEs. As a result, asset finance is now the third most common source of finance for businesses.

CME Group partners with MarkitServ for OTC FX clearing

US derivatives giant CME Group and OTC trade processing service MarkitServ have connected to support clearing for OTC FX transactions, ahead of new regulations in the US and Europe on the central clearing of OTC contracts.

Avoiding spreadsheet Hell

The JP Morgan Task Force Report into its Chief Investment Office’s $6 billion-plus loss found the bank’s Value at Risk was being calculated with an Excel spreadsheet that “required time-consuming manual inputs to entries and formulas, which increased the potential for errors”.

FSA’s swansong opens a fast track for new entrant banks

In future, the possibility of a bank failure will be accepted as a normal market process, and barriers to entry for new start-ups, including a removal of capital requirement obstacles, will be removed, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England have confirmed.

Resistant to digital banking? Consumers have never demanded it more.

In today’s multi-channel age, banks cannot afford to focus all their efforts on a single digital strategy any more than solely on the branch experience – the winners will be those that can see beyond channel-specific efforts and provide a truly integrated offering.