Conference Coverage

  First and foremost, the report expresses doubts that deadline for the migration to Sepa in the eurozone will be met by the February 1 2014 deadline.   On the innovation front, the report underlines the growing importance of “payments ...

The corporate stream is once again expanded at this year's Sibos conference in Dubai. One of the highlights is a look at Alliance Lite2 —the user-friendly, cloud-based corporate access channel that SWIFT launched last year. It requires no infrastructure to ...

  This year’s Sibos, the first to take place in the Middle East, will offer a special day dedicated to Middle East and Africa—looking at key issues affecting the area. The dedicated Africa session will ask what role securities market ...

Of course, the main focus will be on serving the financial needs of corporations. Nadya Talhouni, senior vice president, head of cash management and trade finance at Arab Bank, believes that holding Sibos 2013 in Dubai will allow the region ...

THE NEW NORMAL By Hilary Johnson More companies than ever are launching supply-chain finance programs to reduce costs, ensure the stability of their supply chains and improve working capital efficiency. And growing competition among program vendors is making it easier ...

STEALING THE SHOW By Gordon Platt   Middle East banks say they are catching up to the global transaction banks, and in some cases winning greater market share by delivering solutions that meet the specific needs of companies doing business ...

A GLOBAL CONNECTION   SWIFT’s annual Sibos conference is just around the corner, and this year attendees will gather in Dubai. With Middle Eastern companies following the trend now seen in many emerging markets and increasing the sophistication of their ...

THE GREAT DIVIDE By Susan Kelly   As inter- and intra-regional trade in emerging markets continues to grow, the gap between needed and available trade finance is also on the increase. But new financing sources and new tools offer the ...

UNCHARTED WATERS   By Denise Bedell   At SWIFT’s annual Sibos conference in October, corporates were treated to a range of presentations on topics as diverse as reference data, BPOs and Asian treasury centers.   The corporate stream at Sibos ...

First and foremost, it reduces administration and documentation, and vastly reduces the time-to-payment on secured trade account receivables. With an L/C at site it can typically take 10-14 days to receive funds—while awaiting documents to arrive. But with a BPO ...

  The impact of Basel III on trade was a key topic of discussion at Sibos. As one delegate said: “We have grave concerns around local regulators’ interpretation of liquidity coverage ratios and minimum capital ratios.” “Regulators need to ensure ...

  Chinese corporates are still focusing on domestic growth—but also starting to set up manufacturing bases worldwide. They are moving up the value chain in consumer products and are pushing higher-end products in European, and to some extent, US, markets, ...

Is trade becoming an asset class? Some market participants are pushing in that direction. This, of course, is easier said than done, but the cost of getting it wrong could be enormous. “Ultimately corporates pay the price,” said Kah Chye ...

  Gone are the days when companies wishing to connect directly with their banks via SWIFT had to invest huge resources—in time and money—house highly expensive equipment, and maintain IT resources to manage the connection. Although the connectivity entity’s first ...

Banks and suppliers have been talking up end-to-end supply chain finance solutions for a number of years now, but in order to make that happen it was essential to have a strong platform to pull together information from the disparate ...

The cost of cross-currency payments is more than it need be, contends Rocky Motwani, MD at J. P. Morgan. He noted that most cross-currency payments are done via wire, which is essentially a high-value solution to a low-value problem. “You ...

Mark Flawn, assistant treasurer at National Grid, said cloud-based access fit with a group-wide initiative to use remotely hosted solutions. “We are able to achieve better results by using a cloud platform, as it removes the overhead of maintaining the ...

Trade flows between China and Japan have not—yet—been materially affected by an ongoing territorial dispute, according to Sibos attendees. John Ahearn, global head of trade at Citi Transaction Services, said in an interview with Global Finance: “It is just saber-rattling. ...

Treasurers will need to get their security message out quickly, according to the findings of a new survey out by Treasury Strategies and Fundtech. The survey, polling treasurers at over 200 global corporates, looked at demand for multichannel—meaning desktop, tablet ...