Archive

Rob Eberle, president and CEO, Bottomline Technologies, believes banks are well positioned to bridge the funding gap between buyers and suppliers, and has defied Wall Street analysts by investing more in solutions to help banks uncover new revenue streams in the supply chain.

Tim Lind is perhaps best known for penning the article, “A Eulogy for STP and the Asset Manager,” which challenged custodians to stop blaming investment managers for low STP rates. In his new role as managing director, strategic planning for post-trade pre-settlement solutions provider, Omgeo, Lind looks forward to a time when operational efficiency and buy-side trading strategies are closely intertwined.

Hans-Maarten van den Nouland, director, international treasury services, Europe, Merck & Co., is earning a reputation amongst cash management banks as being demanding. He tells financial-i about the global multi-year project that will make Merck’s cash management processes and systems more efficient and secure.

With some of the main dates set for implementing SEPA, it is up to the banks to sell the business benefits to their corporate customers. But have delays done lasting damage? Shayla Walmsley investigates.

Show me the money. SWIFT corporate connectivity has helped multinationals like Microsoft gain greater visibility into cash balances across hundreds of bank accounts. But Ed Barrie of Microsoft says some banks still do not support corporates accessing SWIFT.

With regulation forcing corporate treasurers to exercise greater control over their finances, the cumbersome and costly bank account mandate process is being targeted by treasurers, vendors and standards bodies.

Opportunity knocks. Ali Pichvai says MiFID presents Europe with the opportunity to develop world-leading capital markets.

Boxing clever. Mike Thrower examines the consequences for traditional market players of the rise of ‘black box’ trading in the forex markets.

Source of opportunity. Steve Craggs looks at the arguments for considering open source software in SOA projects.

Kristina West writes that clarification around best execution policy under MiFID may have lightened the load for firms when it comes to storing masses of data, nevertheless challenges remain.

[Photo of Giles Nelson, Progress Software]

Emerging market banks may have some ground to make up with their Western counterparts when it comes to Basel II preparations, but as Anita Hawser discovers, banks in new growth markets are not burdened with legacy systems. (photo of David Carruthers, Financial Objects).

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is touted as a more agile and cost effective software delivery model than the traditional licensing approach. But as David Longworth discovers, not all SaaS offerings are made equal.

[Photo of Mark Tirschwel, WallStreet Systems]

A multitude of different models exist for tradingFX online, but as William Essex reports, it is not about ne model achieving dominance, but more about making it onto the client’s desktop.

[Photo of Anne Pounds, independent consultant]

The market is abuzz with the prospect of alternative trading venues emerging post-MiFID. But as Lynn Strongin Dodds reports, only a few contenders have thrown their hat into the ring, and on the liquidity front, the battle lines have yet to be clearly drawn. [photo of Peter Randall, Instinet]

Managed reference data services are nothing new, but as Rekha Menon discovers, the response from banks is mixed. [photo of Predrag Dizdarevic, Capco]

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) frameworks may help ease the pain of compliance, but implementation presents challenges. Helen Beckett reports.

[Photo of Sunil Chopra, TATA]

SWIFTNet is the industry standard for interbank connectivity, and with an increasing number of corporates joining the network, it is also looking to extend the benefits of standardised messaging to multinationals, as well as financial institutions in emerging markets. Yet, implementing and maintaining SWIFT connectivity in-house can be costly and time consuming, particularly for smaller-to-medium sized institutions and companies that want the same messaging capabilities as larger global banks, but without the upfront investment and domain expertise. An alternative is to outsource SWIFT connectivity to a service bureau. In the following pages, leading SWIFT service bureaux outline the business case for outsourcing connectivity to a third party, and the value-added services they provide beyond connectivity.

With the proliferation of the internet, web-based trading portals and other applications for delivering financial services over IP networks, securing, encrypting and authenticating data and users of that data has become an integral part of doing business in an increasingly connected world. Financial service providers need to ensure that customer and transaction data is adequately secured whilst it is stored and when it is transmitted over IP networks.

People talk about the physical and financial supply chains these days as if they were one and the same. Yet, while they are separate, they are becoming increasingly intertwined as banks seek to differentiate their offerings by attempting to move deeper into companies physical supply chains in order to extract information which can help companies better manage their accounts receivable, as well as offering additional supply chain financing and management solutions which can help companies reduce metrics such as Day Payables and Day Sales Outstanding (DPO and DSO).