2017 Awards for Innovation and Excellence – Introducing the Winners

Every year in the TMI Awards has marked a step change in the number and quality of award nominations, and 2017 was no exception, with some well-known banks and technology vendors, but some less familiar names too.

This year Citi and HSBC won a clutch of awards in the bank categories. Citi was recognised for both Cash & Liquidity and Financial Supply Chain Management in Middle East & Africa, and South America. Citi demonstrated strong year-on-year growth in both regions, excellent customer partnerships and innovative solutions to meet regional needs whilst creating regional synergies. CitiConnect® API is available across its footprint, creating proven opportunities for efficient transaction and information flows and processes.

HSBC was awarded Best Bank for Financial Supply Chain Management, in Europe, Asia Pacific and North America, and was similarly recognised for Cash and Liquidity in Asia. In Asia, HSBC has expanded in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and ASEAN regions. In addition, it remains one of the leading banks in mainland China and Hong Kong, and is active in creating opportunities resulting from RMB internationalisation. HSBC has also reinforced its commitment to innovation and digital transformation in the region, with a proactive approach to creating solutions in partnership with clients, and collaborating in wider industry initiatives. Based on the strength of HSBC’s nominations across all regions, the judging panel were delighted to offer it the Global Award for Best Bank for Cash & Liquidity Management.

Deutsche Bank won the Cash & Liquidity management award for Europe. The judging panel was keen to acknowledge the bank’s investment in innovation, and the quality of the user experience evidenced through powerful client testimonials, including through cross-border ACH and API-enabled services. Ongoing investment in the bank’s network in Europe and beyond, and collaboration in developing best practices in cybersecurity were also key factors in the panel’s decision.

UniCredit was awarded a special regional  Cash & Liquidity solutions award for Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) in recognition of readers’ enthusiasm for the bank’s articles in TMI during the course of the year. UniCredit has made valuable contributions to cover stories and roundtables, featured in OTB’s award-winning case study, and produced thoughtful insights on digitisation in cash management, including the impact of the internet of things. 

Bank of America Merrill Lynch was awarded the Cash & Liquidity award in the final two, key regions: China and North America. The bank’s strength in North America is well-established and widely recognised, but it is also making a significant impact in China. In January 2017, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) granted special approval to the bank’s China branches to streamline clients’ payment processes for stock option incentive plans through an RMB pending payment account. Another successful initiative was the launch of a payments collection service supporting mobile and card payments through China UnionPay Merchant Services Company (UMS). As the first non-Chinese bank to offer this end-to-end solution via multiple collection channels in China, Bank of America Merrill Lynch now offers companies in the retail, logistics, and industrial goods sectors an integrated solution that streamlines the process of payments collection and reconciliation. 

Societe Generale holds a notable position across 13 countries in CEE, and was awarded a special regional  Financial Supply Chain Management award for the region. In addition to increasing the depth of its network in the region, the bank is pursuing new digital opportunities to meet the needs of importing and exporting clients, including collaborating with partner banks in initiatives such as we.trade, a blockchain-based solution to streamline European trade finance. The bank also launched a pioneering new version of its web-based Sogetrade & Services solution in late 2017.

BNP Paribas was awarded the Global Financial Supply Chain Management Award, testimony to the depth and breadth of the bank’s expertise and solutions across its footprint of around 100 trade centres in 60 countries. Powerful client testimonials bear witness to the transformational value of the bank’s solutions in driving international trade and facilitating growth across supply chains.

ING has been recognised for the FX Risk Management and Markets Award for 2017 with a very impressive submission. As part of the bank’s Think Forward strategy, to empower people to stay a step ahead in life and in business, ING is delivering on its vision to provide a differentiated experience for its increasingly digital and self-directed customers, including investing in client-friendly technologies and tools that make financial planning and decision-making easier, backed by an €800m  investment in digital transformation. Over the past few years, ING’s risk departments have developed a variety of methodologies to answer crucial questions about how much companies can realistically lose as a result of market movements, with tailored analysis for each industry, hedging strategy or business organisation.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management has been awarded the Global Award for Best Money Market Funds provider. By building a reputation for risk management, investment performance and first-class service, J.P. Morgan Asset Management has become the world’s largest institutional money market funds provider, with USD 402.1bn assets under management and overall short-term fixed income assets under management of USD 600.1bn. The bank has enjoyed a substantial increase in new client accounts during the course of 2017 across all regions, taking advantage of 15 locations across seven countries, six global service centres providing 24-hour coverage, and a globally co-ordinated investment approach.

Technology innovation

In 2017, FIS, the world’s largest financial technology company, received Technology Innovation awards for Accounts Payable (FIS TRAX), Accounts Receivable (FIS GETPAID) and Cash & Treasury Management solutions (FIS Integrity) based on the quality of both its nominations and client testimonials. Few other financial technology companies have the commitment and ability to invest to the same degree as FIS in meeting clients’ changing functionality, security, regulatory and integration requirements. These awards were an acknowledgement of FIS’s continued success in meeting these evolving needs, including the company’s sophisticated approach to fraud prevention and cybersecurity, and clients’ high level of satisfaction in leveraging FIS solutions to meet and exceed their financial and operational objectives.

Partners HSBC and ecommerce platform TradeShift launched a joint proposition in March 2017, winning the Technology Innovation award for Trade Finance. The solution allows large corporate buyers to automate and fully digitise paper-heavy, procure-to-pay processes for all their suppliers. Clients access all their supply chain transactions on a single, cloud-based platform, accessible from the device of their choice. As UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond commented at the International Fintech Conference in 2017, “HSBC and TradeShift is a great example of a partnership between a banking giant and a fintech entrepreneur to develop practical solutions to support everyday businesses.” HSBC also won the Technology Innovation award for Mobile Technology, recognising the bank’s pioneering approach to device independent and mobile solutions across cash, trade and FX.

SWIFT was a clear choice for the Technology Innovation award in Bank Connectivity. SWIFT for Corporates continues to go from strength to strength, with an ever-expanding spectrum of corporations connecting to their banks via SWIFT as they extend their business internationally. The award recognises the excellent client feedback on working with SWIFT, the value proposition of its connectivity and wider suite of solutions, its ongoing commitment to collaboration, and its support for clients in meeting the challenges of international growth and pursuing operational and financial excellence.

It is always a genuine pleasure to receive award submissions for completely new solutions that have such clear potential to move the treasury and finance profession forward. DBS Bank’s Treasury Prism solution was recognised with the Solution Innovation award. Developed under an agile delivery model, Treasury Prism is an online cash and treasury management simulation tool that automatically models different liquidity scenarios based on a company’s own account structures and balances, bearing in mind tax, market and regulatory conditions in each location, and quantifying the value of each scenario. The tool is supported with a comprehensive knowledge centre. Client feedback has been extremely positive, and enables treasurers to prioritise cash and treasury optimisation initiatives based on tangible benefits.

Openlink has collaborated with financial institutions and commodity intensive corporations for over 25 years, providing leading-edge technology solutions to help them capitalise on new business opportunities and mitigate systemic risk. Based on the quality of Openlink’s submission and reader interest in its contributions to TMI this year, the panel was delighted to give it the Technology Innovation Award for Risk Management. Openlink’s platform creates “a single source of the truth” across the enterprise, giving clients a detailed and transparent view of currency and asset positions, as well as managing the payment and transaction lifecycles. The platform has been developed extensively in recent years, with significant new user functionality.

Standard Chartered was recognised for the award for excellence in Customer Experience, most notably with the Straight2Bank NextGen platform. Straight2Bank NextGen enhances users’ experience through intuitive and consistent interfaces across devices, personalisation, dashboards, business intelligent analytics and sophisticated functionality. The platform continues to be developed in areas such as biometrics and immersive analytics. The solution has been designed collaboratively with clients, and focused on providing relevant information: the right amount and level of data at the right time to the right users. Client feedback has been very positive, setting the standard for a new generation of intelligent banking solutions.

Once again, the panel was delighted to offer the Technology Innovation award for Portal Technology to leading money market fund portal NEX Treasury. The company has expanded its footprint not only across Europe but also to the United States, Asia and key offshore locations. With around $100bn in assets under management in nine currencies, NEX Treasury continues to experience strong growth through both direct client acquisition and its white-labelled solutions. 

The wealth of submissions received this year clearly illustrated an impressive degree and pace of innovation within both established and emerging organisations. The effect is likely to be a significant change in clients’ experience and expectations over the next few years. The panel selected Cachematrix as Emerging Technology solution, a dynamic automated liquidity and investment management platform. This uses an advanced algorithm and the company’s own investment policy to allow fully automated liquidity portfolio management, as opposed to simply sweeping excess cash into a single instrument. Although early in the initial sales cycle, the solution has already been white labelled for its customers, in addition to direct sales to corporate and financial institution customers in multiple regions.

We would like to congratulate all our award winners, and thank everyone who submitted such professional and complete documentation to support their nominations. We very much look forward to receiving your submissions in 2018, and wish you every success in the year ahead.