Here Come the Winners… 2019 Awards for Innovation & Excellence

Digital disruption was one of the key drivers of treasury innovation in 2019.  As this year’s Award winners demonstrate, banks, technology vendors and fintechs have leveraged digital innovation to move the corporate treasury profession forward – delivering excellence by helping treasurers to become more efficient, operate in real-time, and contribute to the wider business in a meaningful way.

Bank Awards

Within the category of Cash & Liquidity Management, HSBC carried off the prize for Global Bank of the Year, with key developments during 2019 including a range of sophisticated technology solutions such as Next Generation Virtual Accounts Management (NgVAM). This allows clients to operate their day-to-day banking activities with fewer physical bank accounts, supported by multiple virtual accounts. The bank also successfully introduced new ways of working in the application programming interface (API) economy and rolled out its Beneficiary Self-Management solution, enabling a self-service environment via HSBCnet.

HSBC also won two Asia Pacific regional bank Awards for Cash & Liquidity Management and Trade & Financial Supply Chain Management. The first foreign bank in mainland China to launch an omni-channel solution to provide collections services across all major digital channels and payment types, HSBC has a strategy to provide leading-edge products and services to its diverse client segments across Asia Pacific. Another example is PayMe for Business, which was launched in March 2019, enabling merchants to download a mobile app, register using their business banking details and accept payments securely from over 1.7 million consumers in Hong Kong. And in the supply chain space, HSBC’s notable achievements included rolling out a sustainable supply chain finance programme for a leading global sports brand leveraging HSBC’s footprint in Asia. This provides financial benefits to key suppliers that meet relevant sustainability criteria.

Meanwhile, HSBC was also chosen as the Best Bank for Cash & Liquidity Management in Latin America, introducing - among other innovations - its Liquidity Management Portal (LMP) for clients in Mexico. This is an online service with customisable tools to self-manage liquidity, cash pooling and investment execution. A Corporate Travel and Expense card which offers greater cost control and savings on business travel expenses was also introduced as part of the bank’s LATAM strategy of putting clients at the heart of everything the bank does.

Click here to read a detailed overview on HSBC's awards success

Another bank with multiple Award wins in 2019 was Citi – kicking off with Best Bank in North America for both Cash & Liquidity Management and Trade & Financial Supply Chain Management. The bank now has one of the most comprehensive liquidity management networks in the industry, with more than 9,000 liquidity management structures in place globally. And Citi’s transaction services business, which spans 90 countries and clears $4tr.a day across some 140 currencies, remains an industry leader. In addition, the bank’s new CitiDirect BE Cash Concentration portal enables treasurers to manage their cash concentration structures in real time and make changes online within minutes. This is the first offering of its kind in the marketplace. In the supply chain field, Citi’s recent achievements include the launch of a new Global Programme Dashboard, an integrated platform for holistic programme monitoring, and boosting Citi Supplier Finance with Citi WorldLink Payment Services, providing access to one seamless platform.

Citi achieved two further Awards, both in the category of Trade & Financial Supply Chain Management. In Latin America, more than one million domestic and cross-border flows were processed through the bank’s supply chain finance platform, an increase of over 20% year on year. Citi served more than 500 clients and over 12,000 suppliers across Latin America during the year and was the first bank to introduce a mobile application for supplier finance. While, in the Middle East and Africa, Citi opened new offices in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia during the year, and implemented a range of improvements and enhancements to its onboarding digital platform across the region. Citi also hosted its first Treasury Leadership Forum for the Middle East in Dubai, raising awareness of key regional themes and highlighting how banks such as Citi serve as trusted advisors in trade and supply chain finance across the Middle East and Africa.

Recognising its hard work across the year, BNP Paribas received two Best Bank Awards in the Trade & Financial Supply Chain category. It was selected as Global Bank of the Year in recognition of its position as one of the world’s leading banks in this field, offering significant experience at global and local levels with an established track record in all supply chain management products garnered over more than a decade. It plays a leading role in several multi-bank networks such as the Trade Information Network which enables corporates to communicate trade information easily and securely with banks of their choice, aiming to establish an inclusive industry standard to enable multi-bank trade finance.

BNP Paribas also won Best Bank for Trade & Supply Chain Management in Europe, acknowledging its work towards providing the best-e-Banking platform - Connexis Supply Chain - to clients in this region (and other regions). The judges were also impressed by the bank’s tailor-made inventory management system offering. Through its 100%-owned trading company, Utexam, the bank buys, holds and sells a wide variety of inventories for BNP Paribas customers needing to improve working capital and cash flow efficiency while maintaining the physical flows of the goods and the commercial relationship between buyer and supplier.

Elsewhere, the Best Bank for Cash & Liquidity Management in Europe accolade went to Deutsche Bank. The world’s largest euro clearing bank, Deutsche Bank has an 8.5% monthly market share of SWIFT euro volume, and it is also the largest sender of payments on Target2, connected via the Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank. In 2019, the bank invested in numerous technology developments and innovative solutions including the expansion of its virtual accounts offering through a partnership with fintech Tieto. Deutsche Bank has also worked hard to deliver impeccable service to clients through developments such as digital signatures to reduce the document and contract workload, SEPA instant payments through corporate ERPs, and SWIFT gpi for Corporates. 

Click here to read a detailed overview on Deutsche Bank's awards success

The Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) collected the award for Best Bank for Cash and Liquidity Management in the Middle East and Africa. The bank is committed to investing in the latest technology in the payments space, as well as providing optimum solutions to the various problems faced by corporates such as outdated paper processes, lack of visibility into payment flows and challenges arising from cross-border payments. For example, automation of payment instructions by CBD helps corporates to streamline their operations and to auto-reconcile 100% of their payments. Furthermore, significant investments were made in the UAE in 2019, and more will be made in 2020, to improve CBD’s services, including the implementation of SWIFT gpi.

Turning to Central and Eastern Europe, UniCredit claimed the Best Bank Award for Cash & Liquidity Management in the region, thanks to the bank’s determination to create a comprehensive, up-to-date experience for treasurers by systematically eliminating legacy barriers to speed, efficiency and connectivity. The bank’s focus on virtual accounts, for example, and its value-added approach to SWIFT gpi services have promoted instant payments across the industry, and it also develops and refines its own offerings. UniCredit also won the Best Bank for Supply Chain Management in Central and Eastern Europe Award, recognising the bank’s success in revamping its working capital approach to address corporates’ key performance indicators (KPIs), and a simultaneous transformation of front-office procedures via digital innovation.

In China, meanwhile, the Global Transaction Service (GTS) business of Bank of America was named Best Bank for Cash & Liquidity Management. Despite the slowdown of the world economy, RMB depreciation and escalation of the US-China trade war, GTS China revenue achieved 9% growth year-on-year and the bank has developed a range of new solutions during the last twelve months. These included integrated digital solutions such as a collection system achieved through alliance with China UnionPay Merchant Service; a simplified cross-border payment process; and the launch of the first Intelligent Receivables programme in China, which supports receivables matching using artificial intelligence. Bank of America also launched an API in China (and Asia), which directly connects with SAP, meaning that clients can enjoy a speedier implementation process.

China was also where Standard Chartered Bank gained success, as winner of Best Bank for Trade & Financial Supply Chain Management. The bank’s trade digitisation strategy is a high priority, and as such, Standard Chartered has partnered with industry leaders and third-party platforms to develop innovative solutions. One example is a solution called ‘Deep Tier Financing’, which involves supply chain financing that goes beyond immediate suppliers of a corporate (‘Anchor’) into an Anchor’s ecosystem to finance its upstream supplier tiers. Standard Chartered engaged Linklogis, a Shenzhen-based fintech company, and one of China’s largest business-to-business focused supply chain platforms, to provide deep tier financing to its clients.

Technology & Innovation Awards

Serrala’s Managed Automation services provide organisations with key finance and payment services in the cloud. This innovation won the award for Best Accounts Payable and Receivable Solution for a range of cloud-based services introduced in 2019. These include Payments-as-a-Service, a global repository that enables corporations to connect quickly to new banks and comply with payment formulas and electronic data capture for Payables-as-a-Service and Receivables-as-a-Service, which captures remittance advice and service information from customers and suppliers to improve speed and accuracy. Archiving -as-a-Service was also introduced, helping to reduce data volume in ERP systems, automatically managing legal retention requirements and providing easy access to information for audit or review.

The Award for Bank Connectivity was won this year by DBS for its innovative and successful DBS RAPID (real-time APIs with DBS). This digital solution leverages API technology to connect and integrate banking capabilities between DBS and its clients’ systems/platforms, and expedite business transactions across ecosystems. The company offers APIs across the broad categories of information reporting, transactions, workflow, trade, FX and ecosystems. So far it has rolled out more than 165 APIs for SMEs, corporates and institutions, and has developed over 50 digital use cases that can be replicated across markets and industries. In one such case DBS RAPID helped to cut insurance claims pay-out time from five days to instant bank account transfer within a day of approval, setting a new benchmark in the insurance industry, and has been replicated in Hong Kong with the Fast Payment System.

FIS, a global leader in financial services technology headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, was the winner of the Award for the Best Cash & Treasury Management Solution. During 2019 the company continued its investment and innovation in its Integrity SaaS solution, which celebrated its 30th anniversary during the year. The product team made major improvements to usability, functionality and integration, introduced API innovation as well as a new payments hub, including SWIFT gpi functionality. This helps corporates to send payments faster, while reducing international processing costs at the same time. FIS is also working on new functionalities leveraging AI and robotics.

Click here to read a detailed overview on FIS's awards success

The Customer Experience Award went this year to TIS, whose CEO, Joerg Wiemer, started the company with the express aim of easing the pain of payments and generating 100% transparency on cash flow data for treasurers. The TIS cloud-based corporate payment platform is the result of an organisational set-up centred specifically around company success: it promises “one single centre of truth with only one login”, meaning that all the stakeholders in the payment process of an organisation benefit from a centralised and streamlined straight-through process of payments. The judges felt that this offering precisely answered treasurer’s requirements and were also impressed with the thought leadership work that TIS has been producing in this sphere.

A new entrant in 2019, Treasury Spring won the Emerging Technology Solution Award. The London-based financial technology company has introduced a completely new financial instrument called a Fixed Term Fund (FTF). For those not familiar with the concept, an FTF shares many of the characteristics of a term deposit, in that it is a term product that can be acquired without the need for any infrastructure. However, instead of providing exposure to unsecured bank risk, as with a deposit, an FTF can offer exposure to any short-dated, investment grade fixed-income obligation, such as a single government bill, a single secured bank loan or a single investment-grade corporate loan, for example. TreasurySpring has launched an FTF platform which aims to “unlock the multi-trillion-dollar wholesale money markets by providing new digital pipelines to connect cash-rich firms to institutional borrowers from the sovereign, bank and corporate sectors.” As such, FTFs “enable all holders of large cash balances, from corporates to charities, private funds to insurance companies, family offices to private banks and beyond, to reduce and diversify risk on those balances, whilst simultaneously increasing returns”. As the first material innovation in this space since the creation of money market funds in the 1970s, the judges picked TreasurySpring as a hands-down winner of this Award.

Meanwhile, HSBC won three Awards in the Technology & Innovation category. First was HSBCnet Track Payments solution, provided by HSBCnetMobile, which won the Best Mobile Technology Solution Award. Developed in response to customer feedback, HSBCnet Track Payments launched globally in 2019 and allows customers to review the status of any payment they make, at any stage of its journey. An integrated self-service tool, HSBCnet Track Payments integrates payment instruction status information from SWIFT gpi – the industry initiative set to be the new standard in fast and transparent tracking of cross-border payments.

Second, the Award for Best Portal Technology Solution went to HSBC Global Liquidity & Cash Management for its Liquidity Management Portal (LMP). This allows treasurers to connect with their liquidity more seamlessly than before, through better visibility and insight, enabling them to make informed decisions and take effective action. LMP provides tools to enable treasurers to self-manage their global liquidity, facilitating improved funding and investment decisions. The powerful Liquidity Dashboard within LMP contains customisable reports and flexible data analytics tools which facilitate enterprise-visibility of financial information.

The third Award made to HSBC was for Best Risk Management Solution. HSBC Global Trade and Receivables Finance has developed, in conjunction with Quantexa, a cutting-edge technology company, a new analytical and intelligence-led anti-money laundering (AML) system in Hong Kong and the UK. This industry-first system is now being rolled out across the bank’s global network. It uses big data and automated contextual monitoring to detect and disrupt financial crime in international trade. Contextual monitoring is the ability to connect data from different sources to create context and identify significant connections. The solution aims to produce fewer false positive risk indicators, leading to reduced delays in customer transactions.

In 2019 BNP Paribas and Kantox entered an agreement to offer Kantox’s Dynamic Hedging solution to BNP Paribas’ clients across EMEA, resulting in their joint award for Best Solution Innovation - FX Risk. As a standalone solution, Dynamic Hedging allows corporates to automate completely, hedge large or small transactions in bulk and streamline workflows. However, few larger corporates were using Kantox to execute FX trades, mostly because they preferred to use their existing banking partner(s). A jointly presented and marketed solution by Kantox and BNP Paribas met this challenge by leveraging strengths of both partners.

Click here to read a detailed overview on BNP Paribas and Kantox's awards success

The Best Solution Innovation – Fighting Fraud Award went to BELLIN for its system of vendor payment verification developed by the company as an additional feature to its tm5 payments and bank connectivity solution. The innovation allows corporates full payment transparency and uncapped administrative controls for domestic and global payments. Vendor payment verification enhances tm5 by adding a process of checking and validating that payments are only sent to approved and verified beneficiaries via a centralised database.

Click here to read a detailed overview on BELLIN's awards success

Citi won two Technology & Innovation Awards. The first was for Best Solution Innovation - Payments. The bank’s recently enhanced solution, Citi Payment Insights, provides institutional clients with complete visibility into the lifecycle of their transactions across Citi’s entire global network and the correspondent banking ecosystem. The solution is powered by the use of Big Data technology and leverages the transparency provided by SWIFT’s gpi initiative. Payment Insights enables users to: track payments, view payment statuses and transaction details and generate complete transaction-level audit trails (with date and time stamps). Treasurers can also view and track incoming payments in their Citi accounts and see all the outbound payments rejected by Citi or those returned by settlement or beneficiary. The judges were also impressed by the ability to cancel erroneous payments still in process with Citi, or recall payments sent out for settlement or credited to the beneficiary – among other features.

The bank’s second Award was for Best Trade Finance Solution. Over the last two years, Citi’s Global Trade business has developed a ‘next generation initiative to leverage AI, machine learning and other technologies to eliminate the time-intensive manual processes of risk reviews for trade documents. This trade monitoring project has been developed in collaboration with EY and SAS, and aims to create an advanced risk analytics engine to accelerate the processing of global trade transactions while conducting the required due diligence. It works across five key compliance areas: AML/fraud; export controls; boycott; sanctions; and military/dual-use goods. The judges appreciated the fact that the ultimate goal of automating the processing of information in this way can help accelerate the digitisation of trade and enable corporates to make faster and better-informed decisions.

DWS, a manager of money market funds with clients across all the major time zones, was chosen for the Best Money Market Fund Innovation Award in recognition of the firm’s Proprietary ESG Engine, a data consolidation, aggregation and mining platform, which allows objective ESG (environmental, social and governance) analysis. Using this highly sophisticated engine, which is core to its offering, DWS has been able to lead the way in bringing ESG to money market strategies around the world. It launched the first USD dedicated ESG MMF, the DWS ESG Liquidity Fund (ESGXX) in 2018, and in Europe has recently re-purposed two existing short-duration funds into ESG MMFs - the DWS Institutional ESG Euro Money MMF and the DWS Institutional ESG USD MMF.

Click here to read a detailed overview on DWS' awards success

Finally, the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Treasury Innovation was won by SWIFT. Corporates today have access to more payment information than ever before – through their banks they can get insight into the fees, speed and status of their cross-border payments thanks to SWIFT’s gpi (global payments innovation). But for corporates with multiple banking partners this requires logging into many different portals and added complexity in reconciling and integrating payment information into their TMSs. To combat this, SWIFT together with major banks, corporates and vendors in July 2019 launched gpi for corporates, providing a dashboard for activity for the 2,000 SWIFT-connected groups. The go-live followed a successful pilot with 22 corporates and banks who collaborated to scope the project, define the standard and business practices and test the functionality in their own treasury systems. Over 50 of the world’s largest companies have already signed up to the service, and its next iteration is being piloted now.

All that remains to be said is congratulations to our winners! We look forward to seeing all of your innovative work during 2020.