Published: January 01, 2010
HSBC is grateful for the trust and support of our customers and we appreciate the vote of confidence that this award represents. This recognition reflects our commitment to the trade and supply chain business which is a key economic driver across most countries in the region and key to the business success of importers and exporters in the Middle East. HSBC Trade and Supply Chain delivers a comprehensive range of trade finance solutions combined with unmatched expertise and online access through HSBCnet in more than 60 countries and territories worldwide. In the Middle East, HSBC Trade and Supply chain is the largest and most specialised trade operation in the region with more than 450 trade specialists in 10 countries across the region.
Kersi Patel, Regional Head of Trade and Supply Chain, HSBC Bank Middle East said: "Receiving this award validates HSBC's commitment to providing our clients with timely and industry-leading products and services. It aslo reflects out commitment to providing our customers' businesses with the best possible opportunities to grow by investing in people and innovative technology in the Middle East and in key markets around the globe."
From the initial discussions through to the creation and rollout of SCORE, J.P. Morgan has worked with both SWIFT and its clients to help to make the advantages of SWIFT available as an option to the corporate treasurer. “It’s all about choice and finding the right solution that fits with a client’s business model,” commented Brian Wedge, Executive Director for J.P. Morgan. “We have extensive experience of SWIFT as an access channel with our large financial institutions client base and we are finding that corporates, especially treasury departments, have similar needs. We don’t view SWIFT as a competitor to our proprietary channel access products; in fact the two are often complementary.”
Initially, the driver for SWIFT for Corporates was to help increase payments operation efficiency, and while that is still true today, the range of discussions that J.P. Morgan has held with their clients over the past 18 months has broadened. “Many of the client conversations during 2009 have also included looking at leveraging SWIFT to mitigate counterparty risk, meet increased contingency plans and accelerate the use of standards.
“On behalf of J.P. Morgan Treasury Services, we are delighted to be recognised by the TMI readership as the Global Bank for SWIFT for Corporates.”
BNP Paribas and Fortis Bank are highly complementary businesses with each partner bringing strength and expertise. Together we bring a wealth of domestic and cross-border solutions across the spectrum of companies’ cash management needs including SWIFTNet. We will continue to be a pioneer in SWIFT for Corporates, BNP Paribas has now the largest number of corporates connected to SWIFT globally; we also support eBAM (electronic bank account management), XML messages and fully exploit web opportunities based on new generation Flex technology allowing unprecedented integration with our clients’ in-house applications. [[[PAGE]]]
Standard Chartered is fully committed to a strong partnership with SWIFT and recognises SWIFT as a key channel that effectively services the bank’s large base of geographically diverse clients. For Standard Chartered’s clients, having global visibility of their cash positions is a paramount competitive advantage. SWIFT’s dependability, ubiquity and standardisation makes it one of the best ways of achieving this.
The bank’s partnership and approach to SWIFT grows naturally from its business strategy. Standard Chartered is uniquely positioned to deliver access across the world’s fastest growing but complex emerging markets. Standard Chartered is client-driven and is therefore channel-agnostic and aims to offer the channel mix that is optimal for a particular client’s full range of information, transaction and risk management needs.
Standard Chartered has deployed SWIFTNet to give its clients the convenience of a single entry point to multiple markets and products. The benefits of these include:
Standard Chartered has been a pioneer in the adoption of common standards and corporate access to SWIFT, supporting both MACUG and SCORE models, as well as both FIN and FileAct modes of delivery.
As a leading SWIFT bank, Standard Chartered is actively involved in a broad number of initiatives to broaden corporate reach, including:
“Our clients come to us for advice and for access to some of the world’s most dynamic markets. Increasingly, SWIFT is an important part of the solution that gives our clients the market access, visibility, and control they are looking for,” said Neal Livingston, Global Head of Client Access, Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered Bank.
To be ranked so highly by treasury practitioners is all the more impressive given today’s extreme market conditions – a period when skilful risk management in capital and money markets has raced to the top of the treasury agenda.
Ralf Werres, Global Head of Fixed Income & Currency Sales at Commerzbank, attributes the bank’s achievement partly to its European focus. “While maintaining a global footprint, our focus is particularly within Europe. We have an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of the economic climate of these markets – and in extraordinary market conditions that counts for a lot. Furthermore, combining both banks’ relationships and distribution capabilities has further strengthened Commerzbank’s European and global footprint.”
Thomas Deppe, Divisional Head of Corporate Solutions Sales in Germany, believes the bank’s success is also cultural. ”Other institutions may offer risk management almost as an adjunct, simply another stage of a transaction. But for us, risk management is central to every aspect of how we work. It is embedded in each transaction from the start. Even if sometimes we might be considered prudent or even conservative, for us it is as much about managing downside risk as capturing upside opportunity.”
One approach that the team has been keen to maintain is their partnership with clients: “What clients like about us is our honesty as well as our expertise,” says Werres. “We take a 360-degree look at every transaction – and tell them where we think the potential weak spots lie. Our risk management solutions are therefore robust and transparent - the parameters of what can be achieved are understood from the outset. That’s extremely valuable – and in today’s markets, clients need that dialogue more than ever.”
This achievement follows our recent success in the Deutsches Risk Derivatives Poll, where Commerzbank was notably ranked first in Derivatives & Risk Management Advisory and second overall. [[[PAGE]]]
Sustained Performance, Solid Business Based on Strong Capital and Liquidity
Patrick Butler, RZB Investment Banking board member, comments:
RZB is navigating a profitable route through choppy seas.
How?
We haven’t lost our compass. We’re sticking to our core activities because our business model has been validated - not just over the past decades, but during the last 24 months - in the most testing environment for more than 50 years. Of course, we’ve learned lessons during the credit crunch and have applied them; for instance, by reducing concentration risk and reinforcing our capital base. But we’ve remained bottom line profitable; and in the first three quarters of the current year we raised our operating profit to EUR 2,081m, a year-on-year increase of 10.93%.
Are you considering reducing business in Central and Eastern Europe?
No. Austria and Central and Eastern Europe are our home market. Given the economic slowdown our balance sheet has remained relatively static over the past three quarters. But we are totally committed to our 15 million corporate and retail customers in the region reflecting our unique franchise in markets where, over the coming years, there is still scope for a healthy increase in the percentage of banking assets to GDP, where the convergence process will resume, and where the quality of our product palette gives us a competitive advantage.
RZB has once again been named ‘Best Bank Risk Management Eastern Europe’. Your reaction?
Risk management has been the name of the game during the past year. It is good to know that our success in this area is reflected not just in our continued profitability despite market turbulence, but also in the judgement of the experts who have once again presented us with this prestigious award.
Risk management has become increasingly important since the start of the crisis, with counterparty and liquidity risk moving to centre stage of treasurers’ agenda. In addition, operational risk has become a higher priority and treasurers are seeking to implement efficient, secure financial processes.
“Banks have an important role to play in supporting their clients’ risk management objectives by providing timely accurate cash information, integrating bank communication tools seamlessly with clients’ internal applications to facilitate straight through processing and sharing expertise. SEB has taken this role very seriously, and continues to invest heavily in the skills and capabilities that our clients need to manage their financial and operational risks successfully. Developing this responsibility further, SEB has developed the SEB Corporate Financial Value Chain™ to assess the full spectrum of clients’ processes and financial risks, deliver solutions and provide measurable outcomes.”
Patrik Havander, Head of Concept and Packaging, Global Transaction Services, SEB
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Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a leading provider of risk management solutions to our clients around the world. Our global team helps clients manage their exposure to the currency, commodities and interest rate markets, and advises them on how to capture value in an increasingly dynamic marketplace. Bank of America Merrill Lynch offers comprehensive risk analysis, innovative investment strategies and customised electronic dealing. Our clients receive market research, economic and country analysis, and advisory assistance that help them manage their risk management objectives.
In the face of the current economic challenges and an increasingly complex and uncertain commercial, regulatory and geopolitical environment, risk management has been brought to the forefront as organisations carefully scrutinise their counterparty exposures and look to develop a more proactive, systematic and integrated approach to governance, compliance and risk management.
Recent research also supports the theory that tough economic times beget greater fraud levels. The 2008/2009 annual report produced by the security/fraud specialist Kroll and the Economist Intelligence Unit showed that the average company surveyed for the report lost USD8.2m to fraud over the preceding three years – an increase of 22% on the 2007-2008 report.
Standard Chartered’s deep and long-established local knowledge and strong on-the-ground expertise, global platforms and capabilities as well as strong relationships with local regulators puts it in a unique position to meet the risk management needs of its clients. The bank boasts a 150 year history in most of its key markets across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Its focus on building deep client relationships has allowed it to offer a wide-range of financial hedging solutions that can be customised to meet specific risk management needs.
Technology has also become a key competitive advantage for effectively managing risks. Whether online or via ERP integration, electronic banking provides a clean and verifiable audit trail for corporate financial transactions; thereby minimising the possibility for manipulation, tampering or record destruction. Standard Chartered offers a fully integrated working capital global platform called Straight2Bank that does just that. This award winning global electronic banking channel provides comprehensive technology solutions that are common across products and geographies that enable real-time reporting and information to clients for greater transparency and effective risk management.
Farooq Siddiqi, Regional Head of Transaction Banking for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Standard Chartered Bank said, “As a bank, we are committed to providing our clients with innovative solutions that help them effectively manage and grow their business. We are very pleased to win this award four years in a row. This is a strong testament of not just our capabilities in this category but also the strength of our Transaction Banking business across cash management, trade finance, clearing and securities services.”
How Thought Leadership Can Reduce the Cost of Sales by Patrik Havander, Havander & Partners A focused attention on the costs incurred by the global sales and marketing processes is becoming increasingly important for corporate banks and their transaction banking departments. While the client/bank relationship remains vital, research has shown that in fact relationship selling […]
