Transaction Banking Awards 2023

The continued journey of digitalisation and work on global industry initiatives, such as the migration to ISO 20022 for Swift messages related to cross-border payments, continues to dominate the agenda of transaction banks. Virtual accounts, which came into their own during and post the Covid-19 pandemic, remains the dominant product offering among the winners of this year’s Transaction Banking Awards. In addition to virtual accounts, a commitment to combating climate change and supporting clients with net-zero emissions and sustainability goals also figured prominently.

Virtual account management (VAM) functionality has come a long way since its inception. It now enables the segregation of activity under a single, centralised bank account, while retaining the visibility and reporting needed to enable reconciliation and internal accounting. The reporting flexibility VAM offers is a crucial component in supporting operational, intercompany and treasury cash operations, reconciliation and accounting. The virtual account structure provides a comprehensive view of treasurers’ cash positions, enhancing the decision-making process by providing rationalised account structures and centralised transaction processing.

Sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations have increased in priority over the past year. Corporations are increasingly focused on sustainability practices. The transaction banking industry’s role in trade and supply chain finance (SCF) places it in a crucial position to support sustainability goals.

Integrating sustainability performance indicators into treasury management appears to be an important challenge for corporate treasurers in 2023. Treasury departments are applying an ESG lens to various aspects of their business, from investing surplus cash to raising working capital and providing SCF to their suppliers.

Many global transaction banks are developing tailored solutions for their clients. Some of these projects include developing principles around green loans, green bonds and sustainability-linked loans. Other areas of ESG offerings included the setting up of import/export letters of credit and bank guarantees, as well as the factoring and supply chain finance programmes offered by the bank.

Offering white labelled and ‘as-a-service’ offerings also figured highly in the winning entries. Transaction banking ‘as a service’ as well as a proliferation of available open application programming interfaces allows corporate clients more control and flexibility to use bank technology to solve proprietary problems.

All of these initiatives are aimed at offering more targeted and tailored services to global transaction banking clients. These services are supported by a continued embrace of digital technologies, mobile-first based products and an embrace of global initiatives such as open finance and the move toward ISO 20022.

We applaud all the banks who entered our 2023 Transaction Banking Awards and offer our warmest congratulations to all the winners. Trophies will be awarded at the FT/The Banker booth (F40) at Sibos in Toronto at 16:00 ET on Tuesday September 19.

Judges

• Francesco Burelli, partner, Arkwright Consulting
• Liz Lumley, deputy editor, The Banker
• Ruth Wandhöfer, partner, Gauss Ventures

Global/regional

Global and Asia-Pacific

WINNER: HSBC

In 2022, HSBC invested 19% of its operating expenses – around $6bn – in technology to enhance digital transaction banking capabilities; it plans to increase this to 21% in the coming years. Plus, the bank is investing more than $2bn in digital innovation over the coming years, including working with fintech companies.

In addition to being awarded top prize for best bank for supply chain finance, HSBC scoops the global and Asia-Pacific awards for the 2023 Transaction Banking Awards.

“HSBC’s roots are in facilitating trade between East and West, and our transaction banking capabilities today remain at the heart of the bank’s international network. We have taken a leading role in the global digitisation of trade, redefining client experience through intuitive digital journeys and faster processing,” says Vivek Ramachandran, head of global trade and receivables finance, HSBC.

In Asia-Pacific, HSBC operates in 19 markets. Over the past 12-18 months, it has increased investment, implementing a co-head management model – split between Hong Kong and Singapore – across most business and product lines. With this new structure, the bank feels it can better support clients as they capture opportunities stemming from the business megatrends in the region: supply chain diversification, digital transformation of economies and sustainability.

The bank offers real-time payments (RTP) in 15 Asian markets (Bangladesh and Indonesia went live in 2022), processing more than 500 million RTP payments globally in 2022. Virtual accounts for payments are live in five Asian markets (Australia and India in 2022) and omni-channel collections in 12 markets.

HSBC has also expanded its supply chain proposition to over 400 programmes enabling more than 20,000 suppliers for faster financing across Asia, with 87% of all trade finance instructions now initiated through digital channels.

Ian Tandy, HSBC's co-head of global trade and receivables finance, Asia-Pacific, says, “Supply chains remain a C-suite conversation, so we’re focused on our clients’ supply chains, the use of data within them, and our ability to present the information to help our clients understand what support we can provide to their critical suppliers.”

The bank also feels it is best-placed to help clients benefit from the re-opening of China’s economy by servicing intra-Asian trade flows, inbound multinational transactional banking activity into Asia, outbound activity from Asia to the rest of the world, and in-country client needs across the region.

For example, HSBC China is the first foreign bank in China to integrate with China Supply Chain Cloud. A new foreign exchange (FX) feature has been added to supply chain finance, allowing settlement of invoices in suppliers’ chosen currency. This brings straight-through payment processing without disruption to the payables process.

In addition to China, the bank is expanding its services and offerings in Australia. It launched HSBC Orion in 2022, a HSBC proprietary distributed ledger technology-based tokenisation platform created for financial institutions and corporates wanting to issue digital bonds. Tokenisation can lead to significant benefits including improving accessibility, liquidity through fractionalisation and efficiency across asset lifecycles.

Globally HSBC processes, on average, 142 payments per second for wholesale clients, amounting to more than four billion payments in 2022. New customers in mainland China can open local and UK accounts simultaneously with WeChat, halving the time to four working days.

Recently, the lender launched Pay by Bank in the UK, which will support customers’ ability to claim payments and reduce costs by creating effective account structures that take legislation changes into account. This solution offers customers real-time views of their global cash positions. HSBC is also participating in the Immediate Cross-border Payments pilot to create a 24/7 US dollar-to-euro payments corridor.

“Change for our clients is accelerating and they are increasingly looking at their banks with heightened expectations and as a source of innovation. In the payments space, we have made significant investments in RTPs, application programming interfaces, FX and cross-border solutions, and Treasury 2.0 to provide our clients with tools to operate their businesses more efficiently and improve their risk management,” says Manish Kohli, head of global payments solutions, HSBC.

In the Middle East and north Africa region, HSBC provided $922m in environmental, social and governance (ESG) financing to clients via a comprehensive suite of sustainable trade finance products (green guarantees, sustainable supply chain finance programmes and green loans).

During the past 12 months, the bank also introduced sustainability-linked loans to enable and support environmentally and socially sustainable economic activities by linking a borrower’s cost of capital to ESG/sustainability metrics. It incentivises borrowers to achieve ambitious, pre-determined sustainability performance targets.

The bank provided a $158m combined guarantee facility to the Zarafshan Wind Power Project in Uzbekistan. The Zarafshan wind farm is the largest renewables project in central Asia, developed following bilateral agreements between Masdar, a UAE clean energy company, and the Uzbekistan government.

Africa

WINNER: Société Générale

In the past 12 months, Société Générale’s (SocGen) digital transformation and innovation teams have developed an Innovation Accelerator to work with start-ups and fintech companies. It created a cloud treasury management solution that is fully integrated into the bank’s environment and developed an environment, social and governance global transaction banking offer to support corporate clients that have engaged in a real transition toward a more sustainable business model.

Several new services have been launched, including:

• A new cash management offer in sub–Saharan Africa, named MyBusiness, based on web and mobile connectivity. The system offers clients a view on their SocGen accounts or accounts in another bank, real-time follow up of their payments with pertinent status, and rich dashboard and reporting. This solution is already deployed in Algeria, Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia. In 2023, it plans to roll this solution out in Mauritania, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo and Senegal;
• Clearing capacities in two local African currencies: West African CFA franc and Moroccan dirham;
• A sustainability-linked trade finance initiative, targeting customers active in clean energy or organising their transition from a carbon-intensive activity to a sustainable business model.

SocGen has appointed experts dedicated to environmental and social (E&S) aims over four African regions covering all African countries where the bank is active. Offerings include advice on selection of relevant E&S objectives and key performance indicator definitions, and green labelling of trade solutions, such as letters of credit, guarantees and so on.

In Cameroon, the bank launched Komgo, a digital multibank and international solution that allows documentary credits to be initiated without going to a branch.

“Today, we remain the only European bank with a strong African ambition,” says Laurent Goutard, head of Africa, Mediterranean Basin and overseas at SocGen. “At a time when Africa is inventing its own ways of using banking products and services, Société Générale reaffirms its commitment to playing a key role in this transformation.”

Latin America

WINNER: Citi

Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) division experienced a 32% increase in global revenues, with a 40% uptick in Latin America (Latam) alone. The bank supports a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week clearing, sweeping and instant payment service for 33 global markets.

Citi is present in 20 countries in the region, which the bank claims is double the footprint of its nearest competitors. Over the past five years, the bank’s market share has grown from 16% to 22%, testament to its strength in Latam.

In addition to revenue growth, in the past 12 months Citi has seen a 63% increase in liquidity, 15% increase in payments and receivables, and an 85% growth in commercial cards across the region. Adoption of Citi’s virtual account solution grew by 33% and account balances by 82% in 2022. This has helped clients to manage, reconcile and centralise liquidity across 41 currencies, including the Brazilian real and Mexican peso.

Citi’s application programming interface (API) connectivity platform now offers more than 100 APIs available to conduct treasury and business processes, such as trade services, foreign exchange and e-commerce. Around 361 million calls have been made in 2022 and 523 million so far in 2023.

The bank launched beneficiary search APIs in Peru, Uruguay and Brazil. Clients can validate accounts before performing any payments. Brazilian clients can now generate a PIX QR code that contains relevant information for end users to pay for rendered services and goods. Citi reports that Latam is its biggest region for APIs.

Middle East

WINNER: First Abu Dhabi Bank

The aim of First Abu Dhabi Bank’s (FAB) global transaction banking (GTB) division is to increase wallet share and broaden client relationships by delivering innovative product developments, process enhancement and out-of-the-box solution delivery. Over the past 12 months, the bank has focused on products related to cash management, liquidity and developed a virtual account management proposition.

In addition, FAB has formed a treasury advisory team which helps and advises clients on the best solution for their treasury transformation and centralisation journey. Understanding its client needs, the bank has further invested in providing a white-label treasury management system (TMS) for its clients to better manage and control their treasury function, so that they can mitigate operational, financial, and reputational risks.

FAB has partnered with trade data and analytics provider, Coriolis Technologies, to assess and rate the sustainability of each supplier. The solution enables hundreds of suppliers to be rated within hours, versus the solutions available in the market which take a couple of months on average to rate each supplier.

The bank has launched FAB TMS as a white-label product in December 2022, in collaboration with ION Group. In addition, FAB has provided a UAE platform bank with banking-as-a-service (BaaS) offering. This offering is now the base proposition for FAB to offer a similar BaaS solution to other digital banks looking at using such services that would increase the throughput of transaction volumes via FAB.

“Despite a challenging global economic backdrop, the Middle East and north Africa’s regional trade and cash landscape is more dynamic and interconnected than ever before, driving innovation across multiple industries and creating new value creation opportunities," says Sanjay Sethi, senior managing director and head of GTB, FAB.

"This award highlights FAB’s achievements in the GTB sector, the success of our digital transformation strategy, and the strength of our solutions and service model, which delivers seamless digital experiences to clients,” he adds.

North America

WINNER: Bank of America

Bank of America’s (BofA) global transaction services (GTS) business serves thousands of clients across Canada and the US. It is the financial provider to 98% of the 2022 US Fortune 500, and serves one in five mid-sized businesses (revenues $5m – $2bn), supporting 66 million consumer and small business clients.

GTS launched three important innovations in the past year. Those include a virtual account solution, an intelligent receivables service for accounts receivable (AR) forecasting and an impact accelerator programme.

BofA claims it was one of the first global banks to offer a virtual account solution; and in June 2022, it launched virtual account management in the US. The launch included new capabilities, a result of client input including aspirational use cases. The upgraded account and liquidity platform gives users a consistent global experience, while supporting critical payment and receipts activities in each region it is offered.

In 2022, the bank released an enhanced version of Intelligent Receivables, an AR matching solution which has forecasting capabilities and improved reporting. Intelligent Receivables is powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning and optical character recognition software. The platform supports straight-through reconciliation of incoming payments — and helps post receivables faster.

The BofA Breakthrough Lab is an impact accelerator programme that provides economic opportunity and capital access to Black, Hispanic-Latino, Native American and other underrepresented entrepreneurs.

The part-time, six-month programme provides tailored hands-on mentorship, digital expertise, networking with industry experts and access to potential investors to early-stage founders, so they can scale up their tech-related companies. It is funded and managed by GTS, but its mission extends across the entire BofA enterprise.

“As events in the first quarter demonstrated, periods of great uncertainty can appear suddenly, without warning. No one knows what will trigger the next one, however, we do know that to be in the best position to weather any disruption, companies need to have the best possible visibility and control into their global treasury and cash operations,” says Sue Caras, head of global commercial banking for GTS at BofA.

Western Europe

WINNER: Deutsche Bank

“The macroeconomic backdrop of the past three years – characterised by the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing conflict in Europe, an emerging energy crisis, rising interest rates and surging inflation – has significantly changed the business environment we and our clients operate in,” says Jan-Philipp Gillmann, head of corporate bank, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and global head of corporate coverage, Deutsche Bank.

Despite this, Mr Gillmann says the bank has managed to overcome these challenges by putting partnerships, collaboration, investment and solution-building at the heart of what it does.

Innovations over the past year include creating a virtual account structure with Siemens, enabling a new blockchain-enabled procuring platform for Roche, as well as continuing with industry initiatives such as Swift Go and the ISO 20022 migration.

The benefits of the virtual account structure for Siemens include reducing the number of banking partners and bank accounts. The technology company aims to close or virtualise up to 55% of the existing bank accounts. In total, a virtualisation of 200 existing physical bank accounts globally is planned. Importantly, the connected cash pools can also be closed, as the solution provides an integrated real-time pooling to the master bank account.

When looking at its procurement processes, Roche was looking for greater efficiency, transparency, and security with a single source of truth – not only within the company, but across the value chain, with less manual administration. To address these challenges – and leverage the opportunities provided by emerging technologies – the healthcare company wanted to embark on a blockchain-based project in collaboration with Deutsche Bank. By connecting via blockchain, the gap between purchase order and invoice can be virtually eliminated, so suppliers can access financing more quickly.

To build this new capability, Deutsche Bank worked closely with Roche’s treasury team to enhance its process automation, improve the procure-to-pay process and streamline its working capital financing. The bank built a blockchain-based supply chain and procurement solution for Roche to connect counterparties via a shared database to streamline and automate purchase order management, invoice creation, data matching and payments.

The project has been a valuable proof of concept on how smart contracts on blockchain can increase efficiency and transparency. This aligns with the treasury’s wider standardisation and automation objectives and offers lessons for other treasury activities.

Categories

Cash management

WINNER: Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank’s drive to reduce complexity in corporate treasury and reap the full benefits of key technological trends helps it scoop The Banker’s Cash Management award this year.

"Through innovations, such as in-house banking structures, marketplace solutions and explorations into blockchain, we balance state-of-the-art solutions with security and scale to provide our clients with the trusted advisory needed to navigate this dynamic landscape,” says Ole Matthiessen, global head of cash management, Deutsche Bank.

For example, the bank partnered with Siemens, to virtualise a large part of the technology company’s corporate bank account structure by converting its traditional IBANs into virtual IBANs. This project is a part of a larger ongoing effort by Deutsche Bank to build and create a real-time transactional infrastructure.

Siemens maintains hundreds of bank accounts and assigned cash pools that need to be individually managed for its day-to-day treasury operations – and doing so is time-consuming and resource intensive, which ultimately impedes efficiency. Bank account virtualisation removes the need for most physical accounts by connecting a theoretically unlimited number of unique aliases (virtual account numbers) to a single physical master bank account. This, in turn, can drive a host of efficiencies across cash, foreign exchange and liquidity management processes – freeing up capacity for Siemens to dedicate to other forward-looking projects.

The Deutsche Bank solution was piloted in August 2022 with its first transaction, having converted a multitude of physical IBANs held by Siemens’ Germany-based subsidiaries into virtual ones and closing the related physical bank accounts. This is just the first step in a wider roll-out of a centralised, Single Euro Payments Area-wide virtual account set-up by the bank. Deutsche Bank’s goal of the project was to simplify the bank account infrastructure in a virtual hub-and-spoke model that also works cross-border, while avoiding any impact on the customer interface.

To achieve this, Deutsche Bank ensured that Siemens retained its existing account numbers for the new virtual accounts. This minimised the effort involved in communicating the new set-up to existing clients, and eliminated the risk of receiving pushback or having to go through drawn-out anti-fraud or account validation processes.

Payments

WINNER: UniCredit

Payments and digitalisation are two key elements of the ‘UniCredit Unlocked’ strategy, which clinched its win in the payments category.

By leveraging the existing expertise and capabilities in its transactions and payments team, UniCredit created a dedicated new product line in April 2023, called Global Payment Solutions. Encompassing payments and cash management products and sales, along with the global coordination of acquiring and issuing services, the new team claims a more focused approach on clients’ evolving needs, providing innovative solutions to all customer segments.

One of those solutions include UC PayFX, an exotic currency solution that supported an Italian chemical-pharmaceutical company after it acquired a local company in Brazil. Since the Brazilian real is a non-G10 currency, UniCredit was one of the few banks able to support the transaction. Using the service, the bank was able to ensure the transfer could be directly initiated in Brazilian real, with a pre-agreed margin and correct amount.

Furthermore, UniCredit provided joint advisory with its client risk management team, allowing the bank to deliver a customised hedging strategy and solutions to its clients and minimise foreign exchange risks.

The bank has also broadened its provision of instant payments for customers across central and eastern Europe. With initiatives such as Flik Pay, Blink and the National Instant Payments System, UniCredit has eased transactions and strengthened cash flow for small and medium-sized enterprises and local businesses. The introduction of these services has streamlined the transaction process within the region – introducing capabilities, such as mobile banking, and enabling transactions in local currencies.

Notably, since the Flik Pay service has been available to customers, UniCredit has seen a substantial increase in processed transactions during the later hours of the day, when customers were previously unable to make such payments.

“Thanks to our new Global Payment Solutions business line, we are continuing our journey towards simplification via the expansion of our digital tools and payment solutions for individuals up to multinationals – now allowing all our clients to execute frictionless payments. In doing so, we are able to stay close to our clients’ businesses and tangibly support the real economy,” says Raphael Barisaac, global head of payments and cash management at UniCredit.

Securities services

WINNER: BNP Paribas

The past 12 months were a pivotal period for BNP Paribas Securities Services, which saw it merge with parent company, BNP Paribas Group. This merger underlines the strategic importance of securities services as a key part of the bank’s integrated banking model.

As a pillar of BNP Paribas’ 2025 strategic plan, known as GTS (growth, technology and sustainability), securities services continues to develop profitable growth, leveraging the ongoing expansion and transformation of its operating model.

Driven by the roll-out of strategic new mandates and supported by the BNP Paribas Group’s diversified model, securities services achieved a strong business drive over the past year. Revenue continued to strongly increase, reaching €655m. This is a 6.7% rise compared to the first quarter of 2022, driven by favourable impact of the interest rate environment and stability at a high level of transaction volume.

BNP Paribas has enhanced its execution-to-custody solution and it is now available beyond the US in Europe and Asia-Pacific, following the bank’s acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s electronic equities business.

Integrating execution and custody has enabled clients to execute and settle trades with one single instruction. This helps them simplify and automate trade workflows, enhance straight-through processing, achieve greater operational efficiency, optimise costs through instruction netting, and reduce risk.

Bruno Campenon, head of financial institutions and corporates client line at securities services, BNP Paribas, says: “The simplicity afforded by this offering means clients can increase operational efficiency, scale their operations and access new markets quickly and efficiently. This is a powerful solution, which enables us to meet our clients’ evolving needs and highlights the strength of BNP Paribas’s integrated banking model.”

In the US, the integrated execution-to-custody solution enables clients to be ready for a T+1 environment, thanks to automatic settlement instructions, end-to-end transaction lifecycle, faster turnaround on exception to meet regulatory timelines, eliminating the operational risk of missing the settlement deadline.

BNP Paribas is also partnering with leading fintech platforms. Its investment in AccessFintech will help the bank provide corporate and institutional banking clients with the latest technology, data and workflow tools in a context of shortening settlement cycles. Clients will also be able to enhance operational efficiency thanks to the use of AccessFintech’s Synergy data collaboration network.

“In an increasingly fast-paced and globally competitive landscape, clients are asking for a more highly integrated, digital and sustainable banking offering. As a pillar of BNP Paribas’s diversified banking model, we at securities services provide our clients with powerful solutions closely integrated with the best-in-class capabilities of the group’s other business lines,” says Patrick Colle, head of securities services and chairman of financial institutions coverage at BNP Paribas.

He continues: “We are anticipating our clients’ needs by being at the forefront of technology in asset servicing, partnering with leading fintechs and developing our own platforms to deliver utmost operational efficiency, a multichannel client experience, as well as a comprehensive range of sustainable finance solutions. This enables us to be the long-term, trusted partner they need to face new challenges and opportunities.”

Supply chain finance

WINNER: HSBC

In HSBC’s opinion, global trade is seeing a paradigm change due to various factors, including the Covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflict, consumer behaviour change, climate emergency and macroeconomic uncertainty, causing corporate clients to make different supply chain decisions to ensure resilience and adaptability.

The bank has been co-creating new solutions to address evolving client needs, as they reconfigure their finance supply chains earlier and deeper into their ecosystems. It is also enabling client transition plans through sustainable trade finance solutions – financing $6bn in transactions in 2022.

HSBC is expanding capabilities and funding to support complex needs of clients from large multinationals to small and medium-sized enterprises. The bank’s programmes reached 40,000 suppliers in 2022. The bank’s cloud-based supply chain finance (SCF) platform now supports programmes in 22 global sites.

Its Integrated Working Capital programme for pre- and post-shipment financing and Sustainable Supply Chain programme to support customer transitions to net zero continue to gain traction.

HSBC offers multi-tier SCF, enabling an anchor buyer to support its direct suppliers, and their suppliers in turn. Leading the industry, HSBC China is the first foreign bank in China to integrate with China Supply Chain Cloud. Additionally, a new foreign exchange feature has been added to SCF, allowing settlement of invoices in suppliers’ chosen currency. This brings straight-through payment processing without disruption to the payables process.

Its Real-time Supplier Management Tool is aimed at making supplier onboarding simpler and faster with secure, automated and efficient data transfer. Suppliers are automatically set up and onboarding is triggered digitally. The bank can now onboard suppliers at scale with a significantly improved turnaround time.

In addition, HSBC’s new Integrated Payments solution offers a single and consistent experience across standard payments and early payments using industry standard ISO XML formats. The solution is now live in 22 sites.

"This award win is a testament to how clients value our expertise as a facilitator of global commerce as they navigate uncertainty,” says Vivek Ramachandran, head of global trade and receivables finance, HSBC. “Our integrated supply chain finance proposition helps clients scale safely and at pace, supporting complex multi-jurisdictional needs with solutions that make trade financing simpler and faster, and improve decision-making through data visibility.”

Trade finance

WINNER: Alliance Bank Malaysia

One of Alliance Bank Malaysia’s digital solutions revolves around the concept of the ‘Bank in Your Pocket’, whereby business banking solutions are built around the bank’s BizSmart Mobile application to empower business owners to manage their daily banking needs anytime, anywhere from their mobile device. The bank says this follows its commitment to enable customers with products and services that are accessible and affordable to all businesses, especially the underserved small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment.

The bank has introduced BOB, a BizSmart Chatbot to assist its Alliance BizSmart users with information or solutions to their queries via simple conversation through WhatsApp messages. BOB is ready to assist 24/7, beyond the normal banking hours and working days. Customers can easily access self-help without waiting to be served, instead of making a call to the contact centre. The newly added feature is specifically designed for fast moving and dynamic SME customers.

Alliance Bank has also initiated internal resource restructuring to provide dedicated and prioritised BizSmart eTrade processing and disbursement. All digital trade financing submissions are managed by this team with dedicated support to ensure seamless end-to-end processing from submission, approval to disbursement of trade proceeds.

In addition to onboarding new business customers via a digital account opening and electronic know your customer process, Alliance Bank has also focused on enabling their daily banking needs and transactions through the BizSmart Mobile and BizSmart eTrade. Customers can now perform all their payments, salary contribution, sales collection, trade financing, fixed deposit placement and withdrawal and foreign currency exposure, all on their mobile device.

The bank was the first in Malaysia to offer a one-stop and fully digital mobile trade financing platform, BizSmart eTrade. It received 15 international awards and recognition in 2021 and 2022. The adoption of BizSmart eTrade has accelerated by 48 times within the last two years. The number of BizSmart Mobile users has increased by seven times within the last two years. The penetration rate of BizSmartMobile in the fourth quarter of 2022 has increased by 43% compared to the same quarter in 2021.

“Trade finance is a financial instrument consisting of multiple products and services, of which, traditionally the operational processes are tedious with physical documents being presented for financing without updates to the users on their transaction status. To mitigate this tedious operational processes, Alliance Bank’s BizSmart eTrade has been designed to provide users a fast, simple and responsive solution via web and BizSmart Mobile, digitally allowing them to perform inquiry, submission and approval anytime, anywhere,” says Kellee Kam, group CEO of Alliance Bank Malaysia Berhad. “eTrade allows fast disbursement within 24 hours without presentation of physical documents and users are notified upon transaction processing and approval.”