Transaction Banking Awards 2022

Over the past 12 months, the transaction banking industry has been attempting to conduct business while dealing with lockdowns, the temporary lifting of restrictions, staffing shortages and supply chain issues. Just as business continuity practices had become commonplace, offices started reopening and optimism that the end of the global Covid-19 pandemic was allowed to flourish, inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offset much of that hope.

All of these macro issues surround much of the continued work on spreading real-time payments (RTP) around the globe, improving cross-border payments services, providing support for environmental, social and governance (ESG) aims, and continuing overall digital transformation projects.

Supporting the spread of RTP services to corporate clients remains a top priority for many transaction banks, especially in Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the US. In addition to quicker access to funds, RTP allows data to transfer with the payment; instant payments transactions grant visibility into invoices, dates, purchase orders and more, allowing companies to improve their finance function and decision-making.

Alongside RTP, most banks have prioritised the work being done to improve cross-border efficiency, interoperability and speed. More than 24 banks are taking part in the immediate cross-border (IXB) initiative, along with the Clearing House, Swift and EBA Clearing. The IXB pilot aims to have a full service offering by 2023.

The key features of the service will be aligned with the focus areas related to speed, access, cost and transparency, as outlined by the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and the Financial Stability Board for enhancing cross-border payments.

Many banks have also signed up to pilot Swift Go, to provide instant and low-cost cross-border payment services to consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises. The Swift Go service builds on the high-speed rails of Swift gpi for high-value payments. Seven banks, who collectively handle 33 million low-value cross-border payments per year, initially signed on to Swift Go, which went live last year.

ESG support and offerings also ranked as a high priority for many transaction banks. Some of the offerings included linking supply chain financing to ESG ratings and providing an ESG portfolio recording reporting service to clients.

No matter the global environment, most banks are continuing to innovate and progress their overall digital transformation projects. Several banks have signed up to the Marco Polo Network, a cloud-based blockchain consortium, and have begun developing products and services based around distributed ledger technology. Other banks have begun offering ‘as-a-service’-type payments and trade finance solutions to corporate clients, as well as opening up their application programming interfaces for easier access and interoperability.

At The Banker, we applaud all the banks who entered our Transaction Banking Awards this year and offers our warmest congratulations to all the winners in 2022. Trophies will be awarded at the FT/The Banker booth at Sibos in Amsterdam this October. 

JUDGES

• Ruth Wandhöfer, partner, Gauss Ventures
• Conny Dorrestijn, principal, Shiraz Partners
• Francesco Burelli, partner, Arkwright Consulting
• Enrico Camerinelli, strategic advisor, Aite-Novarica

Global/regional

Global and North America

WINNER: BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon’s strategy is to work to enhance and shape the client experience — and the wider treasury services industry — through the development of innovative solutions such as real-time payments (RTP) and sustainable payments, as well as driving an industry network for the financial supply chain. In addition to being awarded top transaction bank for payments and trade finance, BNY Mellon is both the North America and Global winner for The Banker’s Transaction Banking Awards 2022.

For the past 12 months, BNY Mellon has embarked on a series of projects focusing on RTP in the US, along with cross-border payments and innovating global trade finance.

It was the first bank in the US to offer a real-time bill payment solution, allowing participating businesses to instantly present invoices to customers. In September 2021, BNY Mellon collaborated with Verizon to be the first company to send request-for-payment messages to consumers who bank with Citi.

The bank was also the first US bank to go live with Swift’s new small business and consumer cross-border payments service, Swift Go, as well as being named one of the 24 global pilot participants in the immediate cross-border (IXB) initiative.

BNY Mellon joined the cloud-based, blockchain-powered Marco Polo Network, a consortium working to enable the seamless, secure and fast exchange of trade data. In addition to the continued rollout of its front-end, white-label systems to clients, the bank is also supporting clients to move from paper to digital payment solutions through the exploration of carbon-tracking tools, as well as price discounts and waivers.

This year, BNY Mellon released a market-first electronic billing RTP solution, as well as played a leading role in the development of FedNow, the US instant payments service.

The service, which enables clients to instantly present bills to their customers via an authenticated digital channel, provides clients with an efficient and instant way to bill their customers and collect payments 24/7, all powered via application programming interfaces (APIs) enabling real-time integrated messaging. 

The bank is also actively working on a pilot programme for the FedNow service. It is hoped that the addition of FedNow, which can leverage the Federal Reserve’s relationships with more than 10,000 different financial institutions, will broaden the reach of faster payments in the US — specifically for smaller regional banks.

As part of this, BNY Mellon is involved in the early adopter testing group, which aims to bridge the gap between the two RTP networks for both the bank and its corporate clients — helping to solve for the lack of interoperability in the market. 

In April 2022, BNY Mellon was named as one of 24 global pilot participants in the IXB initiative. Working with the Clearing House, Swift and EBA Clearing, the bank will support RTP with embedded foreign exchange between the US and EU corridors.

BNY Mellon has also taken a leading role in innovating global trade finance. The bank is working to establish a network to support open-account trade to enable the move away from maintaining numerous bilateral agreements for each counterparty and solution, and towards a standard set of processes for trade finance structuring. As part of this, BNY Mellon joined the Marco Polo Network in October 2021. It is a cloud-based, blockchain-powered network that allows the seamless, secure and fast exchange of trade data assets in a multi-channel environment. 

Through its participation in the Marco Polo Network, BNY Mellon is now able to more efficiently insert liquidity into the international supply chain, providing supply chain finance solutions to suppliers shipping goods and services to their buyers around the world. So far, two products have launched on the platform, with a third in development: 

• Receivables finance — the early discovery of discrepancies and the automated matching of trade data on the blockchain prevents disputes arising from contract ambiguities.
• Payment commitment — a digital assurance that a buyer will pay its supplier, which enables the supplier to ship the product before receiving the payment itself, and work with its bank to secure pre- or post-export financing to optimise working capital, as well as reduce the risk of fraud and many of the associated paper documents.
• Supplier Pay — the third product, which is a supply chain finance solution, is currently in development.

“Banks are expected to deliver faster, smarter, more transparent and convenient transactions,” says Jennifer Barker, CEO of BNY Mellon Treasury Services. “This recognition shows that BNY Mellon is meeting this expectation head on. We have ramped up our investment into the future of transaction banking, enhancing traditional rails, and leveraging new industry initiatives and emerging technologies, so that clients have the tools needed to manage their payments and working capital effectively in today’s fast-changing, complex landscape.

“From our innovative RTP bill pay solution — enabling the real-time exchange of information and payments — to our partnership with the Marco Polo Network that facilitates the seamless, secure and fast exchange of trade data, we are shifting the industry towards a real-time world.”

Africa 

WINNER: Ecobank

Ecobank’s corporate and investment banking and commercial banking business offer digital cash management, payments and collections solutions for corporates, financial institutions and public sector clients. 

In July 2021, the bank signed a $50m trade finance facility with the CDC Group (the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor) to provide systemic liquidity to underserved markets and crucial trade finance support to local banks and businesses across Africa.

Later that year, in November, Ecobank signed a nine-year agreement for a €100m long-term credit facility with the European Investment Bank, to provide particular support for the sectors most impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Ecobank offerings include multi-geography cash management services, supported by the bank’s knowledge of cross-border financial regulations and controls. It supports international organisations, multinationals, corporates and businesses to manage risk, improve liquidity management and boost working capital, as well as increase efficiency and reduce costs. The bank’s payments and cash management business enables trade and remittances across Africa, and can deliver instant and seamless payments across 33 African countries in the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The bank launched three products in the past year. The first is the Pan-African Wallet, which adds more capabilities for mobile engagement between business entities and their customers by integrating an e-wallet solution with their existing business platforms, such as mobile applications, web or e-commerce. 

The second is the Africa Collect Service, which helps Ecobank clients to manage collections across Africa without having to open an account in each country. The bank has a growing number of corporate customers who require collection services in countries where they operate, but are not incorporated. 

Ecobank’s third service is the recently launched Open Banking Sandbox, which provides a single point of integration with minimal development work required from customers to achieve payments, collections and liquidity management on multiple e-channels. The single point of integration provides clients with real-time reporting on transaction activities.

“We empower our customers by giving them the choice and convenience to self-serve on our digital platforms. This approach is at the heart of everything we do, and we are intent on our commercial banking, corporate and investment banking businesses being the partner of choice for Africa’s small and medium-sized enterprises and corporates,” says Ade Ayeyemi, chief executive of Ecobank Group.

Asia-Pacific

WINNER: Citi

Citi’s treasury and trade solutions (TTS) business represented 21% of group revenues in 2021. In the past year, Citi has conducted more than 200 advisory assignments in Asia-Pacific to help clients navigate regulatory and market change, manage disruption and realise opportunities.

The bank has doubled processing of instant payments in Asia-Pacific over the past 12 months, with 7000 clients using the Citi Global Instant Payments solution. Clients access the system via a single application programming interface, enabling rapid rollout across markets. 

In 2021, Citi expanded the WorldLink payment solution, which supports cross-border, cross-currency payments in 140 currencies. Clients in India, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand, as well as the UK, have benefitted first, with the solution expanding across other major markets and currencies.

During the past year, the bank also expanded its cross-border payment platform to include payments into digital wallets and alternative payment methods, including China UnionPay, Alipay and PayPal, with near-instant delivery of funds.

In June 2021, Citi and partners delivered a working demonstration of a regulated liability network — a multi-tiered financial market infrastructure to support the transfer of digital assets across a single network, as part of a global central bank digital currency challenge organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Launched in Australia, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan in July 2021, the Citi Real-time Liquidity Sharing service supports more than 4200 real-time liquidity structures in the Asia-Pacific region. The solution enables treasurers to automate and optimise funds dispersed across multiple entities, currencies and accounts, and enables virtual lending and borrowing between pool accounts via a single global platform. 

“Businesses are dealing with the effects of the pandemic, uncertainty in the macroeconomic environment, disruption in supply chains and geopolitical changes. Despite these challenges, growth and innovation — fuelled by tech-driven business model disruption and a rising middle class — continue apace in the region. Our strategy is driven by technology and the provision of innovative working capital solutions, leveraging our network, solutions and advisory to provide one of the world’s most global platforms for traditional and digital commerce,” says Rajesh Mehta, regional head for Asia-Pacific of TTS at Citi.

Latin America 

WINNER: Bank of America 

Bank of America (BofA) spearheads what it calls its digital native innovation agenda with its CashPro service. The service, which was developed in-house, is the centre of the bank’s transaction services delivery model, giving access to treasury management solutions spanning liquidity, payments, receivables, trade finance and reporting.

In Latin America, BofA set up a team of more than 40 digital leaders who manage at least 12 initiatives, with more in the pipeline, across operational efficiency, culture of digital, competitive shifts, customer experience and employee experience.

In the region, 81% of clients are digitally active; in Brazil, 90% of contracts are digitally signed. BofA continues to invest in state-of-art digital solutions to help clients boost their automation of processes and routines. 

In response to new regulations around foreign exchange (FX) in Brazil, BofA developed an FX platform to allow clients to execute their cross-border payments on-demand. In 2022, the bank onboarded the first client in Brazil to the online quotation platform, CashPro FX.

In addition, BofA launched a Miami-based shared service centre for clients in Latin America, who can rely on the centre as a single point of contact for service, implementation and technical support. The single-service contact leads clients through any issue across any country in the region.

In other regional projects, BofA rolled out its intelligent receivables matching capabilities to a Mexican multinational building materials company to automate its receivables reconciliation process. The bank also integrated its tailored deposit solution, Swift, host-to-host (H2H) connectivity, data insights and client service with a Mexican utility company.

BofA claims that its internal culture of collaboration spans Latin America and the rest of the world. That culture of collaboration is also extended to the bank’s back office where teams are encouraged to work together to generate new concepts and ideas. 

“There are many facets to the challenges facing Latin America: the economic and political environments, the fast-changing regulatory frameworks, the different taxation schemes, and new technologies that are quickly being adopted by the consumer,” says Fernando Iraola, co-head of global corporate sales, global transaction services (GTS), and head of Latin America GTS at BofA.

“Our role also includes leveraging new technologies to create solutions that make business easier, that support the advancement of business-to-business and business-to-customer payments, and that optimise working capital and risk management.”

Middle East 

WINNER: Bank ABC

Bank ABC has been recognised for decades as a Middle Eastern and north African (MENA)-focused international bank, enabling the region’s banking and trade finance sector, with the full backing of a global network. The bank has a strong presence in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan, as well as Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) members.

Bank ABC used 2021 to extend its multi-year digital transformation programme to build a client-centric ‘bank of the future’, driving innovation and digital banking transformation in the MENA region.

Over the past year, the bank’s strategy involved:

• Accelerating the wholesale banking digital transformation programme, starting with group transaction banking; digital capabilities have gone live across cash management, documentary trade and supply chain finance (SCF).
• Launching the region’s first digital corporate onboarding service.
• Identifying potential partners and onboarding digital solutions.
• Working towards enhancing, leapfrogging and disrupting legacy business models.
• Continuing to reinforce the team by adding new talent with decades of experience in the GCC and abroad.

Also in 2021, the bank completed the revamp of its digital payments subsidiary, Arab Financial Services, and E-Treasury, its online foreign exchange trading platform. Total trade volumes increased by 48% in 2021, reaching $4bn. Key drivers were increased transaction flows in Bahrain, with bank export volumes increasing in value by 89% and transaction numbers increasing by 61% in 2021, according to Swift data.

In August 2021, Bank ABC launched the region’s first end-to-end digital onboarding service for corporates and financial institutions. This enabled prospective clients to open an account in less than a day, a huge reduction on the industry-standard 90 days, as well as track their onboarding status in real time and seamlessly access the bank’s product suite.

The first phase of the bank’s new SCF platform, built in a software-as-a-service model on the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure, was rolled out on November 29, 2021. A subsequent release of the platform will entail a fully integrated and feature-rich customer front-end, which is well underway and on track for deployment in 2022.

“While there has been some trade recovery in the region, it has largely remained uneven, impacted by the continued supply chain disruptions and emerging geopolitical risks. This is fuelling an urgency to transform in the transaction banking space in the Middle East,” says Sael Al Waary, acting group CEO at Bank ABC.

Western Europe 

WINNER: Deutsche Bank 

Deutsche Bank corporate bank offers tailored solutions to its clients to help them manage their risk and liquidity, as well as meet their financing needs as they relate to environmental, social and governance (ESG) financing.

Last year, the corporate bank launched an in-house banking-as-a-service (IHBaaS) solution, built a tailor-made payment platform for professional services company Azena’s digital marketplace and launched a cash investment service, giving corporates access to the institutional investment market.

With the IHBaaS, treasurers can add or change the features they use at will. It has a wealth of features that can be adapted to the individual needs of each client, ranging from liquidity and foreign exchange (FX) risk management to tweaking the virtual account hierarchy. And for those companies that already have an in-house bank set-up, the platform offers complementary services, including detailed entity-level reporting, virtual account reporting and interest settlement.

Deutsche Bank also launched a partnership with specialist fintech TIS to help corporate clients improve their fraud-prevention processes using artificial intelligence and swarm intelligence. In addition, the bank delivered a first-of-its-kind treasury workflow solution for Merck India to integrate its payments, liquidity management, FX and compliance processes into a single, streamlined workflow to support Merck’s cross-border business.

In addition, the bank has worked closely with Swift. Deutsche Bank launched Swift’s new Beneficiary Account Verification service to drive frictionless transactions worldwide. It has also been involved in the development and launch of Swift Go, a new low-value cross-border payments service, as well as helping drive the awareness, education and adoption of the ISO 20022 messaging standard.

Regarding ESG, Deutsche Bank has linked the German-based chemical company Henkel’s supply chain finance (SCF) programme to ESG ratings — the first ever conversion of an existing SCF programme in Europe to a sustainability-linked programme.

The bank set up a $1.1bn reserve-based lending facility for Norwegian oil and gas company, Noreco, as well as a multicurrency syndicated $1.33bn revolving credit facility for Luxembourg-based Traxys Sarl, which provides trading solutions for the ferroalloy, metal, mineral, mining and energy industries. 

“We are proud to have won this award in a year when rising geopolitical tensions and turbulent macroeconomic conditions have posed significant additional challenges for our clients as they future-proof their business models,” says Jan-Philipp Gillmann, head of corporate bank in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (excluding UK and Ireland) at Deutsche Bank. 

Categories 

Cash management 

WINNER: Citi

Impressively, Citi has invested $1bn in payments and treasury innovations in the past year — a 40% increase over 2020. The bank’s treasury and trade solutions represented 21% of group revenues in 2021.

Citi Global Instant Payments provides uniform connectivity to 29 instant payment schemes globally, as well as the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). In 2021, the bank processed more than 584 million instant payments globally ($1.2tn in value), representing 129% volume growth over 2021. And as of April 2022, Citi processes a daily average of more than three million instant payments globally. Clients access Citi Global Instant Payments via a single application programming interface (API), enabling rapid rollout across markets.

Complementary APIs can be used to access a range of value-added services, such as real-time balances and notifications of incoming flows, together with services such as request-to-pay, tokenisation and QR codes. The Global Instant Payments platform is used by both Uber and Deliveroo.

In 2021, Citi expanded the WorldLink cross-border payment solution to allow clients with Global Citi accounts to make cross-border instant payments to India, Indonesia, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand and the UK, with more countries planned for this year — including Australia and Canada — as well as cross-border SEPA instant payments. Year-on-year cross-border payment flows increased by 19% in 2021.

Citi recently launched cross-border payments to digital wallets in Kenya and Pakistan, as well as the ability to pay directly into PayPal (via 20 currencies and more than 100 countries) and Alipay in China. The bank also went live with cross-border payments via UnionPay cards in China.

In the past year, the bank also launched the ‘Citi Real-time Liquidity Sharing’ solution — initially in Australia, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan — with a phased rollout during 2022. Expanding on the real-time liquidity suite, Citi introduced its ‘Real-time Multi-bank Target Balancing’ solution in Brazil, before expanding across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“The emergence of digital ecosystems and rapidly changing supply chains is changing our clients’ payments strategies. In response to this, one area we are particularly proud of is the progress we’re making in growing our instant payments network and capabilities, making it simpler and much faster for our clients to plug into their customers and business ecosystems,” says Steven Elms, head of corporate, commercial and public sector sales of treasury and trade solutions at Citi.

Payments

WINNER: BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon’s strategy is centred on supporting clients’ evolving needs through the development of its growing suite of solutions and services.

It was the first US bank to offer a real-time payment (RTP) bill payment solution for business clients to present e-bills to their customers instantly at participating RTP retail banks. In September 2021, BNY Mellon collaborated with Verizon to be the first company to send request-for-payment messages to consumers who bank with Citi. The bank was also the first US bank to go live on Swift Go, which enables small businesses and consumers to send fast, predictable, highly secure and competitively priced low-value cross-border payments.

In 2021, BNY Mellon was named one of 24 global pilot participants in the immediate cross-border (IXB) initiative, which will send payments instantly between the US and the EU. In addition, the bank launched InstantTrack, which leverages Swift gpi to provide clients with a secure, user-friendly, public-facing website for tracking payments.

As part of the global migration to the ISO 20022 messaging standard, the bank has established a dedicated one-stop ISO 20022 Hub, to help clients and other financial institutions navigate the challenging transition to the new global standard. 

In the US, BNY Mellon is an early adopter of FedNow, the Federal Reserve’s proposed RTP network. It is hoped that the addition of FedNow, which can leverage the Fed’s relationships with more than 10,000 different financial institutions, will broaden the reach of faster payments in the US, specifically to smaller regional banks. As part of the FedNow initiative, BNY Mellon is involved in the early adopter testing group.

“This award is a true testament to BNY Mellon’s pioneering efforts to transform payments. Our team is committed to working hand-in-hand with clients to ensure their needs and processes — from a speed, efficiency and sustainability perspective — are fully supported, optimised and digitalised,” says Carl Slabicki, co-head of global payments, BNY Mellon Treasury Services.

“Some highlights include being the first ever bank in the US to launch an RTP bill pay solution; going live with Swift Go; participating in the IXB and FedNow pilot programmes; and leading calls for the end of paper cheques to support sustainability efforts through the adoption of digital alternatives.”

Securities services 

WINNER: HSBC

HSBC’s securities services strategy is centred around three strategic goals for the bank. First is to build on HSBC’s international securities services provider position in Asia across all major asset classes and services. Second is to service client flows within, to and from Asia (including mainland China) and focus on clients who require east–west connectivity. And third is to meet the digital and data needs of its clients, creating efficiency in technology and operations, and increasing velocity of execution with new services and ways of working that benefit clients.

HSBC has signed a partnership with SEI, where the tech provider will power securities services solutions via a specialist technology platform for private assets. SEI’s technology platform, which includes third-party and proprietary components, will be used by securities services to provide a range of private asset administration services to asset owners and asset manager clients. Under the partnership, HSBC’s clients gain access to a best-of-breed technology platform for private assets that has been developed by SEI over a period of more than 20 years.

HSBC also offers an environmental, social and governance (ESG) portfolio reporting service that provides clients with independent measurement of how focused their listed asset investments are on ESG issues. The service provides a monthly portfolio of summary reports based on scores and ratings, as well as greenhouse gas emissions data from a choice of leading ESG providers, such as MSCI, Sustainalytics and Moody’s VE, including portfolio-level information. 

The tool enables clients to see how large holdings of listed assets and their selected portfolios are performing using recognised independent ESG criteria, thereby helping meet the increasing demand for greater transparency and more insight in ESG. 

“We’re really pleased to receive this accolade from The Banker, in recognition of serving our clients. There are many achievements we’re proud of during the last year, but one initiative that stands out for us is continuing to grow our securities services offering in the private asset space,” says Sebastien Danloy, global head of investor services, markets and securities services at HSBC.

“In support of this growth, we launched a new tech platform, powered by SEI, dedicated to providing private asset administration services to asset owners and managers. And we were also appointed, along with Mount Street Group, to service Aviva Investors’ £50bn real assets business.”

Supply chain finance

WINNER: Bank of America

Supply chain finance (SCF) is a strategic priority for Bank of America’s (BofA’s) global transaction services (GTS) business. The bank has been investing in capabilities, operating models and networks to support clients’ growth and goals. This investment strategy was fuelled by a culture of innovation and collaboration. The bank is collaborating with industry bodies and fintech companies, such as the Marco Polo Network, which offers an open enterprise software platform using distributed ledger technology.

In collaboration with Marco Polo Network, BofA is developing a SCF solution that combines artificial intelligence, blockchain and digital verification databases to unlock the ability to onboard the entire supplier base and scale programmes at speed.

During 2021, the bank expanded its SCF portfolio by both growing existing programmes and implementing new ones. New buyer entities saw an increase to 35% over the past 12 months; processed supplier invoices increased by 14%; invoice value increased 18%; and end-of-period gross SCF balances increased by 30%.

With a growing number of clients using third-party SCF platforms, the bank introduced application programming interface and host-to-host connectivity, and a third-party module to CashPro Trade. The expanded connectivity allows clients using service providers to access their transactional information more quickly, and gives service providers the ability to submit SCF invoices for financing online and receive status updates of invoices on behalf of the buyer.

To streamline onboarding suppliers, BofA launched a supplier enablement portal, initially in the US in 2020 and subsequently in all other regions in the first quarter of 2022. It comprises an online portal, advanced data analytics software powered by artificial intelligence, personalised microsites for suppliers, and real-time supplier status reports.

BofA’s efforts in the SCF space is tightly linked to its environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy. “Backed by the bank’s commitment to deploy $1tn by 2030 to support sustainable finance, we are helping our clients steadily expand their own ESG agenda by embedding ESG within our trade and SCF offerings. Clients’ interest in these solutions are surging as they increasingly perceive ESG as a strategic imperative,” says Geoff Brady, head of global trade and supply chain finance, GTS at BofA.

“Most recently, we expanded our SCF programme for minority business-owned enterprises to include women-owned enterprises. Such companies are conventionally smaller and may not have been prioritised for SCF previously.”

Trade Finance

WINNER: BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon has embarked on a series of initiatives in order to digitise and optimise the trade finance space.

First, the bank has joined the cloud-based, blockchain-powered Marco Polo Network — a consortium working to enable the seamless, secure and fast exchange of trade data. BNY Mellon is continuing to roll out the front-end white-label systems to clients, allowing them to save on costs and resources, while benefiting from the bank’s extensive network and expertise.

BNY Mellon is also continuing to leverage emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and optical character recognition (OCR) to build a suite of innovative, agile, multichannel trade solutions. It continues to work with industry organisations, such as the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade and the International Chamber of Commerce, on key initiatives that drive industry-wide standardisation.

Through its participation in the Marco Polo Network, BNY Mellon can insert liquidity into the international supply chain, providing supply chain finance solutions to suppliers shipping goods and services to their buyers around the world. So far, two products have launched on the platform: receivables finance and the payment commitment that provides a digital assurance that a buyer will pay its supplier. A third product — a supplier payment solution — is currently in development.

The bank is deploying AI and machine learning to reduce the risk and effort related to the processing of manual transactions, create scale and drive efficiencies through the deployment of a suite of automation tools.

The bank is using AI to focus on non-human intervention of sanction checks, which has been a differentiator during the current geopolitical global crisis. Machine learning is deployed in high-volume, repetitive processes of the payments and investigations lifecycle, to automate traditionally highly manual tasks. OCR and intelligent character recognition is used to enhance documentation verification.

BNY Mellon is also working with several corresponding banks to ensure efficient processes to eliminate physical documents, leveraging the FileAct from Swift, which provides a single secure channel for large files of structured messages, operational data or reports within the trade finance value chain.

“Looking to the needs of tomorrow, it’s clear that technology will play a crucial role in optimising the trade finance space,” says Joon Kim, global head, trade finance product and portfolio management, BNY Mellon Treasury Services. “That’s why our digital strategy centres on not just talking about the future but creating it, in collaboration with our clients.”