Trade Services Utility reaches new milestone

New users – including Bank of China Hong Kong and Barclays Commercial Bank – extend the Trade Services Utility community beyond the significant 100-member mark

Hong Kong, 14 September 2009 — SWIFT announced today at Sibos 2009 in Hong Kong that following a flurry of new signings by banks from all over the world during recent weeks, the community of Trade Services Utility (TSU) banks now well exceeds 100.

Among the banks extending the TSU community beyond this landmark number of users are Barclays Commercial Bank and Bank of China Hong Kong.

The recent surge of interest is a reflection of the market’s growing confidence in TSU as an innovative open account solution, providing a platform for banks to deliver a variety of supply chain finance and other value-added products to promote process efficiency.

The migration to open account has threatened to limit banks’ involvement in trade to the settlement end of the transaction, and in order to re-intermediate themselves, the banks need to add value by extending their existing trade services to support broader supply chain integration.

The TSU is a collaborative, centralised matching utility designed to help banks meet this challenge. Banks build individually on the core functionality of the TSU, to offer competitive services complementary to their existing offerings to their corporate customers.

The new registrants to the TSU span all regions, and include: in Europe, Barclays Commercial Bank and Yapi Kredi Bankasi; in Americas, Banco de Crédito del Peru; and in Asia-Pacific, Bank of China Hong Kong, Shin Kong Bank and Taishin Bank.

Cai Chunyan, Deputy General Manager, Corporate Banking and Financial Institutions, at Bank of China (Hong Kong), says: “We are delighted to join the growing community of TSU banks, and look forward to building riding on this platform to create new bring more value-added trade services tofor our customers.”

Iain MacDonald, Head of Trade Product at Barclays Commercial Bank, adds: “We are developing our next phase of trade solutions to add more value across our customers’ supply chains. The TSU has the potential to form part of our new capabilities and, over time, could facilitate transformational change in the market.”

Andre Casterman, Head of Trade and Supply Chain at SWIFT, concludes: “The recent signings and the growth of the TSU community beyond the 100-bank mark are highly significant, and validate our commitment to the TSU as a core element of our strategy for supply chain.”

Note to Editors:

About SWIFT
SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect over 8,500 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in more than 200 countries. SWIFT enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. SWIFT also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest.

For more information, please refer to our website www.swift.com or contact:
SWIFT
Euan Sellar
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euan.sellar@swift.com