Open Theatre sessions

Monday 14 September - 10:00

The flourishing globalization process and increasing needs brought about by the current credit crunch make global cash management (GCM) a more pressing task for treasurers. As the leading cash management bank in China, and stimulated by a large number of “going overseas” Chinese corporates, ICBC is devoted to helping its clients work out an optimal cash management solution on a global basis ICBC believes that to achieve a bona fide “global” cash management, local expertise is a necessity, for which it is seeking for strategic partners around the globe. Such strategic partnership is supposed to build on the basis of mutual understanding and benefit, and to create a synergy to deliver operable and customized solutions to clients of both sides. Thanks to the platform set up by SIBOS, ICBC is able to express its ideas and expectations in this regard and closely communicate and discuss with worldwide leading banks. It’s a great place and time, for both of ICBC and its potential partners.

Monday 14 September - 10:45

Summary:

• Current Plans
• Challenges and risk management and
• Way forward

Monday 14 September - 11:30

Do you ever wish you had a playbook for implementing SOA-based payments solutions?  IBM has developed a SOA industry scenario that delivers a detailed example of a high quality, integrated, business and technical solution for corporate payments. Based on real customer implementations, it provides a detailed business case, deployment scenario, solution and architectural details to help customers and business partners accelerate SOA adoption. Scenarios are available at no charge in a trial environment via the IBM SOA Sandbox.  The sandbox provides a low-risk, "tinker, test, and try" hosted environment that’s available to everyone.  

Monday 14 September - 12:15

With SEPA all payments between countries are treated as domestic payments, eliminating the current differentiation between national and cross-border payments. Banks are completely re-evaluating their systems to compete effectively in this new transaction services world. Existing payments systems, many decades old, will barely survive, never mind thrive, unless updated. As new packages emerge, integration and maintenance costs soar, Capgemini’s 2009 Payments Systems Survey session covers the payments packages available today (including core processing and support functions), how to reduce selection time, and ease integration into legacy environments.  

Tuesday 15 September - 10:00

This session will be about how to migrate from a legacy payments infrastructure to a modern Payment Service Hub, the lessons learnt and benefits gained.

Tuesday 15 September - 10:45

US tax regulations (QI) are so complex that many non-US investors are taxed by custodians or brokers at 30% instead of 15% or even 0% on their US dividends or interest. As account servicers, SWIFT users also struggle to produce end of year tax information reports. The EU and OECD countries are also planning to adopt QI style regulations potentially affecting over 34 markets with more regulation, manual processes and potential for over-taxation. This presentation updates delegates on expected changes in 2009 and new initiatives with swift to provide v-stp solutions.

Tuesday 15 September - 11:30
The economic crisis has put banks in a stage where deriving profitability has become the lynchpin for any initiative. While banks are seeking ways to identify, maintain and increase profitability, a strategic approach that can be adopted is to bring in the best practices from across industries to price and build their customer relations. This presentation takes you through some of the best practices in customer-centric pricing adopted in various industries that will help a bank to increase profitability and customer satisfaction.

• Know your customer – Modelling (from Retail)
• Stop leakage - Revenue Assurance (from Telecom)
• Loyalty based on overall relationship - Relationship Loyalty (from Airlines)
• Manage your products - Enterprise Product Catalogue (from Telecom)
• Smarter pricing techniques can encourage customers to behave more profitably – Flexible Pricing (from Banking)
• Way forward is go with your customers across verticals – be the one-stop-shop for all services – utilities, telco, retails, airlines

Tuesday 15 September - 12:15

The Italian CBI Consortium (Customer to Business Interaction), manages the CBI Service (Interbank Corporate Banking), which allows corporate customers to connect electronically via a unique front-end solution offered by one bank and to exchange financial messages (credit transfers/direct debit orders and cash management reports) with all the banks where the corporate accounts are held (Italian corporates have an average of five different account-servicing banks). CBI defines XML Standards for all the CBI Service functionalities. Currently the CBI Service enables more than 770.000 companies to access payment services offered by more than 90% of Italian Banks. New CBI services includes XML based payment and document management services such as electronic invoicing, SEPA Credit Transfers and Direct Debit, and the “Invoice Financing Request” registered by CBI in the Repository ISO 20022.

Tuesday 15 September - 13:15

Tuesday 15 September - 14:00

The rapid change in payments at the customer end has not always been reflected in the technology in the transactions processing chain. Channel technology at the front end might have been added rapidly whilst the back office was grinding along. Around the world, business events call for even more change: SEPA in Europe, check truncation in the US, CNAPS in China, let alone customer demand for innovation such as secure remittance etc.
As a result many banks are forced to eat 'noodles' for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Payment functions and services are entwined in a range of complex environments. Banks have little insight in the status of their payments, a lot of manual intervention is required, there is a lack of central control reporting, to name but a few of the consequences. For many banks a centralised payments management platform is a target to aim for; three technology trends now make this a real possibility: SOA, BPEL and ISO20022. The current climate turning payments into a core and essential part of the bank's business might do the rest. Through a number of different client cases, we demonstrate how this bank payment hub approach can help any bank, and you!

Presenter:

• Brian Hamilton

Tuesday 15 September - 14.45

SEPA will transform how banks, corporates and consumers do business and interact across Europe. Processing of Direct Debits, Mandates and Exceptions by Corporates in the various national schemes is a highly complex activity. While adoption of SEPA schemes will certainly bring huge benefits and opportunities for Corporates, firstly they must overcome the significant logistical and technical challenges involved in SEPA migration. Sentenial is a leading provider of Direct Debit Management Services to Corporates & Banks across a number of European DD Schemes and will address the SDD business case for Corporates and outline a viable path for approaching SEPA DD migration.

Tuesday 15 September - 15:30

According to the Consultative Group to Assist the poor (CGAP) in 2009 over 1 Billion people lack basic bank account facilities, but own a mobile device. As a result, the unbanked (or under-banked) population represents a major opportunity for the growth of mobile financial services. Coupled with this factor, increases in remittances are also expected to drive growth of mobile banking in developing markets.  This presentation from Fiserv will examine the drivers behind mobile banking adoption for the unbanked and under-banked, mobile banking services available and the benefits to financial institutions adopting mobile in developing and developed countries.  

Tuesday 15 September - 16:15

This session will be about issues around infrastructures. Some should stick to their knitting, the overlap in others should be rationalised and in other cases there should be convergence! Furthermore some banks believe that the regulatory tsunami means that shared services and infrastructure are the only way forward.

Tuesday 15 September - 17:00

In a recent questionnaire by Clear2Pay and Banking Technology banks opened up about (out)sourcing strategies and which partners they would look for. Clearly, the turbulent times have had their impact and banks are being forced to make very clear choices about sourcing and have to execute 'without frills'. Some will clearly opt to invest in SEPA and build an infrastructure capable of executing payments for many other banks. Others will focus on the customer relationship and opt for outsourcing the execution of their payments processing to other banks or service providers. In this Open Theatre session we share the results with you and debate the pros and cons of outsourcing for both tier 1 and tier 2/3 banks. Finally we will give you an example of how to be SDD ready in a day.

Wednesday 16 September - 10:00

We are pleased to introduce the outline of the financial and payment infrastructures in Japan, including BOJ-NET(RTGS), Zengin system (domestic funds transfer system), ANSER-GATEWAY,Integrated ATM Switching Services, CAFIS (credit card network), Multi Payment Network (Bill payment network), CVS-FCS (Convenience store fee collection systems), and electronic money systems. There are many kinds of financial and payment infrastructures in Japan.  Most of them are common in other countries. Some  are very  advanced others are not. We will present the state of the art current systems we have in Japan during this session.
The Payment Service Bill/Act which will be in effect next year in Japan may have some impact on the issue of opening the infrastructures connecting with other regions. This session provides practical perspectives. 

Wednesday 16 September - 10:45

The new MX messages based on XML and ISO 20022 have a much richer content than the old MT's. If the mapping of MT to MX seems easy, it is difficult to map in the other way from MX to MT. The MT templates for funds will be phased out in 2012, how do we prepare and manage the migration to the new standards?

Wednesday 16 September - 11:30

In this fast moving economical environment, banks and corporates are looking to optimise their costs and infrastructure, have visibility and control on their cash and focus on their core business by outsourcing some of their "factories".

Find out at this session how our new Finance Connect service can address these needs.

Wednesday 16 September - 12.15

The World Payments Report will once again be introduced at Sibos. This session will focus on the latest key findings from the World Payments Report 2009 by Capgemini, The Royal Bank of Scotland and EFMA. Attendees will learn the results of a new quantitative analysis of global transaction volumes amidst the economic crisis and gain a view into future volumes. 

Hear the latest updates on SEPA and PSD implementation and migration as well as the challenges presented by new market conditions and how to make SEPA a success.  The World Payments Report 2009 explores the latest trends in the global transaction services industry, including lessons learned and best practices from leading banks and financial institutions.  

Wednesday 16 September - 14:00

Banks have, over the years, held firm to several core beliefs that have driven Operations & Technology performance. But, to what extent are these beliefs pushing banks to outperform competitors? Are some of them simply outdated? This session will draw on McKinsey's extensive global benchmarking surveys in IT and Operations across banks to see which myths can be exploded and to reveal where the reality lies.

Presenter:

• Akash Lal  

Wednesday 16 September - 14:45

PROFILE demonstrates the value of providing an integrated approach to the evolving Bank requirements and high expectations from IT systems and solutions. These requirements are further enhanced with the global Operations of Banks. The integrated approach when based on a modular state of the art and architecturally solid system can provide faster time to market products, lower cost of ownership and operation, improved audit and Risk management and all these with shorter, smaller and safer projects. PROFILE presents the major success factors of such an integrated approach. 

Wednesday 16 September - 15:30

This open theatre session will share some thoughts about a paradigm shift regarding the application of payment infrastructure. One of the capabilities of such an infrastructure is to reliably switch and process valuable messages through a network of banks and corporates. Looking at the core competences of e.g. a processor, new markets open up where services can be applied to new customers. Examples like eInvoicing and health care transactions are areas that can evolve more rapidly using knowledge and technologies the banking sector has been using for years and where processors and banks can play a useful role and create additional revenue streams.

Wednesday 16 September - 16:15

Banks hit by the crisis like never-before are struggling to bring in deposits and revenues by all means possible. Every situation has a flip side and so does this crisis situation, it gives banks an opportunity to excel among their peers. How?

• Knowing your customer
• Have a customer-centric view across products/offering consumed
• Personalized pricing
• Differentiate – de-commoditize your products
• Identify and monitor the profitability of products and customers
• Flexibility to implement your strategies quickly
• Stop bleeding – know the leakage points and fix it
  

Wednesday 16 September - 17:00

In spite of increasing investments in payment infrastructures, payment engines, payment routing and STP capabilities, some transactions will still go wrong  Operator error, referential data, system issues, network problems are some of the reasons why this happens.  Mechanisms must be in placed to identify and correct such situations. With UNIFI, new ISO 20022 standards for exceptions management have been defined and the corresponding E&I initiatives for Banks and Corporates launched by SWIFT. This solution brings visibility, efficiency and effectiveness to the management of exceptions. This session will review the key drivers, obstacles and the timing of migration towards E&I.

Thursday 17 September - 10:00 

Enhance Document Capture in the Back Office to Automate Banking Processes

• The Tools to Extend and Enhance Document Capture
• “A Smoother, Swifter Process”
• Front Office Document Capture
• A Fast Return on Investment
• Automated Document Separation
• Enhancing Document Capture to Improve Accuracy, Lower Costs
• Getting More from Your Existing Investments
  

Thursday 17 September - 10:45

At SIBOS Vienna 2008 the newly printed BIS report “Principles of Sound Liquidity Management” was hitting the printing provide insight into the current challenges for regulators and banks and the varying press at almost the same time as a number of Financial Institutions were going to the wall. A year on, Eric Sepkes will will provide insight into the current challenges for regulators and banks and the varying approaches to resolve some of the conflicting requirements of managing Settlement Risk, Credit Risk and Liquidity Risk

Thursday 17 September - 12:15

There has never been a more critical time to access hidden liquidity. Corporates reeling from the credit crisis are well aware of the importance of uncovering hidden liquidity. With their lenders in turmoil, companies know they cannot take anything for granted. Financing that may have been available to them just 30 days ago may no longer be an option. For both banks and their corporate clients, accessing and controlling working capital can make a huge difference in how you operate and maintain growth.

With automated tools now available, banks can help their customers tap into an estimated half a trillion dollars lying dormant at any given time within the many connective financial systems of global trade. This presentation will provide an understanding of how to better leverage the liquidity that is available to organizations and share insights on specific strategies that can be implemented to help corporate clients loosen tight liquidity in their financial supply chain.

Presenter:

• Sanjay Dalmia

Thursday 17 September - 14:00

An integrated risk management strategy can create the transparency banks are looking for, while helping differentiate their competitive position. This approach makes it easier to understand, control and optimize financial risks and opportunities. It can also help to detect, prevent and remediate operational risks, while enabling regulatory compliance. We can share case studies of where our integrated risk management solutions enabled for our clients secure information sharing and enhanced risk awareness, as well as policies and procedures to be embedded in business processes for more effective governance and control.

Monday 14 September - 10:45

Chinese banks have taken strongly to the SWIFTNet E&I solution, with 15 banks already registered, out of which 2 have already gone “live” since the first half of this year. This presentation focuses on the perspective from the Chinese market, and some of the key drivers and unique thought process behind the strong take-up, and the key values that were derived for the Chinese banks. We will also share some of the technical considerations that mattered to the banks with the “live” cases as references, and hope that the experience can be useful to other markets.

Monday 14 September - 11.30

True Enterprise Data Protection (EDP) must be comprised of encryption, secure key management, centralized policy and controls, and ongoing management to achieve complete data security across databases, applications, networks and endpoint devices. By deploying holistic encryption strategies, financial institutions can secure transactions while streamlining processes across their security constituency and the ongoing administration of their systems, thereby reducing the management and upkeep costs of their security infrastructure. Through a comprehensive presentation and expert testimony, SafeNet will examine EDP and show how financial institutions can meet both security and compliance needs while reaping the cost savings benefits of an EDP strategy.  

Monday 14 September - 12:15

New forms of transaction and payment services, such as e-invoicing, e-payments, mobile payments, NFC payments and e-identification, are an exciting area for banks when extending their traditional transaction business. Not only are these an opportunity for new source of revenue, but additionally allows banks to respond to competition from new entrants while growing their financing and payments business.
How should banks then move forward when deploying these new services and bringing them to the market? Are they to be viewed as isolated silos or could complexities be reduced through an integrated approach? This session will explore how these new services can converge to create an entirely new paradigm. 

Tuesday 15 September - 10:00

The financial crisis has inevitably had a profound impact on the payments business. But what exactly are the fundamental and structural changes, and how can the industry respond and flourish in the aftermath? This session will provide an overview of payments market economics together with highlights from McKinsey's series of Sibos 2009 presentations. 

Presenters:

• Wouter De Ploey
• Steve Ledford 

Tuesday 15 September - 10:45

Presentation of case study: This case study relates to the first live, fully automated pension solution in Asia, utilizing SwiftNet funds messaging ISO20022. This business solution enables S.T.P. (straight through processing) of all mutual fund transactions from Employer to Trustee to Fund Houses, the first of it's kind in Asia.

Benefits:

Highly automated, total administration solution that eliminates transaction errors.

• SWIFT accredited & fully encrypted, highly secure solution
• Extremely cost effective solution

Our CEO Kelly Tallas will present the case study, we have been working extremely closely with the SWIFT office in Hong Kong on this project, as it's the first platform of it's type in Asia.

Tuesday 15 September - 11:30

Datamonitor has recently published a report focussing on business and technology responses in wholesale payments to the post-financial crisis landscape.  The report finds that compliance and customer requirements, combined with the increasing pressure on cost will drive the need to transform wholesale payments and eliminate siloed operations and processes.  Louis Blatt Ph.D, Chief Product Officer at ACI Worldwide, will examine the findings of this report and discuss whether a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach embraced by an agile payments strategy can help meet these challenges.

Presenter:

• Louis Blatt

Tuesday 15 September - 12:15

Traditionally, risk has been placed on a lower pedestal in strategic, tactical and operational decision-making, mainly driven by regulatory pressures & reporting requirements. Now we need to reassess traditional risk-administration in financial institutions & re-learn the art of managing risk. Risk systems should be integrated to highlight the cumulative risk impact by scanning the internal & external environment. Common issues in integrated risk management are seamless integration & aggregation of risk information from multiple sources, integration of capital management, understanding risk interdependency and integrated risk reporting. IT can help by providing unified solutions with a standard framework that integrates credit, market, operational & liquidity risk.

Tuesday 15 September - 14:00

Larry Ryan, Chief Technology Officer, Financial Services Industry, HP, will explore how financial institutions can use cloud computing to fundamentally restructure how technology is managed to address many of the issues faced by financial institutions including increasing demands of customers, time to market for new services, regulatory and risk management requirements, and environmental concerns. Financial institutions can also use cloud computing as an enabler for rapidly moving to an operational platform that replaces fixed costs with variable costs and usage-based models for hardware, software, and services.

Presenter:

• Larry Ryan

Tuesday 15 September - 14:45

To achieve operational excellence with their SWIFT messaging gateway, financial institutions need to measure end-to-end performance, in real-time, all the time. With BusinessBridge, the Systar BAM platform, they can reduce operational risk by following each message, from internal systems to final SWIFT acknowledgement, making sure it will not miss a delivery deadline or break a formal SLA. They can also establish the source of non-performance, whether IT or business.  Finally, BAM helps them to increase transparency by reporting activity, performance and risk to customers and Lines of Business. BNP Paribas and Systar will share how BusinessBridge is used by the bank to achieve these objectives.

Presenter:

• Gilles Leflambe
• Herbert-David Bordier

Tuesday 15 September - 15:30 

The changing landscape of payments is causing banks to review their siloed approach to payments and payments management. Payments are now viewed as an asset to the banks rather than a commodity based function provided to their clients. Regional changes are altering the way payments are viewed by banks from a domestic only approach to an approach that has global reach. Payment hubs provide the architecture and technology foundation to achieving payment convergence. A broad vision and proper implementation of a payment hub will result in cost reduction, Increase in straight through processing rates and better processing of critical payment data. Fundtech approach to payments hub is innovative yet pragmatic, adheres to SOA principles, yet responsive to performance and throughput requirements, revolutionary yet adaptive. We will show you how to achieve all of the above.

Presenter:

• Mothi Porath

Tuesday 15 September - 16:15

The financial meltdown has put a lot of focus on Derivatives markets and driven home the need to standardize and achieve greater STP, thereby enabling better Risk management. Derivatives Trading and Clearing have been operating under fragmented standards for many years, even as cash markets, settlement organizations and Corporate actions processing have streamlined and adopted ISO15022 in the last decade.
Has the time come for Derivatives markets to adopt global standards? Where do we start - with CCPs? This presentation discusses these issues, the options we have and seeks inputs from the audience on the way forward.

To be presented by

• Sri Sundar
• R Vivekanand

Tuesday 15 September - 17:00

A paper and pulp company wanted to expedite delivery of LC advices from the company's central treasury, which maintains multiple bank relationships, to its global network of business units responsible for preparing documents. The company also wanted to improve monitoring, accuracy and efficiency of the document preparation process, as well as have up-to-date reporting on export LC activities on a group level. The new process that uses SWIFT for receipt of secure structured export LC advices from multiple banks allowed company to automate routing of information within the group, speed up document preparation while reducing the number of discrepancies.

Wednesday 16 September - 10:00

In a challenging changing world of payments the customer experience is more important than ever. Banks have to change focus from back-office cost reducing exercises to middle-office offering, customer experience and new revenue opportunities moving up the financial value chain. Data captured in the back office and front office needs to be exploited to create internal and external value, enabling a single view of everything, allowing the customers access to their information, creating true E2E STP. A case study on a Nordic bank centralizing the payment processing from all international branches will be presented.

Wednesday 16 September - 10:45

In the current climate institutions face even stronger pressure to cut costs, but external demands on their technology infrastructure have not abated: messaging standards continue to evolve while market infrastructure consolidation imposes fresh messaging demands. Whilst the intention is improved efficiency, reduced risk and controlled costs, there is an initial hurdle to jump; and external pressures  can disrupt internal plans. Using case studies including the Euroclear Single Platform implementation and the ongoing drive towards Corporate Action announcement standardisation, Trace Financial shows ways of protecting the legacy environment and internal projects whilst embracing new standards and new messaging requirements.

Wednesday 16 September - 11:30

In November 2009, banks will have to be ready for the new SWIFTStandards 2009. This year, the introduction of new "COV" cover payment messages is a significant business and technical challenge for the industry.
COV messages will have to include full ordering and beneficiary parties information, related to the underlying money transfer.

But sanctions filtering compliance might well be the biggest challenge of all:

• How to know the regulations which will apply on COV payments?
• How to prepare for the expected alerts rate boost on COV (versus standard cover) payments?
• What impacts for my business and my compliance team?

Wednesday 16 September - 12:15

In a widespread survey UniCredit Group investigated the Trade Finance Market in CEE countries. The lecture will inform about the outcome of this study with various remarkable and astonishing results

Wednesday 16 September - 14:00

Fiserv will present a case study with our client, Singapore Exchange, regarding the implementation of their SGX Prime pre-settlement matching service. Fiserv's solution, TradeFlow, provides the core functionality behind this service. SGX Prime allows brokers, depository agents and other market participants to engage in post-trade services, with a choice of connectivity options for clearing and depository systems to allow fast, efficient and effective transaction management across multiple instruments and transaction types. The presentation will provide an overview of the project and the business benefits SGX Prime has brought to the Singapore community. The presentation will be presented by Terry Gibson, Head of Processing Services, Singapore Exchange, and Paul Thomas, Managing Director, International Operations, Fiserv.

Wednesday 16 September - 14:45

In the recent years we have seen increased use of SWIFT to communicate with correspondent banks, then with the market infrastructures and now also with the corporates. We now use SWIFT for FIN, XML messages and several types of files. However, ad-hoc additions of SWIFT CBTs have resulted in a multiple  systems connecting to SWIFT creating risk and maintenance overheads.

In the current market situation, it is essential that banks have:

• reduced costs and maintenance overheads
• efficient tracking and monitoring of all SWIFT traffic
• secure and auditable systems
• visibility and control across all SWIFT activities within the enterprise

Wednesday 16 September - 15:30

Corporations and banks alike are becoming well versed in the benefits of SWIFT corporate-to-bank connectivity. However, they are less aware and prepared to deal with the vendor selection, planning, bank requirements and management of the project. These factors play heavily into the success or failure of a new SWIFT connectivity project.  This paper reviews these aspects of implementing a new SWIFT connection so that both the corporate treasury and IT staff can better plan ahead, avoid problems and achieve goals on-time. A case study of BMC Software's implementation is provided as a case study in this paper

Presenter:

• Mary Ellen Putnam

Wednesday 16 September - 16:15

Financial services institutions require vast usage of technology to reliably and securely deliver products and services to the marketplace. But the cost of financial services datacenter operations cannot be measured in hardware, software and support staff alone, but also in terms of energy consumption and being environmentally friendly. As banks seek to maximize shareholder value in the current economy, they are also challenged with being good environmental neighbors by more effectively managing power consumption. This session will explore how financial institutions can leverage advances in computing technology to develop green datacenters and lower the cost of operations.

Wednesday 16 September - 17:00

Mobile banking and m-payments are growing in popularity.  These devices are being used for remittances, consumer purchases, managing banking accounts, and much, much more.  A number of new participants are entering the financial services space, including telecoms and other non-bank payment processors.  New payment schemes are being developed including mobile POS, P2P transfers; and micro-billing.  Who “owns” the customer?  How do these schemes leverage existing payment infrastructures?  This session will explore the challenges of administering AML & KYC regulations.  It will also discuss the challenges that are presented when these payments are infused into the traditional clearing and settlement mechanisms.

Thursday 17 September - 10:45

Traditionally, banks have focused on solving payment related problems by building multiple point applications to process different types of payments and additionally banks may have inherited disparate payment systems due to mergers and acquisitions, resulting in multiple applications performing similar functions. In the current economic environment, banks are under pressure to reduce costs and meet regulations for better transparency in operations. To address these challenges, it is imperative for banks to have an integrated view of payments to ensure transparency and better control on processes, and to minimize chances for revenue leakage.

Thursday 17 September - 11:30

Rapid conform to the compliance processes, seize new business opportunities, minimize the effects on the IT investments already performed: VTPie is a new way of conceiving banking information systems for Banca Popolare di Sondrio and Unicredit Global Information Services. Banca Popolare di Sondrio decided to start an innovative, ambitious program of total renewal of IT infrastructure for payments, collections and multi-currency services and Unicredit needed to efficiently manage payments in the European area in order to increase profitability.

Thursday 17 September - 12:15

The International Polar Foundation (IPF) educates on polar sciences and promotes research as a way to understand key environmental and climate mechanisms. IPF leads others to action through examples of best practice and sustainable development initiatives. IPF is partnering with SWIFT to raise awareness and engage its stakeholders in reducing CO2 emissions. After an introduction movie and the basics of polar sciences and climate, IPF will present a successful project demonstrating that innovation and cooperation can deliver outstanding achievements: the first "zero emission" polar research station, Princess Elisabeth. During the session, IPF will highlight options for the financial community to take action and contribute to the challenge of climate change.

Thursday 17 September - 14:00

How to give a brighter future to children all over the world? ‘One Laptop Per Child’ (OLPC) is our non-profit organisation. Children are our mission, not our market. If you want to know how we create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children, join us at the OLPC session. We will show you a laptop with software and activities, which allow children to learn, explore, share and create. SWIFT is one of OLPC’s major partners and supports projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The session gives you an update on the recent deployment and shows how you can contribute to give children a brighter future. Make a difference and join us!