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Milestone for Trade Services Utility
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16 September 2009
Left to right: Alan Wong, Asia Pacific, SWIFT. Sara Lai Sau Wah, Head of Trade Product Sales, Bank of China. Cai Chunyan, Deputy General Manager, Bank of China. Debbie Lee, Asia Pacific, SWIFT. Edmond Paul Lee Yut Man, Head of Trade Products, Bank of China.
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Three signings to the Trade Services Utility (TSU) at Sibos this week capped a recent flurry of new interest in the service from banks from around the globe. Barclays Commercial Bank, Bank of China (Hong Kong) and YapiKredi Bankasi are the latest to join the community of TSU banks, which now exceeds 100.
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 promoting process efficiency.
The migration to open account has threatened to limit bank involvement in trade to the settlement end of the transaction. In order to re-intermediate themselves, banks have beeen looking 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 that complement existing offerings to their corporate customers.
Global coverage
Left to right: Richard Martin, Head of Transaction Services, Barclays Commercial. David Hennah, Marketing, SWIFT. Vivek Ramachandran, Managing Director, Cash & Trade, Barclays Commercial.
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Registrants to the TSU span all regions of the world. They include Barclays Commercial Bank and YapiKredi Bankasi from Europe, Banco de Crédito del Peru from the Americas; and Bank of China (Hong Kong), Shin Kong Bank and Taishin Bank from the Asian region. “We are delighted to join the growing community of TSU banks, and look forward to building on this platform to create new value-added trade services for our customers,” said Cal Chunyan, Deputy General Manager Corporate Banking and Financial Institutions, at Bank of China (Hong Kong).
“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,” commented Iain MacDonald, Head of Trade Product at Barclays Commercial Bank. For SWIFT, André Casterman, noted that, “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.”
Asian bank benefits
Left to right: Isabelle Olivier, EMEA, SWIFT. Sinem Dogu, Head of Correspondent Banking & International Capital Markets, YapiKredi. Serkan Çoker, Head of Account, YapiKredi. David Hennah, Marketing, SWIFT.
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TSU received plaudits during the conference itself when a panel of Asian banks took advantage of a SWIFT Auditorium session to explain the advantages for customers of leveraging the TSU’s functionality.
The aim of TSU is to help banks and their corporate customers streamline trade operations, reduce costs and improve profit margins by addressing the automation of documentation for the high proportion of global trade that is now conducted on open account.
Panellist Daisuke Kamai, Manager, Global Trade Services, Trade Business Division, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, noted that since joining the TSU – primarily for its business with merchandising store Ito-Yokado – a particular benefit for his company has been the ability to reduce settlement times to three days from ten, by eliminating the document checking process.
Yuanmeng Xiong, Senior Manager, Trade Finance, Corporate Banking Unit, Bank of China, noted that by entering into bilateral agreements with other banks and encouraging their customers to make the switch to automated processes where possible, joining the TSU could also help capture the growing trend of e-commerce trade.
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