Local custody

The financial industry is facing the biggest changes in decades. Having rapidly embraced online banking in the late 90s, the pace of digital innovation in relation to end customers has been sluggish - until now. There is a new window of opportunity to offer innovative solutions. How APIs could be the driver and enabler for the future?

Collaboration between the financial services industry and FinTech ventures continues to gain traction, opening up exciting opportunities for both. The rapid progress being made in areas such as big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning is increasingly being seen as an opportunity rather than a disruptive threat. Working in partnership enables the...

Instant payment services are being developed by payment market infrastructures (PMIs) all over the world. Banks also see real-time services from PMIs as an opportunity to develop new products. The benefits these domestic instant payments systems bring will also be felt in cross-border payments once the systems start to inter-operate.

Cyber security is top of mind for industry executives, as high-profile security breaches continue to reverberate. SWIFT’s Customer Security Programme (CSP) has mobilised its members to take decisive action. What benefits are being gained from such collaboration? In an industry where robust safeguards at one institution can be undermined by weak security at...

At regular intervals the long-term survival of the current correspondent banking model is questioned. Whilst initiatives like SWIFTgpi improve the speed, transparency and traceability of cross-border payments and non-banks offer alternative payment services, they still rely on the underlying settlement mechanism of nostro-vostro accounts held by correspondent...

L’investissement responsable a subi bien des changements de nom et de méthodologie au cours des dernières décennies. Ce segment de niche, dans lequel des investisseurs à grands principes refusaient d’acheter des actions dans le tabac ou l’armement, est devenu un élément standard de la stratégie d’investissement et d’analyse dans toutes les classes d’actifs.

Payments – diagram or list of all the different payments market infrastructures across Europe?

The further south in Europe, the less interest has historically been paid to sustainability in investment. This is now changing, and the rate of change is accelerating. Inarcassa, the €10bn pension fund for self-employed engineers and architects, has just become a signatory to the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, the first of Italy’s first...

The SWIFT global payments innovation (gpi) service aims to respond to an increased demand from treasurers for speed, transparency and traceability in cross-border payments. Is the proposed service going far enough or is this just the beginning of a much longer journey? Which other pain points need to be tackled and how are banks responding?