Making the most of Open Banking for corporates

20-04-2022 | Cobase | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

Open Banking has come a long way in just a few years. Many banks around the world now offer APIs for account reporting or payment initiation, and several banks also offer other products and services via APIs.

So far, most banks have invested in APIs for consumer banking because they believe they can achieve a competitive advantage, or because they must comply with regulations such as PSD2.

When we look at use cases for corporate banking, the maturity level of APIs offered by banks is still rather low and it is expected that most banks will take a few years to get to the minimum level required for corporate customers.

Corporates typically want to connect their accounting software, ERP system or other software with their banks and using APIs for this can bring a variety of benefits for corporates. But these customers have different needs to consumers and therefore have some specific requirements.

Benefits include:

  • Availability of balance and transaction information in real-time to enable more accurate and timely decision-making
  • Payment execution in real-time, enabling more optimized cash management
  • Fast connectivity to new banks, especially for corporates who work via partners that already have implemented connectivity with specific banks via their APIs

 

However, while banks may be keen to encourage corporates to use APIs they are not a panacea for all bank connectivity challenges.

For example, current APIs often require the use of a bank-specific hardware token or mobile app, which is prohibitive for those clients that wish to work with a number of banking partners. Additionally, APIs delivered by banks often assume that a human is initiating the session whereas corporates may be looking for an automated connection from their systems.

There is also limited standardisation, which means that integrating and maintaining these APIs may require a degree of specialisation that would not be available to most corporates.

When a corporate uses a bank connectivity provider, ERP or TMS provider or other provider that has already integrated the bank’s API it is relatively easy to connect with the bank, especially compared to traditional interfaces such as SFTP or SWIFT.

 

On the other hand, if the corporate has to integrate the API itself, it will become clear that the technical aspect of that process can be rather time consuming because each bank offers its own API and there is no industry standard yet.

So making the most of Open Banking will involve answering questions such as:

  • Which products or services do we need from our banks?
  • Which APIs and/or other interfaces do we need from our banks for those products/services?
  • Can my banks offer the required products or services via APIs?
  • Can these APIs be used for corporate banking processes, meaning can I connect my corporate systems directly and schedule automated interfacing with my banks?
  • Do we integrate the APIs ourselves or will we need a solution partner to do that?

When it comes to future connectivity, corporates also need to consider whether their provider will be able to move to Open Banking APIs once banks make them available and is able to provide APIs to the corporate’s ERP environment.

It would be unwise to select a provider only to encounter implementation issues as soon as these new opportunities become available. Determining whether providers can facilitate such a move involves checking on their ability to handle external APIs (from banks, for instance) and whether they have the right licences and capabilities to connect via APIs to the corporate’s systems once they are ready.

We will explore issues relating to cash management optimisation projects and identifying the right bank connectivity partner for your company in the remaining blogs in this series.

 

A reality check on Open Banking

To know more about the benefits of new developments in bank connectivity for treasury and cash management you can download our white paper. It offers insights into how corporate treasurers and cash managers can avoid pitfalls.

Embedded Finance: What are the possibilities?

The barriers to entry that have traditionally protected the financial services sector are beginning to fade away, and incumbents now face a multitude of disruptive shifts. On the other side, customers expect real-time, seamless, and intelligent financial services. Regulation drives further competition.

Read more

Your free eBook, What is Treasury?

13-04-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

Receive your eBook What is Treasury? after subscribing to the free treasuryXL weekly newsletter.

The world of Treasury is a complex topic. Many people will think about pirates and big see ships that sank deep into the bottom of the ocean including their ‘treasure’. A mystery treasure map will lead the finder to a treasure worth a lot of money. In some way Treasury and Treasure have similarities, it is about money and other valuables.

Are you having a hard time how to explain what treasury is to family, friends and colleagues? Or are you interested to learn more about the World of Treasury?

 

Subscribe and Download

treasuryXL created a 41 pages eBook for the corporate treasurers and the world of finance addict.

This eBook is designed to answer layman questions about the function of Treasury. treasuryXL bundled the most important information for you and created an easy to read and understand articles about the main subjects within the World of Treasury:

This ebook will answer your questions about Treasury topics.

treasuryXL explains the purpose of each Treasury function; what specialists do, examples of activities, FAQs, and a summary.

This ebook is based on the most relevant best practices that Treasury experts provided over the last years. On the website of treasuryXL you can explore additional information on the latest in Corporate Treasury.

 

HAVE FUN READING!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners at treasuryXL

 

 

 

 

EuroFinance International Treasury Management returns to Vienna | 21-23 September 2022

08-04-2022 | Eurofinance | treasuryXL |

 

Featuring keynote speakers, Guy Verhofstadt and Göran Carstedt…

The 31st annual EuroFinance International Treasury Management 2022 will return this September with more than 2,000 attendees, 150 speakers, 100 sponsors and exhibitors.

 

 

For the first in-person event in three years, EuroFinance International Treasury Management keynote speakers will include Guy Verhofstadt, member of the European Parliament and Göran Carstedt, former corporate executive of Volvo and IKEA.

The full line-up brings more than 150 global corporate treasury leaders, financial institutions, technology providers and thought-leaders together to discuss the theme “Treasury in transition”, across 12 stages at Vienna’s Messe Wien Exhibition Congress Center from September 21st-23rd 2022.

Guy Verhofstadt is a Member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the Conference on the Future of Europe. He served as prime minister of Belgium from 1999 until 2008 and also made a name for himself as Brexit coordinator and as a passionate champion of more European integration. He will give the opening keynote on day 1.

Dr Göran Carstedt is the former head of IKEA North America and IKEA Retail Europe and former head of VOLVO France and Volvo Sweden. Having run some of the world’s leading companies, Dr Carstedt is also the former senior director of President Clinton’s Climate Change Initiative. He will give the opening keynote presentation on day 2 on how climate change is changing business.

Corporate treasury leaders from some of the world’s top multinationals – including TechnipFMC, Citrix Systems, Kongsberg Automotive, Autoneum, Equinor, Heinz, Medtronic, John Lewis – have also been confirmed.

 

“We look forward to seeing people connecting and collaborating face-to-face once again in Vienna. It’s great to see live events bouncing back across the world and from the response we have had so far,  it’s clear that our community of speakers, banks and technology providers are eager to meet in-person after 2 years of virtual meetings.” says Asif Chaudhury, Managing Director of EuroFinance.

 

Irreversibly changed after the events of the past few years, this year’s theme will explore the “new” treasury; a highly digital and automated function tasked with meeting strategic goals and changing remits against a backdrop of multiple issues from climate change to high inflation. Treasurers will share their experience in practical case studies and technical discovery labs and celebrate the innovations that will drive change.

EuroFinance’s growing list of sponsors and exhibitors for the event includes  J.P. Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered, Citi, Bank of America, BNP Paribas,, Fitch Group, HSBC, Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, Visa, Société Générale, ION, TIS, Remote Technology, B2C2, American Express, Bayerische Landesbank, UniCredit, PrimeRevenue, Northern Trust Asset Management, Credit Agricole, Zanders, ICD, Pictet Asset Management, Raiffeisen Bank, BlackRock, Legal and General, Tietoevry, Amundi, CMSpi, Nomentia, Aviva Investors Global Services, CashAnalytics, Treasury Systems, CoCoNet, Exalog, Traxpay, SisID, Finastra.

For more information and to register, visit: https://www.eurofinance.com/international

About EuroFinance

EuroFinance, part of The Economist Group, is a leading global provider of treasury, cash management and risk events, research and training. With over 30 years of experience, our mission is to bring together the brightest minds and most influential voices in treasury. Through in-depth research with 1,000 corporate treasury professionals every year, we have a unique insight into the trends and developments within the profession and an unrivalled global viewpoint.

Contacts

Marianne Ford
Senior Marketing Manager
EuroFinance

Economist Impact
[email protected]

 

 

Cobase bank connector for NetSuite

31-03-2022 | Cobase | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

The Cobase Bank Connector app adds to NetSuite an interface with banks. Therefore, employees are no longer forced to perform manual banking activities outside NetSuite and several electronic banking portals accordingly, which may lead to potential errors and security issues. No longer a tedious and time-consuming process for your colleagues. The Cobase Bank Connector automatically downloads bank statements from your banks and uploads them into NetSuite, ready to be picked up for reconciliation. Payments and direct debit (batches) are automatically sent in a secure way to the banks.

Stay tuned as Cobase expects to come up with a similar application for other Cloud ERPs soon!

Out-of-the-box bank connectivity for NetSuite, with over 15,000 banks integrated via the Cobase platform! The solution removes the manual processes to upload payment files and reporting statements. With the Bank Connector SuiteApp for NetSuite, the Cobase platform is fully integrated with your NetSuite ERP system. You can automatically transfer your payment and direct debit (batches) in a secure way to Cobase and with the flexible approval flow, they are transferred to all your banks. Bank statements are automatically downloaded from your banks and delivered in NetSuite, ready to be picked up for reconciliation. Simple!

Cobase Bank Connector – Easy and seamless banking integration for NetSuite

Cobase bank connector for NetSuite has been developed specifically to:

  • Reduce the operational inefficiency of managing multiple bank accounts and payment providers manually.
  • Remove the IT complexity from your organization.
  • Eliminate the security risks of critical information being accessed, amended, or intercepted externally, and invisibly, to your core business systems and processes.
  • Easy automated bi-directional integration between NetSuite, Cobase and all your banks for payment files and reporting statements

Cobase offers off-the-shelf direct connections in the most optimal way to most major global banks. But we also implement on-demand bank connections to all requested banks. We can support this for all required bank protocols, bank security, bank formats and all required payment products in more than 100 countries already

Besides delivering the aggregation platform with portal and the NetSuite bank connector app we also take care of the implementation effort towards the banks and Payment service providers.

Next to delivery of bank connectivity, there is more! Cobase can also offer additional services on their platform like:

  • Payment- and cash management– HUB functionality with centralized user management module
    • Manual initiation of single payments, batches and direct debits
    • Modify payment and batches
  • Easy connection with the payments and reporting flows of PSD2
  • FX dealing and hedging, with an easy hedge tool to manage your risks.
  • Liquidity forecast module, to analyse your balance and cash position.
  • Robo-assistant to monitor your balance positions.

All modular-based, meaning you only pay for what you use!

Simple!

 

Key Benefits

NetSuite integrated solution: Cobase bank connector for NetSuite is an easy to install built for NetSuite solution to connect to the Cobase platform. It can be used for both payment file upload and bank statement download to your banks.

Eliminates manual and inefficient processes: Cobase Bank Connector SuiteApp for NetSuite automatically transfers your payment files via Cobase platform to your banks and downloads the bank statements back in NetSuite ready to be picked up by your reconciliation tool.

Be compliant with your risk policies: Eliminating the touchpoints where a payment (batch) can be changed reduce your operational risks.

Integration to all possible banks and PSP’s: Connection via the Cobase multibank platform to all banks in a centralized way

Supported by a professional implementation team: Your bank connectivity setup is guided by a professional team that communicates with you and your banks to set up the connections in the best and fastest way.

Easily extendible with additional cash management and treasury modules: integrate with a real (mini) Treasury Management System

Summary

Cobase Bank Connector for NetSuite is a ‘Built for NetSuite’ solution which helps organizations eliminate inefficient and risky manual processes to:

  • upload payment files to your banks
  • download reports and statements from all your banks

Features of Cobase Bank Connector

Seamless Bank Integration

  • Cobase manages the integrations from the platform to most major national and international banks and payment service providers (PSP’s) as standard
  • All kinds of bank protocols and interfaces supported (EBICS, SWIFT & H2H (PSD2) API Integrations)

Simple, Secure & Controlled

  • Manage permissions and access at the user or role level
  • Full audit trail of all actions including time, date and user stamp
  • Multi-factor authentication to log in to the Cobase portal

Single Point of Access to all Accounts

  • No need to log in and out of individual electronic banking portals

Extendible with Additional Cash Management and Treasury Capabilities

  • Payment and cash management with centralized user management module
  • Easy connection with the payments and reporting flows of PSD2
  • FX dealing and hedging, with an easy hedge tool to manage your risks.
  • Liquidity forecast module, to analyze your balance and cash position
  • Robo-assistant to monitor your balance positions

 

Digital rules (URDTT) for Trade Finance: Episode 3

17-03-2022 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

Episode 3 of a series of educational videos on URDTT (Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions) is now available. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Episodes 1 & 2 are, of course, still available on our YouTube channel.

 

 

Trade Advisory Network Limited and treasuryXL Trade Finance experts launched their third episode of a series of free, educational videos on URDTT. There will be 6 episodes in total covering all aspects of the development, interpretation, and application of URDTT in the context of a digital trade strategy. In the upcoming months, you can expect one educational video per month.

What can you expect in the third episode?

In this session, we look at the parties involved in a Digital Trade Transaction (DTT). We start with the principal parties – the seller and the buyer – and then move on to the financial services provider, and finally cover any other parties that might be involved.

Duration: 14.46 min

WATCH NOW FOR FREE

Enjoy, explore and develop!

Interested to know more about this topic and the upcoming educational videos? Contact our Expert Wim Kok.

 

Wim Kok

International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist

 

 

 

 

Effective Finance & Treasury in Africa event run by EuroFinance | London

23-02-2022 | Eurofinance | treasuryXL |

 

If your company operates in Africa or is thinking about it, then join us at Effective Finance & Treasury in Africa on March 23rd in London. Now in its 9th year, this intimate event brings together more than 150 senior corporate treasury professionals from leading multinationals – all involved in markets across the continent.

With peer-to-peer learning and knowledge-sharing more important than ever before, join other treasury leaders to debate the key issues, share success stories and gain practical guidance on how to overcome your shared challenges.

From treasury technology to managing liquidity risks, financing strategies, FX, payments and more, the concise 1 day agenda will provide all the information you need to redesign your treasury operations for cost and efficiency, power innovation and support business growth.

Speakers include:

Jan Beukes, Group treasurer, MultiChoice Group Ltd

Omofolake Fawibe, Head of finance, IBS, Danone SA

Ricky Brink, Treasury professional, Siemens SA

Titus Owoeye, Head finance, Fan Milk West Africa

Gain all the tools you need to succeed in Africa in 2022 and beyond.

 

Registration is open – find out more and register now.

 

 

 

The Evolution of Legal Documents, The Next Step

22-02-2022 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

A fantastic end-to-end digital journey has begun to create a paperless supply chain ecosystem for the benefit of all parties concerned in the documentary (paper heavy) Supply Chain settlements of today.

EVOLUTION OF LEGAL DOCUMENTS, THE NEXT STEP

For this Enigo AB (www.Enigio.com) started at the basis of the current standard, the paper document. A clean sheet of paper!

A large share of the communication in a trade finance transaction is already digitalised. Banks structure customer communication through portals, negotiate via safe e-mail and sign using e-signatures, not to forget SWIFT which has already enabled the digitalisation of many products and process steps between banks. A major obstacle for achieving a completely digital trade finance world has been the requirements to be able to manage and present documents in their original form. Enigio’s focus has therefore been to create a digital document with the same properties as its paper equivalent. The trace:original document is designed to be able to hold all necessary data to execute a transaction and at the same time not being tied to any specific transaction infrastructure. More importantly it can also be managed by anyone with access to a computer and the internet.

 

How does the solution work? Watch below video:

 

Following the accelerating momentum (after and pushed by the Covid pandemic), we see changing environment in the banking landscape, which is becoming rapidly more adoptive for transformation, especially digitalisation of the paper heavy trade documentation evidencing import- and export transactions. Both infrastructures, paper and digital documents must co-exist. There will be countries being early digital adopters and others lagging. An infrastructure agnostic digital trade finance document of any type can serve all the aspects of the global digital ambition extremely well. Interoperability can be achieved on different levels and by using different tools. One of the most forceful ways of achieving interoperability is by standardisation of data definitions and data formats. Json Schemas and the trace:original document is a perfect connector to achieve digital interoperability not only between blockchain based trade finance platforms but for all trade finance platforms.

The banks’ lack of investment decisions for end-to-end digitised trade processes impacting their customers have created a large cost effect on corporations.

  • Banks additionally impose costs on their corporate customers as they lack strategic vision on operative and compliance issues. Still manual or dual processes that are partly broken and very costly for all parties
  • Banks also impose costs internally for front, middle and back-office and create compliance risks with manual or partly manual processes
  • Trade finance digitalisation is a strategic issue for a bank and its corporate customers and is undergoing rapid change
  • Many solutions and offerings to choose from but a lack of basic digital standards internally and when interacting with others
  • Cost and risk/AML issues for all parties
  • Bank’s role is to help to prioritise the trade finance short-term initiatives that will support corporate treasuries long-term objectives
  • Banks should be firm with their opinion about coherent direction and help corporates to reduce the uncertainty that comes with trade finance digitalisation.

 

Conclusion

 

 

Footnote: further detail to be found on the website: www.Enigio.com

  • Several whitepapers
  • Walkthrough gallery of (1min.) YouTube videos explaining product usage very clear
  • Modules for bank guarantees, Standby L/Cs, Prom Notes, Bills of Exchange and eB/Ls

 

Thank for reading and stay tuned!

 

Wim Kok

International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist

 

 

 

 

Digital rules (URDTT) for Trade Finance: Episode 2

10-02-2022 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

Episode 2 of our series of educational videos is now available. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Episode 1 is, of course, still available on our YouTube channel.

 

 

Trade Advisory Network Limited and treasuryXL Trade Finance experts launched their second episode of a series of free, educational videos on URDTT. There will be 6 episodes in total covering all aspects of the development, interpretation, and application of URDTT in the context of a digital trade strategy. In the upcoming months, you can expect one educational video per month.

What can you expect in the second episode?

Episode 2 of this series of videos focuses on URDTT (Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions).  Subsequent episodes will focus on the use of electronic records, payment obligations and, the role of banks/non-bank financial service providers.

Duration: 11.38 min

WATCH NOW FOR FREE

Enjoy, explore and develop!

Interested to know more about this topic and the upcoming educational videos? Contact our Expert Wim Kok.

 

Wim Kok

International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist

 

 

 

 

How companies can improve their multibank cash management

07-02-2022 | Cobase | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

The complexity of corporate structures and the disparate relationships that develop over the lifetime of an organisation mean managing bank interactions has become a complex task.

Multiple banking relationships

Businesses can grow through mergers and acquisitions. These enlarged organisations often comprise multiple subsidiaries working in several different currencies with a variety of banks with which they will typically hold numerous accounts. Making smart cash management decisions requires tactical and strategic decision-making, which can often be overshadowed by operational demands.  Corporates with multiple banking relationships will find managing payments and cash a cumbersome process that involves logging in and out of different bank portals and managing disparate authorisation schemes while trying to ensure that bank data and data in ERP or accounting systems is synchronised.

In some organisations, managing cash positions over multiple banks and accounts remains a manual process, increasing the possibility of human error. When looking to execute sophisticated liquidity forecasting and/or manage foreign currency exposure, this process may become significantly more difficult and risky. At the heart of these challenges lies the current state of connectivity between ERP/accounting systems and banks. The available integrations can be cumbersome, resulting in lengthy IT projects.

Room for improvement

As a result there is scope for significant improvement in this area, which can be achieved through the use of specific solutions centered on connectivity.  Optimally managing payments and cash requires seamless, robust and real-time connectivity between banks and financial systems and the execution of all payment and cash management tasks in the company’s administrative environment or another single user interface dedicated to this task. Solutions that can help corporates gain visibility into their overall cash positions and run an efficient payments operation across the whole company do exist. Banks do provide solutions to let companies connect their ERP or accounting systems to their bank accounts. Companies who do all their business with a single bank should be able to access a portal and get connectivity to their back-office functions in a rather efficient way.

Efficient bank connectivity

However, for corporates that have significant business with multiple banks, the situation is more complex. A single bank will not be able to provide a robust solution to reach all other banks. Most certainly not with all sorts of different payment formats and products, bulk payments and local reporting standards have to be used. In this scenario, corporates are faced with a vast amount of workarounds, dedicated applications, and interfaces to perform cash management across their banks.  It is not hard to envisage the high degree of inefficiency and risk introduced to the process by this way of working. These drawbacks have been highlighted in various research reports where corporate clients are asked about the biggest challenges they faced when integrating with a bank.

Efficient bank connectivity is the first step towards optimized multibank cash management. Once this foundation is in place it can be combined with applications that can efficiently manage the bank accounts, and the overall solution can be further optimized to perfection.

 

A reality check on Open Banking

To know more about the benefits of new developments in bank connectivity for treasury and cash management you can download our white paper. It offers insights into how corporate treasurers and cash managers can avoid pitfalls.