Tag Archive for: FinTech

Financial services en Fintech

| 9-6-2017 | Peter Schuitmaker |

 

Onlangs las ik het artikel van Derek White, business banker op Finextra.com. Hij maakt melding van de opkomst van IT technologie op het bankwezen. Met name de opkomst van artificiële intelligentie (AI) in ons leven. Fintech is een samentrekking van financial en technology. Deze technology gaat de koers voor de bankwereld beïnvloeden. Althans, dat lijkt zijn boodschap.

 

Personal assistant in de ‘cloud’

Als eerste opstapje naar de toekomst noemt Derek White de personal assistant (PA). Deze is ge-host in de cloud en communiceert via headset en smartphone met een personal data base, ook beveiligd in the cloud. De PA helpt ons gebeurtenissen en data te herinneren. Ons op eventualiteit te wijzen. Een fraaie gedachte.
Derek werkt (in zijn artikel) deze functionaliteit verder uit met betrekking tot ons financiële leven. De PA helpt ons bijvoorbeeld tijdig om van aanbieder te switchen, bijvoorbeeld als abonnementen aflopen of wanneer er zich betere aanbiedingen voordoen. Optimale inkoop van energie, telecom, data, verzekeringen, enzovoorts gaan dan geheel buiten ons medeweten om. Zo gaat een dergelijke cloud PA ons aankoopgedrag beïnvloeden, of zelfs sturen. Deze PA herinnert zich een eerdere latente behoefte. Maakt ons opmerkzaam op nieuwe aantrekkelijke aanbiedingen. En hopelijk meer dan dat. Onze PA voorkomt financiële stress, door het juiste uitgavenpatroon te kiezen. Passend binnen ons –door de PA vastgestelde– behoeftepatroon en passend binnen het –door de PA vastgestelde– privé budget. Al met al mooie visioenen. En vooral bijzonder dat dit opgetekend wordt door een business banker. Uit een –ogenschijnlijk- traditionele business bank. Met een sterke focus op B2B.

Natuurlijk is Fintech hot. De vele honderden startups die inmiddels in de westerse wereld actief zijn, leveren op een of andere manier traditionele bankproducten: financieren, investeren, betalingsverkeer, risk management, compliance, hypotheken, pensioenen. We horen steeds vaker en meer over bitcoins en blockchain.

Holland Fintech

Alleen al in Nederland zijn er ruim 300 startups die zich verenigd hebben in Holland Fintech. Dit zijn bevlogen ondernemers die, niet gehinderd door wetgeving, overhead, organisaties en structuren technologie ontwikkelen voor moderne financiële dienstverlening. Zij zien de traditionele gevestigde orde juist als een knelpunt voor economische groei. En de eigen Fintech branche als aanjager van maatschappelijke vooruitgang. Met technologie als drager en financiële dienstverlening als focus.

Ten slotte

De visioenen van Derek White zijn prachtig. Maar innovatie in de financiële wereld komt vast uit een andere dynamische omgeving.

 

Peter Schuitmaker

Registered Advisor for Business Transfer and Succession

 

Blockchain hyperledger Project: Collaboration pays off

| 1-6-2017 | Carlo de Meijer |

Recently, I wrote that smaller blockchain consortia are needed. See my blog: Towards smaller and more focused blockchain consortia in  27 February 2017. The Hyperledger Project however may be the exception.

Umbrella

Things look quite good for the Hyperledger Project, described as being an “umbrella” for the developer communities to work on creating open source blockchain and related technologies. The Project receives even more interest from different organizations and industries than ever before since the start of this year. Their collaborative effort seems also to be paying off as the Hyperledger Project recently announced the upcoming release of its first production-ready blockchain: Fabric. And Hyperledger feels “there are still plenty of use cases waiting to be explored”.

The Hyperledger Project

Hyperledger Project is a global collaborative cross-industry effort created to leverage the emerging blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The Hyperledger project, that announced its first members in February 2016, has grown to more than 120, making it the largest blockchain consortium in the world today. These span various industries including finance, banking, technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and the Internet of Things, among several others, with big names such as IBM, Cisco, Intel, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo, The London Stock Exchange and Accenture. Its latest members reflect all of these different areas as well, indicating the future for blockchain looks even more viable than ever before.
Hyperledger aims to enable its member organizations to build robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems based on blockchain technology to support their individual business transactions by creating an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and code base. The goal is to advance blockchain technology’s use in business by developing both a cross-industry open standard and an open-source development library that would allow businesses to build custom distributed ledger solutions.

New Members

The Hyperledger Project continued its strong momentum in 2017. Early March Hyperledger announced that eleven new members have joined the project. The latest members include: Bank of England, Bitmark, China Merchants Bank, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3), Kaiser Permanente, Kubique S.p.A., MadHive, Monax, OSCRE and RadarWin Cyber Technology. Hyperledger also announced American Express and Daimler AG as Premier members earlier this year.
“Growth and interest in Hyperledger remain high in 2017. We’re now at 122 members and seeing even more diverse organizations across industry sectors invest their energy and resources in understanding how blockchain technology can strengthen their own business processes. This new set of members’ combined backgrounds and experiences will be invaluable to the community, as we strive to increase production deployments through this year,” Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director of Hyperledger, stated.

Central banks

Interesting is that now also The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston are among the new members of the Hyperledger blockchain initiative. They are the first institutions of their kind to become part of Hyperledger, underlining the big interest of these institutions in the new technology. The Bank of England has already pursued a range of applications, including the potential issuance of a digital currency.

Working Group China

The Hyperledger Project, has now also set up a working group in China, mirroring the strong interest in the country. Hyperledger revealed that over 25% of Hyperledger members are from mainland China.
As a result, Hyperledger announced the Technical Working Group China (TWG China) to “help bridge and foster a working relationship between the global Hyperledger community with local technical teams in China”. The TWG China aims to facilitate interactions between Hyperledger members around the world and contributors and technical users in mainland China as well as other regional countries including Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Working Group is also tasked to grow the Hyperledger developer community in China by encouraging technical contributions to the project. TWG China will host and organize meetups, hackathons, training sessions and other community efforts to help push blockchain education, research and development.

Hyperledger Fabric

After the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) of the Hyperledger Project announced the promotion of its “Fabric” blockchain project to an active phase, early March, its first production-ready distributed ledger code base, was released at the end of last month.
“Hyperledger’s TSC agreed to grant the project team’s request to advance the Fabric’s status from Incubation to Active. As a reminder, we see Hyperledger as an “umbrella” for software developer communities building open-source blockchain and related technologies. Fabric falls under that umbrella and is the first of the five Incubator projects to graduate.”

Hyperledger Fabric is thereby the first project to graduate incubation to production-ready status. It was originally proposed by Digital Asset Holdings (DAH) and IBM as a result of the first hackathon during which a merge between the IBM’s proposal and DAH’s proposal was started. A group of developers from 20 different member companies has been instrumental in making the Hyperledger Fabric a reality.
“In the year since the project entered incubation, the diversity of contributors on Fabric-related projects has grown from nearly no diversity of contributors to 45 percent of the contributors – representing individual contributors or developers working for one of nineteen other companies, be they exchanges, banks, large ISVs or start-ups.” Behlendorf

The goal of Hyperledger Fabric is to supplement large-scale commercial operations of companies with a robust network. It is designed to enable confidentiality, scalability and security in business environments through a modular architecture. It allows components, such as consensus and membership services, to be plug-and-play. Fabric, will be utilized as the base protocol and platform for its member banks and companies looking to use blockchain technology in building both decentralized and private applications.

Various industry leaders and large corporations have expressed their interest to implement Hyperledger Fabric once the codebase is deployed and released. Community members including the London Stock Exchange, DTCC, and Fujitsu, said “they will allocate their resources in maximizing the potential of Hyperledger Fabric by showcasing its use cases in a wide range of applications”.

Loyyal Platform as an example

IBM Blockchain partner Loyyal became the earliest tester of Fabric and joined the Hyperledger Project soon after. They have built a handful of prototypes on Fabric, from the first release of Marbles to the most recent Fabric Composer release. And now they are building out an enterprise-grade loyalty platform utilizing Fabric and its newest features. Loyyal is thereby using blockchain and smart contract technology to reduce loyalty program operation costs through efficiencies and increase revenues through targeting capabilities. The Loyyal platform, built on blockchain, is transforming the loyalty and rewards industry by offering interoperability, multi-branded coalitions, superior liability management and dynamic issuance and redemption options.

 Other Hyperledger Projects

The Hyperledger Project has a special procedure to initiate blockchain projects. Any community member, contributor or partner company can propose blockchain projects or ideas to the Hyperledger Project and once approved, the development for the project will be pursued shortly after that. For Hyperledger projects like the Fabric to be deployed and introduced to the public, the foundation’s Technical Steering Committee (TSC) must unanimously agree that the codebase is production ready. The TSC thereby looks into the technical viability of the code, as well as its adaptability, flexibility, security and functionality to ensure that large-scale service providers will be able to utilize the blockchain technology without any boundaries.

Next to the Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Project nowadays hosts multiple blockchain technologies. Hyperledger’s incubated projects include names like Blockchain Explorer, Cello, Iroha and Sawtooth Lake.

  • Blockchain Explorer

Hyperledger Blockchain Explorer is a “project in Incubation” that was proposed by IBM, Intel and DTCC to create a user-friendly web application for Hyperledger to view/query blocks, transactions and associated data, network information (such as name, status, list of nodes), chain codes/transaction families (view/invoke/deploy/query) and any other relevant information stored in the ledger.

  • Cello

A second project is Hyperledger Cello. This is a toolkit for deploying a Blockchain-as-a-Service, that reduces the effort required for creating, managing, and terminating blockchains. Hyperledger Cello aims to bring the on-demand “as-a-service” deployment model to the blockchain ecosystem, to provide a multi-tenant chain service efficiently and automatically, on top of various infrastructure, e.g., baremetal, virtual machine and more container platforms.

  • Iroha

Hyperledger Iroha is also a “project in incubation” that was proposed by Japan’s Soramitsu, Hitachi, NTT Data, and Colu. Hyperledger Iroha is a distributed ledger project that is designed to be simple and easy to incorporate into infrastructural projects requiring distributed ledger technology.

  • Sawtooth Lake

Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake is a modular blockchain suite. It supports both permissioned and permissionless deployments. Sawtooth Lake includes a novel consensus algorithm, Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET), targeting large distributed validator populations with minimal resource consumption. Transaction business logic is decoupled from the consensus layer into so-called transaction families that “allow for restricted or unfettered semantics”. Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake is contained in a single repository.

Hyperledger Project appears more promising

“Success of ‘clubs’ or consortia depends on the set up and governance, the stated aim, and also on the degree of alignment of interest of member organizations”. ”Models such as the open-source collaborative Hyperledger effort ultimately appears more promising when the aim is mainstream, commercial adoption”.Milan Salaba, partner at Deloitte

 

Carlo de Meijer

Economist and researcher

 

From Fintech to Regtech… from potentially disruptive to leaner compliance opportunities

| 31-5-2017 | François de Witte |

On 18/5/2017, I attended a seminar covering the topic “From Fintech to Regtech… from potentially disruptive to leaner compliance opportunities” organized by The Finance Club of Brussels, the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the Solvay Finance Society and Thomson Reuters.

Introduction

Fintech describes a wide range of innovation in financial technology, going from payment systems to lending and trading platforms.
Fintechs are seen in many cases as potential disruptors of the traditional intermediation of heavily regulated banks and other financial institutions See also my articles on PSD2 further down.
However Fintechs can also be enablers, helping banks and financial institutions to streamline their regulatory reporting and compliance, or help the disruptors in coping more easily with compliance in the future.

Setting the scene

Fintechs are playing an increasing role. The investments in Fintechs exceeded EUR 25 billion in 2016, and they bring a real digital revolution. Fintechs are perceived to foster the Digital Revolution, but equally to increase the digital divide in our society between the skilled and/or wealthy and those who are not.

Regulatory compliance is time-consuming and expensive for both financial institutions and regulators. The volume of information that parties must monitor and evaluate is enormous. The rules are often complex and difficult to understand and apply. There is a lot of data to be analyzed. Much of the process remains highly labor-intensive, or still depends heavily on manual inputs.

The Regtechs can be considered as an outgrowth of Fintec. Regtech use digital technologies— including big data analytics, cloud computing, robotics, behavioral analysis, blockchain technology and machine learning to facilitate regulatory compliance. Amongst  other things, Regtech applications automate risk management and compliance processes, enable companies to stay aware of regulatory changes around the world, facilitate regulatory reporting and support strategic planning.

In recent years banks have seen opportunities to ask Fintechs to solve their large regulation and compliance issues. They can change the paradigm of banks from heavy IT releases to agile sprints, from integration to standardizing protocols, from static functions to workflows.

Hence financial institutions are more willing to consider using Fintechs for getting more efficiency. During the seminar, somebody of the panel mentioned: “Collaboration is the best innovation”. Banks can also help Fintechs thanks to their experience in managing large databases, managing risks and providing the required critical mass.

We have seen some applications recently in areas such as the KYC (Know Your Customer) domain.

Regtech – some other considerations

However, as mentioned during the seminar by Antonio Garcia Del Riego, Head of EU Corporate Affairs at Banco Santander, in Europe there remain obstacles in using Fintechs. The Bank Regulators in Europe expect the banks to deduct the goodwill from the core capital of the banks. This implies that software investments cannot be capitalized and need to be written off immediately in the P&L. A second challenge is the ability to attract digital talent, given the fact that the regulators limit the way in which the remuneration can be paid, whilst startups can be very creative here.
For the regulators, there also remain challenges. Once banks will have automated their reporting, the regulators will have to follow. They also will have to attract digital talent, to treat all these data in an automated way. If they do not succeed in this, they might challenge the use of Regtechs, and this is not what we want.

Regtechs can potentially offer similar benefits to regulators as they do to financial institutions. We recently observed that some (quite few) Regtech providers have emerged to serve the significant needs of regulators. There have seen recently some examples in Fintechs bringing behavioral models to the regulators, or new cognitive technology or the use of Blockchain technology (smart contracts), to trigger automatic alerts for the regulators when the banks exceed some thresholds.

Some regulators are taking initiatives to foster innovation. In 2016, the FCA (US) created its “regulatory sandbox,” a space where financial services companies are encouraged to test new products without regulatory consequences. Recently the Australian Securities and Investment Commission also created its regulatory sandbox, suggested to establish a new regtech liaison group, comprising industry, technology firms, academics, consultancies, regulators and consumer bodies, and announced that it would host a Regtech hackathon later in 2017.

Other countries have also taken steps to support Fintech and Regtech innovation. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is in the process of developing a regulatory sandbox. We might expect other regulators to also take similar initiatives.

Conclusion

Thanks to their digital technology, Regtechs enable banks and other financial institutions to reduce the burden of compliance. However some steps need to be taken to create a level playing field and some topics will have to be clarified.
One can ask oneself the question how far these innovations can become game changers, awakenings for the banks, or even force them to more transparency and predictability towards regulators.

 

François de Witte – Founder & Senior Consultant at FDW Consult

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More articles on this subject:

PSD 2: A lot of opportunities but also big challenges (Part I)

PSD 2 : The implementation of PSD 2: A lot of opportunities but also big challenges (Part II)

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“Systems om je bank buitenspel te zetten” – Verslag van mijn Financial Systems presentatie

| 23-5-2017 | Pieter de Kiewit |

Dit is een verslag en korte samenvatting van mijn presentatie die ik mocht houden op het Financial Systems evenement. Afgezien van een gênante vertraging door mijn gebrekkige Powerpoint skills was het een prettige sessie afgerond met een pittige discussie tussen experts in de zaal. Eerst een korte samenvatting:

Als Feyenoord fan ben ik dit jaar gelukkig en weet veel van voetbal, ook al speel ik het niet. Daarin ligt een parallel in mijn werk als treasury recruiter. Maandelijks krijg ik van circa 100 experts persoonlijk college en zie een veelvoud aan cv’s. Ik denk dat ik hierdoor inzicht heb in systemen die worden gebruikt om treasury processen te managen en ik zie de afgelopen decennia interessante ontwikkelingen die de laatste jaren in een versnelling zijn geraakt.

Zonder namen te noemen van leveranciers, ik doe geen software sales, heb ik een lijst gemaakt van diensten en producten die de gereedschapskist van de treasurer kunnen vergroten en afhankelijkheid van zijn bank verkleinen. Toen ik deze lijst opstelde, viel me op dat er tussen de vakgebieden cash & werkkapitaal management enerzijds en funding anderzijds interessante ontwikkelingen zijn zoals bankonafhankelijke betaalplatforms, crowdfunding en het bankkosten inzichtelijk maken. In het managen van risk zie je bijvoorbeeld trade finance in blockchain en partijen die FX transacties tegen ongebruikelijk lage marges bieden.

Banken daadwerkelijk buitenspel wordt lastig en is volgens mij ook niet het streven. Banken bashen vind ik een zeer onsympathieke hobby. Daarbij is de Fintech wereld ook nog niet volwassen met alle bijbehorende consequenties. Voor de drukbezette treasurer, voor de DGA en CFO die maar incidenteel te maken hebben met het vakgebied kunnen deze ontwikkelingen nogal onoverzichtelijk zijn. Helaas is er geen oplossing die snel inzicht verschaft. Wel denk ik dat er mooie kansen liggen voor degene die vooraan wil meelopen in ontwikkelingen.

De discussie die zich ontspon tussen financiële lijnmanagers en treasury experts ging, onder andere, over de vraag of bankkosten daadwerkelijk inzichtelijk zijn en wat de toekomstige rol van de banken zal zijn. De Powerpoint presentatie is onder dit artikel opgenomen. Ik verheug me op verdere events waar discussie rond dit thema kan worden verder gevoerd.

Pieter de Kiewit

 

 

Pieter de Kiewit
Owner Treasurer Search

 

 

Klik hier als je de presentatie van de sessie wilt bekijken.

 

 

 

 

Better Decisions through real-time Reporting: Business Intelligence about Cash Flows & Cash Positions

|17-5-2017 | Joerg Wiemer | TIS | Sponsored content |

How do strategic professionals decide on the best path to success for their company? The key is in transparency and real-time reporting. If it comes to the responsibility of the treasurer or financial professional this means deciding about company-wide cash flow and liquidity levels, bank, customer and supplier relations and working capital.

When cash flow visibility is the lifeblood of your company, you want full control and knowledge. Direct access to insights on profitability and potential business risks allow users to drive better decisions based on solid business intelligence, accessible anytime and anywhere.

 SCENARIO

Better decisions: Companies now have the power of the Business Discovery Manager – a business intelligence module within the TIS cloud platform. Supplier, salary and treasury payments can be easily analyzed along with cash flows, liquidity and working capital via easy-to-use dashboards and reports. The tool, enhanced through state-of-the-art BI technology, enables users to access all strategic insights in a single, flexible, web-based and multi-bank, multi-ERP capable platform available 24 hours a day from anywhere in the world.

 

Source: TIS Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH

Challenges

You can’t manage what you don’t measure

  • A lack of visibility over liquidity, working capital and cash flows at the C-level, in treasury, controlling, accounting, Sales and
    purchasing departments.
  • No transparency regarding bank relationships, liquidity positions and account turnover
  • No transparency regarding customer and supplier relationships, as well as incoming and outgoing cash flow

TIS Business Discovery Manager

Company-wide unified automated analysis of cash flow, liquidity and working capital in various departments of Corporate headquarters and in local subsidiaries

  • Multi-bank capable
  • SAP ERP integration via certified plug-in; connection to any ERP, HR and treasury system
  • State-of-the-art BI technology and functionality in a single SaaS solution
  • Support of customer-specific BI tools; support of self-service BI functionality
  • Business Intelligence as a Service: Ready for use throughout the company within seconds without any complex IT projects
  • No changes to bank or system landscape required; the solution is flexible and easily adaptable
  • ISO 27001 certified for data security

 Customer value

  • Better decisions based on complete visibility of liquidity, working capital and cash flows
  • Ability to quickly answer essential questions without the need for any extensive IT projects

Your benefits

C-Level executives:

  • Instant reports about cash flow performances (total of all inflows and payments) of the various local subsidiaries compared to one another over a specific time period
  • Identification of corporate risks and value-adding activities to drive future growth
  • Tangible insights to support internal and external audits
  • Power and data to provide strategic advice to sales and procurement departments

Treasury and controlling teams:

  • Answers to key questions, such as: How much liquidity is available at which bank? What is the net cash flow for a specific currency over a specific time period for a group of companies (natural hedge)? How much working capital does a local subsidiary require in a specific time period?
  • Increased compliance, transparency, and more efficient processes paired with reduced costs

Accounting teams:

  • Visibility of when a supplier was paid, or when a customer paid a local subsidiary over a certain time period
  • Insight into the value of inflows made by customers via various bank accounts and ERP systems over a specific time period

Sales teams:

  • Insight into the value of inflows made by customers and the overall payment behavior of the customer base

Purchasing teams:

  • Transparency across values of overall payments to a supplier via various bank accounts and ERP systems over a specific time period

Source: TIS Treasury Intelligence Solutions GmbH

Business Discovery Manager: never struggle to answer any of these business-critical questions again

 

joerg wiemer

Joerg Wiemer

CSO and Co-Founder of TIS

 

Guide to Treasury Technlogy by ACT & AFP

| 1-5-2017| treasuryXL | ACT | AFP |

ACT and AFP have published a Guide to Treasury Technology sponsored by Bloomberg, which might be interesting for you.
Managing treasury tasks has become more complex due to globalization of markets and increasing uncertainty in business since the first AFP edition appeared in 2011. Since then treasurers faced multiple challenges to exercise control of treasury activities, especially group activities.

Managing treasury has become more complex during the years in the face of global change and increasingly uncertain markets. Treasury practitioners face magnified challenges, as they try to gain more visibility and exercise more control over group activities. Treasury technology developed quickly to help them to operate more efficiently and answer compliance requests with ever more stringent regulation. Automate processes was one of the biggest challenges. Technology can help treasury play a more strategic role, automate routines and be compliant with regulatory environment.

Joint AFP/ACT publication, sponsored by Bloomberg

This guide is the first joint AFP/ACT publication and aims to help practitioners to identify a cost-efficient solution.

The first chapter starts with a detailed introduction of the development of treasury technology, expectations towards this technology and how the evolution of the Corporate Treasurer took place. This chapter illustrates how the technology available to treasurers has developed over the last 15 years. A brief explanation of how dedicated treasury technology was first developed is followed by details of how a series of factors have moulded the treasury technology market into the one we see today. Three points are highlighted: that the treasury technology market has matured, tremendous improvements in the quality of connectivity and what the changes brought with them for Corporate Treasurers.

Why review technology?

In Chapter 2 the drivers for reviewing the technology and a case study are presented.
With the rapid changes in available technology, the increased opportunity for treasury centralization and the need for treasurers to be able to demonstrate control over activities, treasurers were reviewing how best to deploy technology in order to help them perform their various roles effectively. Given the different environments in which companies operate, the potential benefits from the deployment of a new technology solution can vary significantly. This chapter outlines some of the key drivers that are encouraging treasury practitioners to review their use of technology.

Purpose of technology

Chapter 3 deals with the purpose of technology and identifies the core roles of the treasury department. Also how treasury structure can affect the use of technology. When assessing a deployment of technology, treasurers need to determine their requirements of the technology. This chapter includes a series of questions to help treasurers clarify their existing operations and also identify how structures and processes might change with the adoption of new technology. A case study shows how a company uses a certain technology to improve process quality.

Technology solutions

Chapter 4 presents treasury technology solutions.
A wide range of technology solutions is available to support treasurers. Treasury management systems are able to support the majority of the work of most treasury departments. However, it is also possible to develop a technology solution that supports treasury departments, including those with complex operations, without adopting a treasury management system. This can be achieved by developing in-house solutions or by using tools offered by banks and other vendors. A range of potential solutions available to support treasurers is presented in this chapter.

Evaluation and building a business case

Chapter 5 is about the evaluation process and how building a business case can help to evaluate which technology fits best. How to build a business case and then how to develop a requirements definition is explained in detail. The requirements definition is a critical part of the process: it helps to set the scope for the project and is the core document in the selection process. The process of developing the requirements definition also helps to build support for, and awareness of, the project throughout the rest of the organization.

Selection, implementation and maintaining the solution

Chapter 6, 7 deal with the selection and implementation process, while chapter 9 tells you more about maintaining the solution over time.

Trends

Chapter 10, the final chapter describes some of the current trends in treasury technology and lines out how they might impact treasurers over the coming years. Some of the key areas of development in technology and also some of the market changes which might require a technological response are presented.

In the appendix of the guide you will find information on how to develop a request for proposal (RFP) , a checking list for this RFP and a very detailed country reports list.

Source: © Association for Financial Professionals, ACT (Administration) Limited and WWCP Limited (except articles by Bloomberg LP), 2016, ISBN 978 1 899518 47 0 book 978 1 899518 48 7 CD ROM, for the articles  Bloomberg LP, 2016 | TMI

Our conclusion

A very detailed, valuable guide for all who want to learn more about treasury technology, want to find out more on how to select the best technology solution that meets the specific requirements of their company and what to focus on during the purchase and implementation process. You can find the guide on tmi, after registering for free.

 

Review Dutch Fintech Awards: I’ll be back next year!

| 28-4-2017 |  Pieter de Kiewit |

Last Friday I had the pleasure of visiting the Dutch Fintech Awards. Diversity, technology, marketing and entrepreneurship are the key words that in my opinion describe the event best. Both contenders as well as audience were mainly Dutch. Although the language used was English, the communication style, also due to the moderator, was very “Dutch direct”. This kept the program entertaining during the pitches of companies of less relevance for me.

Dutch Fintech Awards

The event was not about parallel sessions or handing out brochures between presentations. One large, very representative room at the headquarter of Rabobank, a moderator who used interactive technology (on my smartphone!), a number of categories where three contenders pitched, an expert giving his opinion and a jury. At the end of the day the winners got awards and one of them won the event over all.

Pitches with various approaches

In comparison to previous versions of the event, I liked that there were no parallel sessions. There was plenty of time to network, people did not feel the need to skip presentations. One could notice that the pitches had various approaches: some of them were purely focused on the product or solutions as if to land extra clients. Others pitched as if to land extra funding. That made the task for jurors harder. Perhaps by coincidence, the less professional pitches were in the same categories.

The overall winner: BUX

The categories catered various target groups. Private persons could learn about financial planning tools & innovative on-line banking, SMEs about expenses management & crowd funding and large corporates about internet fraud & credit rating. I will not go into details about specific company pitches, you can read about them on www.fintech.nl. The only company I want to mention is the winner: Bux. The pitch had flair, a clear target group, a structured & smart approach and success was described in numbers. Both the proposition as well as the business case (funding!) were presented and questions were being answered with confidence.

I left later than planned, inspired, made new connections and met old friends. I will be back next year.

Pieter de Kiewit

 

 

Pieter de Kiewit
Owner Treasurer Search

 

 

More articles of this author:

Fintech recruitment considerations

Consider a treasury intern!

Blockchain and the Ripple effect: did it ripple?

|24-4-2017 | Carlo de Meijer | treasuryXL

Our expert Carlo de Meijer has published an interesting article about a blockchain initiative that we want to share with you. We have slightly shortened the original article about Ripple.

 

Who is Ripple?

Have you ever thrown a stone in still water of a river or a lake. I did! The effect is rippling the water in a way that can be followed outwards incrementally. It might be this effect that the founders of Ripple, the payments blockchain network had in mind when choosing the name for their project. Did it ripple?

San Francisco based Ripple is seen as one of the most advanced distributed ledger technology (DLT) companies in the industry, which focuses on the using of blockchain-like technology for payments.

In just four years, Ripple has established itself as a key player in the fast-growing distributed ledger technology world. Since 2013, the Ripple Protocol has been adopted by an increasing number of financial institutions to “[offer] an alternative remittance option” to consumers. Especially the years 2015 and 2016 marked the expansion of Ripple, with the opening of an office in Sydney (April 2015) and the opening of European offices in London (March 2016 ) and in Luxembourg (June 2016).
In June last year, Ripple obtained a virtual currency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, making it the fourth company with a BitLicense. As of 2017, Ripple is the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, after Bitcoin and Ether.

What is Ripple?

Ripple is a financial real-time gross settlement solution, currrency exchange and remittance network using distributed ledger technology. Released in 2012, it purports to enable “secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions of any size with no chargebacks”.
Ripple is built upon a distributed open source Internet protocol, consensus ledger and native currency called XRP (ripples) enabling (cross-border) payments for retail customers, corporations, and other banks.
The Ripple Protocol, described as “basic (settlement) infrastructure technology for interbank transactions”, enables the interoperation of different ledgers and payment networks and brings together three aspects of modern payment solutions: messaging, settlement and FX management. It allows banks and non-bank financial services companies to incorporate the Ripple Protocol into their own systems, and therefore allow their customers to use the service.

The protocol enables the instant and direct transfer of money between two parties. As such the protocol can circumvent the fees and wait times of the traditional correspondent banking system. Any type of currency can be exchanged including USD, euros, RMB, yen, gold, airline miles, and rupees.
“Ripple simplifies the [exchange] process by creating point-to-point and transparent transfers in which banks do not have to pay corresponding bank fees.” Chris Larssen, former CEO Ripple

The Ripple company also created its own form of digital currency dubbed XRP in a manner similar to bitcoin, using the currency to allow financial institutions to transfer money with “negligible fees and wait-time. One of the specific functions of XRP is as a bridge currency, which can be necessary if no direct exchange is available between two currencies at a specific time. For example when transacting between two rarely traded currency pairs. Within the network’s currency exchange, XRP are traded freely against other currencies, and its market price fluctuates against dollars, euros, yen, bitcoin etc.

Did it Ripple?

Growing adoption by banks
Ripple has experienced a growing adoption by banks. Many financial companies have subsequently announced experimenting and integrations with Ripple. The first bank to use Ripple was the online-only Fidor Bank in Munich, which announced the partnership early 2014. Fidor Bank would be using the Ripple protocol to implement a new real-time international money transfer network.
Since then a host of major banks have adopted Ripple to improve their cross-border payments, and many have completed trial blockchain projects. These banking institutions – including Santander, UniCredit, UBS, Royal Bank of Canada, Westpac Banking Corporation, CIBC, and National Bank of Abu Dhabi, among others – view Ripple’s payment protocol and exchange network as a valid mechanism for offering real-time affordable money transfers.

Some recent developments in the Ripple network

The real uptake of Ripple however started to take place in 2016 and continued during the first quarter of 2017.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi (February 2017), Axis Bank (January 2017), SEB (November 2016), Standard Chartered (September 2016), and National Australia Bank (September 2016) are the latest banks to join Ripple’s blockchain-powered network for cross-border payments. And more banks will get on the Ripple bandwagon during 2017. Ripple says its network now includes 12 of the top 50 global banks, ten banks in commercial deal phases, and over 30 bank pilots completed.
“Banks and their customers have been hearing about the promise of blockchain technology to enable real-time cross-border payments. Now, some of the most innovative and successful banks like NBAD are making this a reality by offering Ripple-enabled payments to their entire customer base, and in doing so, paving the way to make 2017 the year we see broad commercialization of blockchain take hold globally.” Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple

Further Rippling: enlarging the network

Global Payments Steering Group
Last year September Ripple created the “first: interbank group for global payments based on distributed financial technology. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Santander, UniCredit, Standard Chartered, Westpac, and Royal Bank of Canada have joined as founding members of the network, known as the Global Payments Steering Group (GPSG). CIBC will also join the GPSG as a new member.
“The creation of GPSG is significant because this represents the first time that major banks have formulated policies to govern the transfer of money across borders using blockchain,” Donald Donahue, GPSG chairman.

GPSG aims to use Ripple’s technology to slash the time and cost of settlement while enabling new types of high-volume, low-value global transactions. The group will oversee the creation and maintenance of Ripple payment transaction rules, formalised standards for activity using Ripple, and other actions to support the implementation of Ripple payment capabilities.

R3CEV
Last year October R3 and twelve of its blockchain consortium member banks – including Barclays, NAB, Nordea, Royal Bank of Canada, Santander – have trialled Ripple’s Digital Asset XRP, to tackle the costs and inefficiencies of interbank cross-border payments. Ripple says XRP has the “fastest” settlement speed, settling in about five seconds or less.
“The prototype paves the way for a major overhaul of how banks process and settle cross border payments”. David Rutter, CEO of R3

Banks traditionally provision liquidity for cross-border payments by holding various currencies in local accounts with correspondent banks around the world. But these ‘nostro’ accounts are costly because banks have to fund them, trapping capital. Ripple argues that this can be fixed by instead using a digital asset – such as its XRP – which provides liquidity on demand.
Ripple’s network was trialled in R3’s lab and research centre, making markets for fiat currencies using XRP and then completing authenticated payments without multiple nostro accounts. The trial introduced XRP to test the feasibility of reducing or retiring the use of current nostro accounts for local currency payouts.

Ripple Innovations

In the meantime a number of important innovations were announced in the Ripple offering.

Ripple Validator Node
Global IT company CGI announced it is the first commercial enterprise to implement the Ripple Validator Node. Ripple validators are servers that confirm Ripple’s distributed financial technology transactions on the network. The CGI-hosted Ripple Validator Node provides banking clients with a trusted network partner for Ripple’s distributed financial technology that settles international and domestic transactions in real-time.

Smart Token Chain
Smart Token Chain (STC), a blockchain specialist in the FinTech sector, has completed its first full Smart Token transaction across the Ripple Network. Using Ripple gives STC universal access to a wide range of partners and customers without having to physically craft a digital relationship with each one. STC is leveraging Ripple’s open, neutral platform, called “Interledger Protocol” to move payments globally across different ledgers and networks.
Leveraging the Ripple platform with new Smart Token solutions is accelerating the move toward the launch of a truly useful blockchain and smart contract implementation, which has great potential for making global exchanges of value fast, affordable and highly secure. It also provides a well-documented audit trail that will make dispute resolutions more efficient and less frequent.

Ripple’s new cost model

Ripple created a cost model, designed specifically to help banks understand their cost structure and how Ripple can help them overcome current inefficiencies. With Ripple’s new cost model, banks can easily enter transaction volume and operational metrics to receive a custom cost analysis. The cost analysis breaks down cost to a per-payment level, for both a bank’s current system and if it were to use Ripple. By using this model banks can easily estimate the efficiency gains it could achieve using Ripple for international payments.
XRP Incentive Program

The XRP incentive program is designed to accelerate the use of XRP as a universal bridge currency by creating deep and liquid markets at the outset of being listed on digital exchanges. The program is funded by Ripple and will be operationally managed by exchanges for their liquidity providers.

Global financial institutions are increasingly looking for solutions to consolidate the liquidity tied up with the nostro accounts required to fund their overseas payments. Digital assets such as XRP allow for banks to fund their payments in real-time, and in the process, cut down their dependency on nostro accounts.
As a bridge currency, it can enable liquidity concentration around fewer currency pairs, making cross-border payments more efficient. As evidenced by R3’s trial with XRP for interbank cross-border payments, the use of Ripple and XRP can enable both cost-cutting and revenue opportunities for participating institutions.

BitGo makes XRP more accessible
Ripple’s efforts to build an active ecosystem around its XRP digital asset has been boosted by a deal with virtual currency processor BitGo. Under the programme, BitGo will provide multi-signature security, advanced treasury management and additional enterprise functionality for XRP, which will be integrated into the BitGo platform this year.

The Rippling goes on!

Ripple plans to enlarge the number of exchanges trading XRP. Working with a greater number of exchanges to list XRP is an important step to serve the growing demand for global payments in major and exotic currency corridors. Ripple has previously commented that by using its network and XRP as a bridge asset, banks can save up to 42% on interbank international payments.

“This cost-saving frees up capital to generate revenue opportunities, including new product offerings for high-volume, low-value payments and access to new corridors”, claims Ripple.

The Ripple effect goes on!

 

Carlo de Meijer

Economist and researcher

 

Interesting apples and oranges a.k.a. the Dutch Fintech Awards

|18-4-2017 | Pieter de Kiewit

One of my friends who works in human capital development and is a psychologist, explained me once how we can increase our creative output. One of the elements he mentioned was mixing up the way information comes to you and how you digest it. For example, if you are used to create business plans  sitting behind your desk and writing, a multi-person brainstorm session might tap into your undiscovered creative potential. And the other way around: if you are talker/listener, try writing for a change.

Bearing this in mind, I always try to combine personal meetings, with calls, with reading, events and so on. For the people who know me: I am always behind on my reading. So much to read, so little time! Events and personal meetings get my creative juices flowing. Today I trained MBA students of RSM in their labour market approach, very inspiring. And I look forward to the Dutch Fintech Awards that are organized shortly.

Dutch FinTech Awards

Being a recruiter with a focus on corporate treasury, I have tried to find the Fintech Awards contenders with a relevance for the corporate treasury community. This is not as obvious as it seems, only a few are. I do not envy the jury of this event. Categorizing the contenders is almost impossible, let alone judging them. Comparing blokchain insurance with video financial services sales and a crowdfunding platform with easy on-line payments, is comparing apples with oranges. One thing is clear: some of the potential award winners are very good at attracting social media attention.

Despite their diversity, each of the companies tells a different inspiring story. Some of them are about cutting edge technology, some of them are about understanding potential clients, others are about smart entrepreneurship. One thing I am sure of is that the level of creativity of the entrepreneurs will be extremely high. I am ready to be inspired and will inform you in my review blog afterwards.

On 21 April the Dutch FinTech Awards will take place in Utrecht. A day with many international keynote speakers, provoking master classes and pitches by the Dutch FinTech 50. Make sure you register today and join this unique opportunity to meet 300 International FinTech stakeholders. Via treasuryXL you can get a discount on the regular ticket. More information

Pieter de Kiewit

 

 

Pieter de Kiewit
Owner Treasurer Search

 

Dutch FinTech Awards (21 April): discount via treasuryXL

| 12-4-2017 | treasuryXL |

On 21 April the Dutch FinTech Awards will take place in Utrecht. A day with many international keynote speakers, provoking master classes and pitches by the Dutch FinTech 50. Make sure you register today and join this unique opportunity to meet 300 International FinTech stakeholders. Via treasuryXL you can get a discount on the regular ticket. Read the article for more information about the event and to discover the discount code.

​Dutch FinTech Awards & Conference

You are more than welcome to join the Dutch FinTech Awards and Conference of 2017 where innovative and disruptive FinTech companies are awarded. Meet 400 hand picked entrepreneurs, bankers, investors and advisors, demonstrate thought leadership, extend your network and develop business. Join the festive award ceremony on 21 April 2017.

What is happening?

Tens of thousands of finance jobs are vanishing. Google, Apple, Facebook and countless FinTech startups are disrupting the financial sector. Innovative companies are eager to please millions of frustrated banking customers. Investors are fascinated by the phenomenal profits made by banks struggling with outdated technology.

Get your ticket with discount

We have the opportunity to give you a 150 EUR discount on a regular ticket.

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We hope to meet you at the Dutch Fintech Awards 2017 at the Rabobank HQ in Utrecht on 21 April.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Annette Gillhart – Community Manager treasuryXL

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