Sibos 2013: news briefs

Comprehensive tools

Kyriba, a developer of cloud-based treasury management solutions and CGI, a consulting and systems integration company, have formed an alliance to integrate CGITrade360 into the Kyriba Enterprise platform.

The alliance aims to address the needs of corporate treasurers and finance teams, who are increasingly demanding a comprehensive view and control over their cash management and trade activities and exposures. To meet this need, Kyriba has used CGI’s global trade solutions to extend its treasury and risk management platform. With the integration of CGITrade360, Kyriba will offer a multi-bank trade finance solution to manage the issuance and tracking of bank guarantees as well as standby, import and export letters of credit. The newly integrated solution will meet client’s complete workflow needs, leveraging Kyriba’s connectivity hub for multi-bank Swift connectivity.

Separately, CGI announced that Canada’s Scotiabank has completed its rollout of CGITrade360. The cloud-based software as a service solution is replacing the bank’s legacy trade and supply chain applications.

 Innotribe winners

The winners of the Innotribe Challenge 2013 have been announced after yesterday’s final judging round. In the Startup category, Klick Ex took the prize. Klick Ex is a P2P currency exchange based in New Zealand. The Innovator category was won by Dublin-based Waratek, which is a ‘Java virtualisation specialist’. Congratulations to both companies.

Smart guidance

The Sepa Migration Action Round Table (Smart) has published a guidance document providing explanations and best practices on the handling of Sepa direct debit (SDD) related ‘R transactions’. These transactions are described as rejects, refusals, returns, refunds, reversals, revocations and requests for cancellation. The key recommendations of guidance on the handling of such transactions and related charging principles were presented at Sibos. “Putting in place efficient processes for SDD exception handling is one major challenge that banks and their customers have to face as part of their migration to Sepa,” said Jan Paul van Pul, head of market infrastructures, ABN Amro Bank, and chairman of  Smart.

Santander vote trial

Broadridge Financial Solutions has completed a pilot for vote confirmation with Santander Investment Corporate Services in Spain. The pilot results proved that the Spanish institution, in its role as a share registrar, accurately received a range of voting instructions through the legal chain of intermediaries including both global and subcustodians. It was also able to confirm that the shares voted were executed at the meeting.

“End to end vote confirmation has become an important area of focus within capital markets and presents an opportunity for greater integrity throughout the overall proxy process, which in turn will lead to improved investor confidence,” said Elizabeth Maiellano, senior director product strategy, Broadridge.

The pilot took place during the 2013 proxy season and, together with Broadridge, it included the participation of six custodians that use Broadridge’s Global Proxy Management service; Santander Investment in its role as registrar for Spanish share-issuing companies; and three participating issuers.

The Fatca factor

Fiserv has launched Fatca Manager, a monitoring and control solution that financial institutions can use to meet key requirements of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca). Built on the company’s Financial Crime Risk Management platform, Fatca Manager allows financial institutions to use proven detection, workflow and reporting capabilities to assist with ongoing compliance. By introducing Fatca Manager, institutions can leverage a single investment in a system and the data it requires to combat money laundering, fraud and global tax evasion.

Fatca Manager from Fiserv automates many US indices and entity classification checks, alerting exceptions and performing ongoing monitoring for changes in circumstances. Sitting behind an institution’s primary onboarding process, the solution also provides consistent workflow and record-keeping facilities for remediation, prepares IRS reporting and acts as a second line of compliance control.

 BAML joins Swift’s Jasdec early adopters

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has joined Swift’s Early Adopter Programme for the Japan Securities Depository Centre (Jasdec), the country’s central securities depository. The depository has been working closely with Swift to internationalise and standardise its messaging standards and connectivity by adopting ISO 20022. From January 2014 to December 2018, all market participants must migrate their messaging standards from the existing formats to ISO 20022. The Early Adopter Programme is a Swift initiative to help customers connect to Jasdec and to send ISO 20022 messages via SwiftNet from the start of the community testing phase in July 2013.