Another Day at SIBOS 2019

On the first day of Sibos
My TB gave to me
A current account and OD facility

On the second day of Sibos
My Transaction Banker gave to me
Two virtual accounts
And A current account and OD facility

The second day of SIBOS started off with a session on polictical uncertainty, Brexit and its impact on Banks and mentioned that waves of nationalism and globalization are common.

There were two sessions on DLT and R3 and its use for Trade Finance and indeed Marco Polo and Voltron are making good traction in this space but are yet to see mass adoption. Mr Vijay Mendonca, Head of Trade Products at HSBC gave a very interesting talk on SIBOS TV on how digitization and DLT in trade finance can enable sellers, shippers, logistics companies, freight forwarders, buyers and banks to all come together on a common distributed ledger and I liked his comparison of the time it takes for a ship to move goods being faster than the time it takes documents to move between importer and exporter.
He rightly says that its important for every party in the trade supply chain to realize that investment in the DLT nodes does mean something for them and does not just mean faster realization of money for the seller. As this enbales a higher velocity of trade, each party in the chain will benefit from the higher turnover, enhanced visibility and greater access to trusted data which will in turn allow fintechs and banks to lend and thereby pump more money into the economy.

It was also good to hear that the session on the "Future of Banking" mention that central banks such as the BOE are now permitting non banks to become part of the payment (RTGS) networks and indeed the API'isation of banking services means that non banks can leverage payment services with much lesser investment, lower risk and faster time to market.

Anyway, The third day of SIBOS is kicking off...meanwhile who had the bst coffee this SIBOS ? HSBC ? Pega ? Who had the best gift ? I invite your views....