Finextra and Misys have announced the results of their annual survey of trends in transaction banking. The responses from 105 professionals in the trade finance, payments and cash management industry located in 40 countries highlighted the stronger strategic focus on customer service and channel and product innovation.
The survey also provided evidence of the ever-increasing number of banks that have integrated their transaction banking businesses.
The Global Transaction Banking Survey 2012, undertaken by Misys and Finextra, showed that the days of having separate business units responsible for cash management, payments and trade finance are well and truly over. 90 per cent of banks have created a single transaction banking group or plan to in the near future. While many are still challenged by complexity in their IT environments, this shows a consistent strategy across the industry of becoming much more aligned with corporate customers' needs.
Mobile channel development is a growing trend, with 45 per cent of banks ranking this a priority in the coming year, while 63 per cent stated that expanding self-service channels such as mobile would be part of their strategy over the next three years.
"The majority of people perform their personal banking online and increasingly via mobile devices," states Tim Tyler, Global Product Manager, Misys. "This is becoming the norm for consumers. Corporate treasurers and transaction banking professionals now expect all their services from banks to be available to them via the same channels as their personal banking services."
Financial supply chain solutions are more widespread and mature in the market, with 88 per cent of respondents saying their bank has, or will soon offer, financial supply chain services for corporates. But there is still work to be done, with most of these banks expressing dissatisfaction with the sophistication and packaging of their current solutions.
As open account trade continues to rise in most markets, there is increasing interest in the new ICC Bank Payment Obligation (BPO) instrument to achieve better standardisation and reduce risk. At the same time, more than half of banks are demanding simpler ways to manage regular updates to existing standards. Both of these results are good news for SWIFT, given its current involvement with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) to develop the BPO, and its work with member banks and corporates on the MyStandards platform.
A copy of the full report on the results of The Global Transaction Banking Survey 2012 can be found here.
Watch Bank of America Merrill Lynch, RBS and Misys discuss the report's findings: