Observations from SIBOS 2012, Osaka, Japan
2012/11/13
Robert Mancini
I had the pleasure of attending the SIBOS Annual Conference in Osaka, Japan last week with several of my colleagues in the Celent banking team. I spent much of my time at the event in constructive meetings with clients and prospects. Several industry leading vendors have organized fantastic events. A few I would like to call out include Bottomline Technologies, Fiserv, NEC, and SunGard. The Clearing House equally organized a delightful evening and the closing event from SWIFT was entertaining. In terms of topics, I have heard several recurring themes through various meetings. These include: Risk Mitigation – fraud detection tools/processes, analyze client behavior from bank data for decision/alerts, advanced fund movement (e.g. country capital flight), etc. Cost Reduction – banks focus on reducing costs via technology/processes to remain competitive (e.g. replace non-differentiating processes with cheaper solution), operational efficiency, etc. Analytics – the top three value propositions include superior customer service, cross sell/revenue opportunity, and operational efficiency. I think the cross sell/revenue opportunity is the hot button for banks at this time. Mobile – continues to be a hot topic. The opportunity is likely in growth markets P2P and commerce in developed countries. Real Time/Near Time – processing of payments. Real time view of liquidity with clients – critical for regulatory which impacts front end so clients can have visibility. Banks at various maturity stages as it relates to real time with liquidity. Treasury Services – Cash Management Services in Asia growing. Asian banks appear eager to win back business from U.S. banks. BPO – corporates seek to speed up settlement. Asia market appears highly interested in BPO despite higher L/C uses (I heard 60% +). Core value appears to be the ability to get financing (i.e. BPO used as an instrument). Several open items around accounting perspective, regulatory perspective (ICC rulings), etc.