Let us go then, you and I, to Sibos

Sibos once again fast approaches, the programme is largely set and delegates can begin to plan their week in Toronto in some detail. As the recent financial crisis is no longer centre stage, the overall themes for Sibos recognise that the focus is shifting to the future and that the industry is grappling with new questions, especially around the implementation of regulation in a way that is sustainable, cost-effective and delivers safeguards; and how banks can adapt to changing customer expectations and keep pace with an increasingly open and inter-connected world. And nowhere are such questions more relevant than in payments.

The regulatory landscape is changing rapidly, bringing with it new demands for compliance, audit, transparency and control. The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), Basel III and the Durbin amendments to the Dodd-Frank Act, for example, change the cost base of many bank payment systems. Worldwide, greater risk controls and new strict liquidity management and capital adequacy requirements will require further technological capability in addition to the systems already supporting data protection, privacy regulations, anti-money laundering, and know your customer (KYC) requirements.

Banks’ corporate customers’ want real-time everything, and individual customers’ lives are increasingly becoming digitised. So customer expectations are also changing rapidly.

Faced with such challenges, it could be argued that the payments industry has a limited window of opportunity to transform its electronic payment systems. If today’s payment systems are siloed, non-compliant, inflexible and uncommunicative, the payment system of the future is the opposite. Whereas legacy processes and architectures effectively disable new initiatives and strongly limit the ability of any financial institution to be proactive, advanced systems and architectures facilitate the achievement of both revenue-raising and cost-reducing strategies.

Sibos is simply the pre-eminent place to consider, debate and progress such issues. Let’s get to it!