Fundtech, a market leader in global transaction banking solutions, today announced the introduction of the Global Liquidity & Risk Management solution, designed to address the changing needs of banks that have come as a result of new regulations and the demand for real-time global cash and collateral management.
In the wake of the financial crisis, new regulations are requiring banks to have far greater knowledge of their liquidity and collateral positions and be able to react much faster to changing market conditions. As a result, banks are finding it necessary to implement new systems that have an enterprise-wide view liquidity with real-time, intraday management capabilities.
The Global Liquidity & Risk Management solution is built on the Fundtech Services Platform, the advanced Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology that is at the core of Fundtech's broad line of transaction banking products and services. As a standards-based SOA service, Global Liquidity & Risk Management is a stand-alone solution that can integrate with any payments infrastructure.
The new solution consolidates liquidity- and collateral-related transactions from across the bank's global enterprise, providing a new level of real-time visibility and control. NOSTRO accounts can be closely monitored, providing critical information on transactions, intraday settlements, future-dated positions, and reconciliation.
The rules-based design offers unparalleled flexibility to tailor the solution to existing workflows, policies and preferences. For example, rules can be used to identify priority payments, set parameters, reserve funding and set release bands.
The Global Liquidity & Risk Management solution can be deployed on a global, regional or local basis, and can be integrated with a wide variety of systems. This flexibility addresses the fact that the governance of liquidity and collateral is unique to each financial institution.
According to Gareth Lodge, senior analyst at Celent: "The financial crisis has brought on a new era in liquidity and risk management. The need has never been greater for banks to have complete information across not just all of their channels, but across all of their business, with the ability to act in real-time. Fundtech's Global Liquidity & Risk Managgement solution addresses these new concerns."
According to Joseph Mazzetti, executive vice president at Fundtech: "It is evident that new regulations and current economic conditions have made liquidity and risk management a top priority for banks globally. In this environment, banks need the ability to understand their current positions with precision in real-time, and be able to act immediately. We designed the new Global Liquidity & Risk Management solution with the power to aggregate and analyze the bank's enterprise-wide liquidity, and have given it the flexibility to react through both rules-driven automation and manual controls. We believe that banks need the capability to monitor, manage, and monetize their global liquidity more today than ever before."
A recent client survey conducted by Fundtech found that liquidity and risk management was a top concern for banks around the world. Among the most interesting finds were the following:
• 58% say that bank liquidity has become a top priority for their bank. 96% say that bank liquidity has become a more important issue recently.
• 65% say that poor economic conditions are the most important driver of bank liquidity management today; while 31% say that new regulations are the driver.
• 100% think that changes in regulations (e.g. Basel III) will either increase their bank's costs or increase complexity; 57% say that it will do both.
• 54% say that their bank is developing the capability to obtain real-time intraday liquidity management; 21% say it is under consideration.