denotes premium content | Jan 6 2009 Trade & Forfaiting Review magazine archive
Volume 7 Issue 8
Editor’s foreword
Opening up a discussion about trade-finance technology is like opening that proverbial can of worms. Where to start? There are many types of technology, many facets to the subject, many challenges to be dealt with and many complex terms to understand – and just when you feel you’ve got a handle on one aspect, another rears its ugly little head. It’s all difficult enough for your average techie, but for the technophobes among us (hello, forfaiters), it’s enough to make a person nostalgic for the days when a fax machine was the height of technological advancement.
We here at TFR can sympathise with what trade-finance institutions and corporates must face when they have to make decisions about their trade technology. Having decided to devote a cover story to technology, we then had to figure exactly what we meant by “technology”. Were we talking about front-end systems, back-end systems, or both? Were we interested in the technology that corporates are using, the technology that banks are using, or, again, both? Should we perhaps compare the various offerings and strategies of the main technology vendors? Would we delve into issues such as digital connectivity, trade-services utility or even insourcing and outsourcing? Or would we rehash that tired old debate about when, and if, the move to entirely paperless trade was ever going to happen?
We’d have needed to produce a virtual tome in order to tackle all of these issues, so we thought we’d focus on the one area that receives the least attention, both in the trade press and within institutions: the back office. There is a lot of old technology still hanging around that needs upgrading and innovating, and most of what is new is on the front end. There is a real need for a new generation of back-office systems, built on new technology. We asked trade-finance technology consultant David Player, if he were to design the ideal back-office platform, what would it look like?
Read on for his requirements – what are yours? He, and we, would be interested in hearing.
And to show that we are doing our part to embrace technology and abandon the paper trail, voting for the first-ever “TFR Awards” will be completely web-based. No paper ballots and dangling chads here! Voting has officially begun, so log on to www.tfreview.com and cast your vote. We’ll announce the lucky winners in our July/August double issue.
Courtney Fingar is editor of TFR.
Features
The lease they can do
While most forfaiters are happy to trade promissory notes back and forth, few would consider dealing with leasing paper, especially in a region like Latin America where investor protection is sometimes sketchy. But more forfaiters are coming around to the view that a leasing transaction is not all that different from a loan transaction. Erika Morphy reports.
Fortis Lease Group: Some European enlargement of its own
Big-ticket leasing: Capitol Hill takes aim
Searching for perfection
Many of today’s back-office systems do not have the flexibility to cope with tomorrow’s business requirements. David Player, an independent consultant specialising in trade-finance technology, takes a technical look at some of the basic characteristics required of the next-generation trade-finance system and explains how to create a future-proof architecture.
Defining the requirements: What is a service-oriented architecture?
The joys of membership
Last month eight Central and Eastern European countries, along with Cyprus and Malta, joined the European Union, presenting banks with a whole host of new opportunities for providing trade and project finance and, in some cases, private equity. Even more exciting is the spill-over effect this current round of enlargement is having on members-in-waiting like Bulgaria and Romania. Erika Morphy reports.
Riding Bulgaria’s property market
Brussels and beyond
The European Union’s recent round of enlargement makes it the world’s largest trading bloc and, as a result, has big implications for international trade. Konstantinos Katsoulis, a trade lawyer with Baker & McKenzie’s European Law Centre in Brussels, and Hannes Schloemann, a trade lawyer with Baker & McKenzie in Berlin, offer a legal perspective on the effects of EU enlargement on the trade arena.
Regulars
Letter from Hong Kong: David Sullivan
Company profile: Something for banks everywhere
The Bank of New York is a “bank’s bank”, focused on providing wholesale financial services to financial institutions, including, of course, trade products. Courtney Fingar speaks with William F Williams, senior vice president of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa division, about why this business model plays to the bank’s advantage in the markets that his group covers.
Personal profile: Job of a lifetime
Denis Childs has spent his entire career to date at SG CIB, working his way from the French retail network to the export-finance department to heading the global commodity and trade-finance business line as well as project and mining finance. He tells Courtney Fingar about what keeps him at SG CIB and how he intends to double his group’s income by 2005.
Emerging-market debt pricing
Omni Whittington Commentary, June 2004
Country-risk appetite
The analysis from Standard Bank London:
