Global Banking & Finance Review Issue 6 - 2016 Banking Awards - Business & Finance Magazine

Issue 6

Celebrating 96 Years of Strong Partnerships Mr. Ricardo R. Chua, President and CEO, China Banking Corporation

Health Insurance in Saudi Arabia Mr. Tal Hisham Nazer, CEO, Bupa Arabia

Banking in The Gambia Mr. Bolaji Ayodele CEO and Managing Director, Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd

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FROM THE

editor

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Assistant Manager Operations Bala Prasad

Project Managers Megan Sash, Peter Barron, Manuel Carmona, David Dineen, Oisin Kavanagh

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I am pleased to present to you Issue 6 of Global Banking & Finance Review. For those of you that are reading us for the first time, welcome.

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The purchaser or reader of this publication assumes all responsibility for the use of these materials and information. However, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretations of the subject matter contained herein no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the publisher Image credits: @istock.com/gece33 (p8n9), @ istock.com/Rawpixel(p10,11,18,19,27,45), @istock. com/ monkeybusinessimages (p12), @istock.com/ BrianAJackson (p14-16),@istock.com/PytyCzech (p19), @istock.com/BraunS (p21), @istock.com/SIYAMA9 (p2223),@istock.com/iLexx (p28),@istock.com/ Choreograph (p32-33), @istock.com/Rawpixel Ltd(34-35), @istock. com/ swisshippo (p36-37), @istock.com/4X-image (p40,41), @istock.com/Richmatts(p42), @istock.com/ SolisImages(p42), istock.com/andresr(p44), @istock. com/goir (p46),@istock.com/fazon1(p62,63),@istock. com/ferrantraite(p78-81), @istock.com/KeongDaGreat (p82,83), @istock.com/Todor Tsvetkov (p84,85), @istock. com/Cylonphoto(p86,87), @istock.com/Sky1991(p88,89), @istock.com/HomoCosmicos (p96,97), @istock. com/ mathiaswilson (p99), @istock.com/ mtcurado (p100,101), @istock.com/monsitj (p102,103), @ istock.com/oneinchpunch (p104,105), @istock.com/ RossHelen (p108,109,111), @istock.com/Roman Babakin (p118,119), @istock.com/Szepy (p120,121), @istock.com/ LDProd (p120)@istock.com/YinYang (p120), @istock. com/franckreporter (p122), @istock.com/microolga (p124,125),istock.com/danchooalex (p125), @istock. com/ spainter_vfx (p126,127),@istock.com/tupungato (p128,129), @istock.com/pixelfit (p130,131)@istock. com/ (p136), @istock.com/ railelectropower (p138,139), @istock.com/shironosov (p132-135), @istock.com/ sakkmesterke 143,145), @istock.com/lolloj (p146) @ istock.com/tomograf(p48,49,51,52,55,56,59-61)@istock. com/-1001- (p53,54,57)

In this edition we are pleased to present the 2016 Global Banking & Finance Review Award Winners. You will also find engaging interviews with leaders from the financial community and insightful commentary from industry experts.

Featured on the front cover is Mr. Ricardo R. Chua, President and CEO of China Banking Corporation. Founded in 1920 by entrepreneurs, China Banking Corporation is celebrating 96 years of strong partnerships. We spoke with Mr. Ricardo R. Chua about the current business and banking environment in the Philippines.

For over 5 years, we have enjoyed bringing the latest activity from within the global financial community to our online and now offline readership. We strive to capture the breaking news about the world’s economy, financial events, and banking game changers from prominent leaders in the industry and public viewpoints with an intention to serve a holistic outlook. We have gone that extra mile to ensure we give you the best from the world of finance.

Send us your thoughts on how we can continue to improve and what you’d like to see in the future.

Happy reading!

Wanda Rich Editor

®

Stay caught up on the latest news and trends taking place. Read us online at

http://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/

Issue 6 | 3

12

CONTENTS

76

Global Business with Business Bank Group

Three Things Banks Can Learn from Pokemon Go

inside...

BANKING

14

New Decision Management Technologies Help Mid-Tier and Smaller Banks Overcome Big Data Challenges Ashoke Dutt, CEO , Semantify

18

FRTB – Why Banks Must Act Now

82

84

Digital Banking in Chile

BUSINESS

12

How can CFOs stop the exodus of young talent?

Thack Brown, Global Head of Line of Business Finance at SAP

25

Christopher Burke, CEO, Brickendon Consulting

118

How to ‘keep calm and carry on’ during an M&A

FINANCE

31

Risk-based approach to KYC

42

Microfinance Movement: Time for a Revolution?

124

104

Stuart Hall, Sales Director for Epicor Software, UK and Ireland

128

The Subscription Economy – a new way to travel Dr Steve Cassidy, Managing Director, Viaqqio, part of ESP Group

4 | Issue 6

Neil Jeans, Head of Policy & Regulation – Thomson Reuters Org ID

Steve Polsky, Founder and CEO, Juvo

Nick Pointon, Head of M&A at SQS

How to keep pace with the changing global manufacturing landscape

Customer Engagement in Retail Banking

Lessons from retail marketing for the financial services industry Customer data attitudes and postures: Breaking down siloes for a better view

Chiara Pensato, Director - EMEA, Alteryx Inc.

108

Innovation is opening the door to a real future of financial inclusion

Marija Zivanovic-Smith, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs, NCR Corporation

AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

36

28

Understanding the next generation of software robotics

Health Insurance in Saudi Arabia

64

78

Leasing in Mexico LOCATION INTELLIGENCE

INVESTMENT Sydney Stock Exchange wins Most Innovative Exchange

91

Sydney Stock Exchange Mr. George Wang, Deputy Chairman and Non-Executive Director, Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre and APX Settlement CEO Mr. David Lawrence

TECHONOLOGY

40

Will 2017 be the year of data literacy?

21

Seven logical steps to secure today’s Industrial Control Systems

44 70

Dan Sommer, Senior Director, Qlik

Sameer Dixit, Senior Director Security Consulting, Spirent Communications

Five factors behind digital transformation success

102

The Power of Graph

124

Roberto Mircoli, Senior Director Enterprise Marketing – EMEA, Dell EMC

TECHONOLOGY

8

INSURANCE

Wobi Plugs Into The Power Of Graph For Insurance Price Comparison Emil Eifrem, CEO, Neo Technology

Understanding the value of cyber insurance

Darren Anstee, Chief Security Technologist at Arbor Networks

Cyber Insurance: Protecting the Financial Industry

Dan Trueman, Unit Head of Cyber with Novae at Lloyd’s

Denial. Resistance. Adaptation The Three Phases of SSH Key Management

Matthew McKenna, Chief Strategy Officer, SSH Communications Security

143

What’s Next for Blockchain: Disruptive Technology and New Regulations

Penny Sanders, Head of Financial Services Regulation, Gowling WLG

Issue 6 | 5

CONTENTS

62

CELEBRATING 96 YEARS OF STRONG PARTNERSHIPS

interviews...

CELEBRATING 96 YEARS OF STRONG PARTNERSHIPS 62 Ricardo R. Chua, President and CEO, China Banking Corporation (Founded in 1920 by entrepreneurs, China Banking Corporation is celebrating 96 years of strong partnerships. Global Banking & Finance Review spoke with Ricardo R. Chua, President and CEO of China Banking Corporation about the key to successful corporate governance, the current business and banking environment in the Philippines and China Bank’s future strategy.

BANKING IN THE GAMBIA 96 Mr. Bolaji Ayodele CEO and Managing Director, Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd ( Mr. Bolaji Ayodele CEO and Managing Director of Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd spoke with Global Banking & Finance Review about the banking industry in The Gambia and the role of Guaranty Trust Bank (G) Ltd.)

DIGITAL BANKING IN ANGOLA 112 Eduardo Pinto, COO of Banco Económico (Eduardo Pinto, COO of Banco Económico has been working in financial services for 23 years. He joined Banco Económico three years ago as COO, to lead its digital transformation. )

6 | Issue 6

CURRENT BANKING TRENDS IN MACEDONIA 132 Mr. Vladimir Eftimoski, CEO of Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola Global Banking & Finance Review spoke with Mr. Vladimir Eftimoski, CEO of Stopanska banka a.d.

Bitola to find out the current banking trends in Macedonia.

98

Redefining the ease of banking

96

BANKING IN THE GAMBIA

132

CONTENTS

DIGITAL BANKING IN ANGOLA

112

CURRENT BANKING TRENDS IN MACEDONIA

Issue 6 | 7

Americas 8 Issue 6

AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

Will

the

2017

be

year of data literacy?

Over the past twelve months we’ve seen an explosion of data, an increase in processing it and a move towards information activism. This means the number of employees actively able to work with – and master – the huge amounts of information available, such as data scientists, application developers, and business analysts, have become a valuable entity.

Unfortunately, however, there still aren’t enough people with the expertise to handle the everincreasing, vast levels of data and computing.

You would assume, with all the information currently being produced and held by businesses, that 2017 would see us in a new digital era of facts. But, without the right number of specialists to consume and analyse it, there’s a gap in resources. Data is, unfortunately, growing faster than our ability to make use of it.

For many business leaders then, this means a reliance on gut instinct to make even the most important decisions. Unable to hone in on the most important insights, they’re presented with multiple – and sometimes conflicting – data points, so the most important ones seem unreliable.

The situation needs to change. Yes, that will mean upskilling more data scientists in 2017, but there will be a greater focus on empowering more people more broadly. That will go beyond information activists and towards providing more people with the tools and training to increase data literacy. Just as reading and writing skills needed to move beyond scholars 100 years ago, data literacy will become one of the most important business skills for any member of staff.

So, what will change to see culture-wide data literacy become a reality? Here are my predictions: 1.

Combinations of data – Big data will become less about size and more about combinations. With more fragmentation of data and most of it created externally in the cloud, there will be a cost impact to hoarding data without a clear purpose. That means we’ll move towards a model where businesses have to quickly combine their big data with small data so they can gain insights and context to get value from it as quickly as possible.

Combining data will also shine a light on false information more easily, improving data accuracy as well as understanding.

Issue 6 | 9

AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY 2.

3.

Hybrid thinking – In 2017, hybrid cloud and multi-platform will emerge as the primary model for data analytics. Because of where data is generated, ease of getting started, and its ability to scale, we’re now seeing an accelerated move to cloud. But one cloud is not enough, because the data and workloads won’t be in one platform. In addition, data gravity also means that on premise has long staying power. Hybrid and multi-environment will emerge as the dominant model, meaning workloads and publishing will happen across cloud and on-premise.

Self-service for all – Freemium is the new normal, so 2017 will be the year users have easier access to their analytics.

More and more data visualization tools are available at low cost, or even for free, so some form of analytics will become accessible across the workforce. With more people beginning their analytics journey, data literacy rates will naturally increase — more people will know what they’re looking at and what it means for their organisation. That means information activism will rise too.

10 | Issue 6

4.

Scale-up – Much a result of its own success, user-driven data discovery from two years ago has become today’s enterprisewide BI. In 2017, this will evolve to replace archaic reportingfirst platforms. As modern BI becomes the new reference architecture, it will open more self-service data analysis to more people. It also puts different requirements on the back end for scale, performance, governance, and security.

5.

Advancing analytics – In 2017, the focus will shift from “advanced analytics” to “advancing analytics.” Advanced analytics is critical, but the creation of the models, as well as the governance and curation of them, is dependent on highlyskilled experts. However, many more should be able to benefit from those models once they are created, meaning that they can be brought into self-service tools. In addition, analytics can be advanced by increased intelligence being embedded into software, removing complexity and chaperoning insights.

But the analytical journey shouldn’t be a black box or too prescriptive. There is a lot of hype around “artificial intelligence,”

AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY but it will often serve best as an augmentation rather than replacement of human analysis because it’s equally important to keep asking the right questions as it is to provide the answers.

6.

7.

Visualization as a concept will move from analysis-only to the whole information supply chain – Visualization will become a strong component in unified hubs that take a visual approach to information asset management, as well as visual self-service data preparation, underpinning the actual visual analysis.

Furthermore, progress will be made in having visualization as a means to communicate our findings. The net effect of this is increased numbers of users doing more in the data supply chain.

Focus will shift to custom analytic apps and analytics in the app – Everyone won’t — and cannot be —both a producer and a consumer of apps. But they should be able to explore their own data. Data literacy will therefore benefit from analytics meeting

people where they are, with applications developed to support them in their own context and situation, as well as the analytics tools we use when setting out to do some data analysis. As such, open, extensible tools that can be easily customised and contextualised by application and web developers will make further headway.

These trends lay the foundation for increased levels of not just information activism, but also data literacy. After all, new platforms and technologies that can catch “the other half” (i.e., less skilled information workers and operational workers on the go) will help usher us into an era where the right data becomes connected with people and their ideas — that’s going to close the chasm between the levels of data we have available and our ability to garner insights from it. Which, let’s face it, is what we need to put us on the path toward a more enlightened, information-driven, and fact-based era.

Dan Sommer Senior Director Qlik

Issue 6 | 11

AMERICAS BUSINESS

How can CFOs Stop

The Exodus of Young Talent?

Many of the CFOs I meet are worried and disheartened about the exodus of young millennials from the profession – and for good reason. These talented young professionals have both the skills and the desire to spearhead finance’s needed evolution from looking at yesterday to planning for tomorrow.

12 | Issue 6

This outflow of talent is a lose/lose situation. Those leaving lose the opportunity to advance in a profession that holds great promise, and corporations lose both the talent and the costly investment they have made in hiring them.

It’s nothing new for early-career finance talent to abandon the profession. I speak from personal experience. My career began with 18 to 20 months of management training, rotating through international assignments throughout a Fortune 500 company. It was fun and exciting. Then we newcomers settled into our actual roles: tedious transactional accounting work.

Within a year, only about 10 of us were left from the original 36 who started. Most migrated out of finance to other professions.

AMERICAS BUSINESS

The young people I meet today are highly motivated; they want to have an impact. But they are stuck with correcting accounting problems and data gathering instead of learning the skills they’ll need to solve future problems. The churn rate is 15 to 20%.

Capitalizing on youthful enthusiasm The reality is that we can eliminate that wasted, useless work through automation: business networks for procurement, machine learning, software that supports financial close, and so on. At SAP, we have seen exactly that as we have shifted that talent to doing things that can help the business change – working on new billing structures and more complex contracts, for instance.

Here’s an example. When I was the SAP CFO in Latin America several years ago, we had a number of young professionals under the age of 30, and wanted to keep them engaged. We made transparent the difference between management reports and statutory reporting, and had them work on analyzing how decisions that helped the management books could actually have negative effects on statutory results and cash flow.

The results were incredible: tens of millions of dollars in cash flow improvement, favorable tax impacts, and balance sheet cleanups. I was so impressed: they did this on their own time, working crazy long hours and making personal sacrifices. And they were so incredibly proud that they could show business leaders how the finance team was adding value.

And we need take another look at how we educate them. It’s essential to ensure that finance professsionalis develop a firm grasp of the cornerstones of the profession – accounting rules, balance sheets, cash flows, and P&L – while helping them focus their skills where they are most needed in an increasingly complex business environment.

Rethinking our own paradigm But I think CFOs are starting to better understand the frustration of young people in the field, whose expectations are dashed as they are sentenced to years of mindnumbing work before being given a chance to make a meaningful contribution. At a recent meeting, I heard CFOs expressing the importance of changing their own mindset if they are going to stop the hemorrhaging of talent. They are beginning to understand the need to abandon the “rite of induction” mentality, that the way you learn is through painful, mind-numbing account reconciliation work – and whoever can take the most pain for the longest time survives. Creating opportunities for young professionals has to start early.

Thack Brown General Manager, Global Head of Line of Business Finance SAP

Issue 6 | 13

AMERICAS BANKING

New Decision Management Technologies Help Mid-Tier and Smaller Banks Overcome Big Data Challenges Banks have always had to manage large amounts of critical data. Yet, in spite of the buzz around the value of “big data”, most frontline employees in mid-tier and smaller banks still lack direct access to timely and relevant data insights.

Traditionally, data analytics has been seen as a back-office function that utilizes expensive, complex business intelligence solutions and requires a level of IT support often out of reach for smaller institutions. But not anymore.

Thanks to innovative, new “decision management technologies”, smaller banks without large IT staffs can transform how their less tech-savvy employees work with data and get the same kinds of actionable insights as larger banks.

As the banking industry becomes increasingly complex, these new cutting edge data technologies help mid-tier and smaller banks mitigate risk and fraudulent activity and create more compliant environments. And, they provide real time metrics to improve customer service and enhance product development all at a fraction of the cost.

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Struggles with Traditional Data Analytics Many mid-tier and smaller banks struggle with basic customer and business analytics because they cannot afford traditional data management platforms that are expensive, highly technical, and often incompatible with their existing infrastructure. Built for power users who routinely prep, collate, extract and compile data and reports, these platforms are difficult and time consuming for nontechnical employees even after training.

Unfortunately, these barriers prevent frontline employees and their managers from having direct access to information that is critical to timely business decisions and customer response. Prompt responses to regulators is also of particular importance to smaller banks since they are often subject to as much, if not more, regulatory scrutiny than larger banks.

New decision management solutions take aim at all of these challenges. Most are highly “self-service” in nature, low maintenance and do not require expensive technical consultants to get work done. They empower smaller players to be more nimble, competitive and satisfy their employees’ growing need to access information.

Committed to bonds for over 90 years

Ranked among the top 10 municipal trustees in the U.S.1 While many banks have exited this line of business, MUFG Union Bank, N.A., has remained dedicated to bonds and the complexities of bond administration for nearly a century.

Our relationship managers have an average of 18 years of in-depth experience in corporate trust, escrow, and project finance. Ongoing education to strengthen this knowledge enables our specialists to provide insights into industry trends. Whether it’s making timely interest payments to bondholders or providing comprehensive recordkeeping, you can count on our support for the life of the issue.

MUFG Union Bank, N.A., was named Best Corporate Trust Bank in the U.S. for four out of the last five years.2 MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) is one of the world’s leading financial groups. The global MUFG network encompasses 2,200 offices in more than 40 countries. MUFG provides access to corporate banking, trust banking, securities trading services, credit cards, consumer banking and finance, asset management, and leasing.

Corporate Trust Services Carl Boyd Director Southern California 213-236-7150 Dean Levitt Director No. California & Pacific Northwest 415-705-5020 Julie B. Good Director Mid-West & Texas 714-336-4230 Nils Dahl Director Eastern U.S. 646-452-2115

Learn more at mufgamericas.com/corporatetrust

MUFG Union Bank, N.A.

A member of MUFG, a global financial group

1

Thomson Reuters Financial.

2012, 2013, 2014, and 2016 Global Banking & Finance Review. ©2016 Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. All rights reserved. The MUFG logo and name is a service mark of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc., and is used by MUFG Union Bank, N.A., with permission. Member FDIC. 2

AMERICAS BANKING

How It Works: Conversations with Data Today’s decision management platforms use technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive search to perform simple vocabulary-based data analysis. What this means is that non-technical users can perform their own analytics by simply typing questions like “How many customers with more than one account take advantage of special perks for having multiple accounts?” into a familiar, Google-like search bar. Within seconds (not minutes!) the platform responds by generating a customized report of real time, authenticated data in easy-to-understand formats.

Business users in every corner of the organization can become their own data analyst, engaging and collaborating in real time data exploration to investigate business hunches, increase efficiencies, share insights and information, maximize returns and minimize risk exposures. Here are just a few ways teams can benefit:

16 | Issue 6

•

Governance, Risk and Compliance can use AI, machine learning and cognitive search to automate the process of searching, understanding and managing changes to regulations. A simple search-like interface can be used for everything from looking for policy and procedure documents to complex analysis of transactions by searching across both structured and unstructured data.

•

Risk Management can use natural language querying and machine learning to connect the dots between emails, phone calls, text and transactional information to spot anomalies or compliance issues. (e.g. bankers opening multiple accounts for the same customer; creating online banking accounts with bogus email addresses; customers performing fraudulent activities). Combined with predictive analysis, this functionality can help predict likely occurrences of fraud as well as detect and report of fraudulent patterns.

•

Sales & Marketing can easily track sales performance and other key performance indicators (KPI) using both internal and external customer data. This improves their understanding of customer behavior and how to refine customer segmentation.

•

Customer Service now has the ability to search across multiple data repositories and easily extract customer data without using multiple systems and windows. This facilitates response time and accuracy, improving customer satisfaction and outcomes.

AMERICAS BANKING

Considering the latest advancements in data analytics, there is no reason why mid-tier banks still need to rely on yesterday’s expensive, complex technologies and deny their business users access to the kinds of actionable data insights that benefit larger banks.

Ready to take the Plunge? Avoid the Pitfalls In order to insure your organization gets the long term value it deserves from a decision management solution, make data analytics a part of your corporate DNA. This means getting top management involved as well as line-of-business managers.

Let’s take a look at some basic things to keep in mind: •

Do your homework: With a growing number of solutions available, look for a platform that is adaptable, scalable and customizable to your unique business needs. The solution should be truly “self-service” and require minimal employee training and vendor support to run and maintain. Take the time to properly define your business requirements upfront so potential vendors can help you make the appropriate decisions.

•

Get your workplace onboard: Remove corporate resistance to empowering frontline staff to access data. Executive Management should support a workplace culture free of central gate keepers who decide how, what and when information should be fed to the business.

•

Reduce the need for human intervention: Think twice about investing in multiple incompatible tools and building a larger IT team to manage disparate systems. This is a decision that many large banks suffer from today and smaller banks should steer clear of this strategy.

•

Find a technology partner that meets your needs: Consider doing a gap analysis on the needs and support required by your business teams to achieve company objectives. Ask potential technology vendors to address these gaps and do not settle for rigid prescriptive tools that only partially get the job done. The right technology vendor must be a good cultural fit for your company and understand what your organization requires to truly meet the needs of its customers, employees, and business goals.

Data has always played a critical role in day-to-day bank operations and solving business problems. Until recently, most mid-tier and smaller bank employees have missed out on the benefits of direct and prompt access to big data. But now, thanks to the growing and evolving world of data technologies, smaller financial institutions finally have the opportunity to level the playing field.

Ashoke Dutt CEO Semantify Ashoke Dutt is the CEO of Semantify, a pioneering semantic search technology platform company based in Chicago, Illinois. His career in global financial services spans more than 30 years and includes the launch of India’s first credit card business in 1989 at Citibank.

Dutt went on to assume various other leadership roles at Citibank, including EVP, International Cards. He also served at Morgan Stanley (EVP, International Retail), and Discover Card (EVP, Marketing). Today, Dutt is an active entrepreneur and investor, serving as on boards of various start-ups and philanthropic organizations.

Issue 6 | 17

AMERICAS BANKING

FRTB – Why Banks Must Act Now The final rules for the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) regulations were published in January and although details of how the regulators in each jurisdiction will implement them still remains ill-defined we know the changes are coming and that now is the time to prepare. FRTB, part of the Basel III rules which were finally published in January 2016, will transform the way banks manage their capital requirements in addition to how they are structured and managed internally.

Risk models, liquidity horizons and data for risk calculations, back testing and hedging must be changed to meet the new regulatory guidelines, with a significant component of this change impacting desk structures and their oversight, management and reporting.

The rules at a local level are not yet granular enough for banks to implement them with confidence. While this makes preparation difficult, the deadline of January 2020 is not far off considering the massive scale of the changes. Financial institutions need to get lean, streamline efficiencies and ultimately prepare ahead of this change. With this in mind, we propose some critical steps to help during this period of uncertainty:

18 | Issue 6

Step One: Understanding the Scale of the Changes The implementation of FRTB will be substantial and undoubtedly incur significant costs, so if you haven’t already, setting up a programme to ensure good governance and structure is critical. It is important that the FRTB team establish and maintain early communication with impacted stakeholder groups (especially Risk, Finance and Front Office) as they will be looking at potential impacts based on findings presented by the team and as well as those assessed internally. There is a degree of uncertainty around the new rules for desk definition and the need to clarify the P&L attribution.

This is currently being worked through via the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) panel and examples include repos for funding and liquidity purposes that should be in the banking book, but are in fact currently managed on a trading desk.

Another complication is the difference between the Volcker and FRTB desk definitions, giving rise to speculation about virtual, or “reporting desks”, versus physical desks. Such an arrangement might be acceptable under Volcker but is unlikely to be

valid under FRTB where desk management, P&L attribution, strategy and remuneration – all physical things – need to be clearly and singularly associated with a desk.

Step Two: Get Lean Quick The estimated costs of implementing FRTB will double or quadruple the cost of doing business across a bank. To stay competitive and ensure you have the right mix of desks to operate your business, it is important to reduce costs and align procedures and systems. Streamlining and rationalising business and IT processes, implementing automation in areas such as back testing, consolidating systems and reducing your costs per trade are all critical activities. Some desks may no longer be viable businesses once the changes have been made, but if you know your structure, at least you will be in a better position to decide which desks should or shouldn’t remain.

Step three: Organise Your Data One of the main concerns the various regulatory programmes have raised for banks relates to the completeness and consistency of their data sourced from multiple systems. Additionally, business

AMERICAS BANKING

desks will potentially need to produce up to 60 times more data than current levels for certain desks. The subsequent increased workload for regulators will be enormous. In preparation, allocating more resources and processes to interpret the data is essential.

Just like the ‘multiple trading system issue’ encountered in various trade repowrting programmes, banks are about to have a ‘multiple risk system issue’. This is not because those systems are deficient but because, as with the trading systems, they are generally single-purpose, operate in relative isolation, and as a result do not share a common data dictionary. This is exacerbated by the current granularity of the data versus the required degree of granularity (i.e. risk measured at portfolio vs transaction level) under the new regulations.

What is certain is that risk data will need to be much more granular to provide the correct inputs to calculations with new categorisations for reporting to the regulators. With banks juggling multiple risk systems across asset classes and geographies, there will be a requirement to consolidate risk data in a central repository from which calculations and reporting can be derived. Firms that have already taken

steps to create central data repositories – even for non-risk data, such as trade or client data – will be in a much better position than those who have not.

There will also need to be a much tighter integration of data between the front office and risk and finance functions to ensure consistency of P&L attribution calculations. If these fail three times in any 12-month period, the approved internal model used by the desk will be withdrawn by the regulator, immediately increasing the desk’s capital charge.

There are many other topics to watch out for within FRTB, such as multijurisdictional implementation challenges, hypothetical versus risk theoretical P&L, the move from VaR to Expected Shortfall (ES), the treatment of Non Modellable Risk Factors (NMRF), and the uncertainty around CVA calculations.

Intertwined within these are the ‘softer side’ HR impacts of the new guidelines. The rearrangement of the trading desks and more stringent requirements for staff job descriptions aligned to those desks and their strategies and business cases will have a significant impact on a company’s organisational structure. Anything that so

fundamentally impacts a person’s role, their responsibilities and authority levels, and directly links them to a reportable, regulatorapproved business case and strategy is likely to significantly affect where and how businesses are run post-FRTB.

This has been a brief look at only some of the critical topics within FRTB. What’s known is that it is coming – what’s not known is how the banking world will look once all the yet-to-be confirmed regulations are finalised by local regulators.

Christopher Burke CEO Brickendon Consulting

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AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

7 logical steps to secure today’s Industrial Control Systems Critical infrastructure is evolving fast. No longer residing in splendid isolation, many control systems are joining the great migration to the Internet – with all its advantages of ubiquitous coverage, easy access and potential integration with other services and systems. There is a real need for security testing, auditing and monitoring – as well as physical and logical security training says Sameer Dixit, Senior Director Security Consulting, Spirent Communications

strategy plans getting leaked via breach in physical security, network compromise, social engineering attacks or other zero-day system vulnerabilities. Enterprise and financial systems have grown up with these challenges and an entire industry has developed around secure coding practices, safeguarding databases and hardening networks with firewalls, intrusion detection systems and deep packet inspection devices to examine all the traffic on a network and look for anomalies and cyber threats.

Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are taking industries’ control mechanisms online, allowing management to monitor and control critical infrastructure remotely over the Internet. This brings many management benefits, providing a distributed workforce with real time monitoring and control. As a result, individual companies and public services are growing more efficient. They are reducing overheads while gaining in agility and responsiveness – but they also face new risks.

Critical control systems, however, were often developed as stand-alone solutions, designed to fulfil a specific function of replacing widespread manual operations with central control. So they were not designed with cyber-security in mind. When security became an issue, defence measures were often layered on in a piecemeal fashion after the networks become operational – with a bias towards keeping out intruders or unauthorized access, rather than the more devious and malign threats that infect the Internet. Because of a strong incentive to get the process operational, rather than imagining how it might perform under attack, network routers were often installed with default factory settings and an “administrator” password that worked just fine, but left the system vulnerable to attack.

Welcome to cyberspace Traditional security challenges include loss or theft of employee and consumer data, and corporate secrets such as intellectual property, future project designs and business

Issue 6 | 21

AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

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AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY Critical control systems, many of them designed and built long before the Internet became the backbone of our world economy, are now increasingly being connected online, and remote control of industrial processes brings new risks of remote tampering. Manufacturing industries that have already learned the vital necessity of cyber-security to protect office networks now face a new threat that goes beyond information or financial loss because it can result in direct physical damage, wastage or breakdown. Increasing automation also means that a lot more harm could happen in a shorter time before management is alerted.

New Security Challenges The expansion of integrated technology in the industrial sector has created a surge in demand for process automation, and an increase in self-driven heavy machinery. These improvements in manufacturing are creating a new cyber security challenge for industries where cyber- attacks could destroy machinery and threaten workers’ lives.

The Stuxnet worm is a famous example of what can happen to physical systems – in January 2010 it reputedly damaged up to a thousand centrifuges across Iran by deliberately pushing them beyond recommended operational rotation speeds. So the potential threat to ICS is proven, and the risk to critical infrastructure has prompted the US Department of Homeland Security to create a task force ICS-CERT – “The Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team”.

ICS-CERT aims to reduce risks within and across all critical infrastructure sectors by partnering with law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community and coordinating efforts among Federal, state, local, and tribal governments and control systems owners, operators, and vendors. ICSCERT also collaborates with international and private sector Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) to share control systems-related security incidents and mitigation measures.

Seven key steps for hardening critical systems

1 • •

Defence-in-depth strategies

Establish network segmentation, firewalls, and “de-militarised zones” Deploy firewalls on SCADA and process control networks

2 Harden ICS remote access • • • •

Authentication, authorization, and access control for direct and remote connection Use virtual private networks and encryption for secure communications Secure all wireless connections Deploy intruder detection and prevention systems

3 Manage patching for control systems • • • •

Patch and vulnerability management Enterprise password management Computer security and privacy controls Secure control system modems

4 Establish a secure topology and architecture • • • •

Apply and comply with security standards Always re-examine security when modernizing and upgrading Establish an industrial automation and control systems security program Establish specifications for control system security procurement

5 Assess assets, vulnerabilities, and risks • • •

Understand and analyze critical infrastructure interdependencies Look for common vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure control systems Conduct penetration testing of ICSs

6 Security and response training •

Initiate cyber-security training for control system engineers, technicians, administrators and operators

7 Cyber-forensics planning for control systems •

Develop an ICS incident response plan

An extensive list of recommended best practices to safeguard Industrial Control Systems can be found on the ICS-CERT website at: https://ics-cert.us-cert. gov/Recommended-Practices. Not surprisingly, the recommendations follow similar lines to typical enterprise network and perimeter security best practices.

Knowing where to start is often the biggest initial challenge.

Of course we do need more in- depth detail once we start putting security into place, but it is better to begin with a palatable summary. So, to save you reading hundreds of documents, I will summarise the key requirements below into seven common sense steps.

Sameer Dixit Senior Director Security Consulting Spirent Communications

Issue 6 | 23

“Strategic Alliances to support SME Institutions making a more effective impact in financial inclusion of the majority population in Mexico�

Financiamiento Progresemos, S.A. de C.V., SOFOM, E.N.R. http://www.progresemos.com.mx/

AMERICAS BUSINESS

keep calm and carry on’ during an M&A How to ‘

In June 2015, U.S security regulators investigated a group of hackers, known as FIN4. The group were suspected of breaking into corporate email accounts of 100 listed companies and stealing information in relation to mergers1 for financial gain.

Hackers are always on the lookout for opportunities to exploit vulnerable IT systems during mergers or acquisitions.

Starwood Group, an American hotel and leisure company, was the victim of a data breach in 2015 caused by malware infected point-of-sale terminals, shortly after the acquisition by Marriott Corporation had been announced. As a result of the breach, hackers gained access to customer names, payment card numbers, security codes, and expiration dates. It was later questioned whether IT systems were appropriately assessed before the acquisition was made public knowledge.

There is so much going on in the process of an acquisition or a business merger that IT systems are often neglected. This creates vulnerabilities, potentially exposing sensitive information which cyber criminals can exploit. IT teams must focus their attention on ensuring the security of existing systems before a company even considers undergoing an acquisition or merger.

Pre-acquisition technical due diligence Technical due diligence refers to the period during which IT systems are inspected, reviewed and assessed for areas of vulnerability that need to be addressed. Organisations looking to be acquired or merge, should begin a process of technical due diligence internally before seeking interested parties. By carrying out such an internal technical due diligence, the company being acquired can be satisfied its systems are robust, secure and fit for purpose, and the acquirer’s due diligence will not expose any issues that may jeopardise the deal.

In addition to the security vulnerabilities, many organisations carry open-source licensing risks. Open-source modules or snippets of code are commonly incorporated by developers into software to aid rapid development. Although this opensource code is freely downloadable, it is normally subject to an open-source licence, and this licence places restrictions and obligations on what can be done with this code. Companies often have no idea what open-source code is used in their systems and any breach of licensing restrictions can be costly to fix and endanger the deal. So the internal technical due diligence should include an assessment of open-source licensing risk, allowing the company to resolve any problems in advance.

By conducting thorough technical due diligence before embarking on the process of an acquisition, organisations will have a greater appeal to interested parties and can ensure the deal will proceed smoothly.

Those looking to acquire will have a clearer understanding of the technical assets for sale, with the added reassurance there won’t be any unpleasant surprises.

Yahoo recently felt the ramifications of neglecting IT systems in anticipation of the Verizon acquisition, after it was revealed earlier this year that 500 million customer email accounts were hacked. This now has the potential to affect the final deal - Verizon have issued a statement stating that the company is looking to alter the terms of the deal, as it felt Yahoo wasn’t completely transparent about the breach. This is a prime example of technical due diligence that hasn’t been thoroughly conducted and proves issues unearthed during the closing stages of an acquisition have the potential to affect the final sale price.

Pre-implementation hurdles Once an acquisition has been agreed in principle, senior stakeholders must then address which systems are being continued and which should be decommissioned. A skilled project manager must be chosen to manage and monitor the implementation of the systems; ensuring decisions impacting the seamless integration of the acquisition are made on time.

Issue 6 | 25

We are the bridge that connects you with world markets We offer the most advanced solutions to operate in real time worldwide

0810 666 4717 www.puentenet.com

Financial solutions since 1915

PUENTE HNOS. S.A. IS AN INTEGRAL AND SETTLEMENT AGENT AND A BARGAINING AGENT (ALYC INTEGRAL) REGISTRED AT THE CNV (ACRONYM WHICH STANDS FOR "COMISION NACIONAL DE VALORES", "NATIONAL SECURITIES EXCHANGE COMMISSSION" IN ENGLISH) UNDER NUMBER 28, AND REGISTRED AT THE PUBLIC REGISTRY OF COMMERCE UNDER NUMBER 11481, BOOK 6, VOLUME - OF "CORPORATIONS". REPÚBLICA BUILDING, 1st TUCUMAN ST, 14th FLOOR (C1049AAA), BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA. PHONE 0810-666-4717 / CUIT 30-70102707-4 / WWW.PUENTENET.COM

AMERICAS BUSINESS

Companies often underestimate the amount of work that goes into managing the process of an acquisition. This can result in the appointment of a project manager without the necessary skills needed to efficiently run the entire process. All too often it is assumed acquisitions only affect the financial and legal teams, when in reality it affects every department. An individual is needed with the skills to communicate across all departments and at all levels.

Post-acquisition finishing touches The sale is agreed and personnel have merged, but it doesn’t stop there. Postacquisition integration is a separate project in its own right and requires close engagement from senior stakeholders.

Merging IT systems across companies can affect the smooth running of daily operations, exposing flaws in acquired

systems likely to cause system downtime.

By bringing third-party experts on-board, companies facing both pre- and postacquisition challenges can be kept safe in the knowledge that IT systems are maintained and sensitive data is kept safe.

No matter how big or small the company or the number of employees, acquisitions are always a major upheaval. In order to allow the organisation to continue to operate efficiently both during and after the deal, it is vital the entire integration is properly planned and effectively executed.

This planning starts during due diligence by carrying out a thorough assessment of the technology and systems. And the process continues with the execution of the integration project, which requires a skilled project manager supported by engaged stakeholders and effective communication at all levels in the new organisation.

Nick Pointon Head of M&A SQS

1 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-hackers-insidertradinidU SKBN0P31M720150623

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AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

Understanding the Next Generation of Software Robotics

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AMERICAS TECHNOLOGY

Neil Kinson, chief of staff, Redwood Software discusses why we must move away from the idea that robots simply replace humans if the industry is to thrive in the new year.

configure computer software or a ‘robot’ to capture and analyse existing applications for manipulating data, processing a transaction or triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems.

The Robotised Enterprise™, where an organisation has realised the ideal of having all back-office operations fully robotised so human involvement is only required for judgement and analysis, is seldom understood from a business perspective.

The shared services sector in particular is split on the capability of robotics when performing critical business processes.

According to recent Redwood Software research carried out with Shared Services Link, 97% of people in shared services agree that robotics have the ability to automate manual data entry tasks, yet only 52% are in agreement that they understand basic financial processes. Only 51% of respondents were confident in their ability to replace human activity across the entire spectrum, which is surprising considering that 67% of shared service professionals plan on using RPA within the next 12 months. 72% of these organisations plan on leveraging existing investment in ERP to drive further automation in the next year.

Process robotics can therefore play an integral role in how processes are managed and transformed in shared services.

But that is not the extent of robotics’ capability. The rise of process robotics presents a real chance to reimagine processes from the ground up. Companies should look at how they can positively transform core processes by looking at opportunities with a ‘robotic lens’ and not a ‘human one’. For example, to ensure enterprise grade scalability, security and resilience, organisations should deploy robots to interact with business and core ERP systems through APIs and other standard integration methods.

So, what do these statistics mean and how can shared services and finance professionals better understand Robotic Process Automation in order to fully reap the benefits?

Understanding robotics Everyone is talking about robotics but no one is agreeing on a uniform definition.

Everyone thinks that they know, but no one is looking at it holistically.

We need to make some clear distinctions between the different forms of process robotics on the market.

According to the Institute for Robotic Process Automation (IRPA), enterprise process robotics is the application of technology that enables employees to

Recent Redwood research into the rise of ‘RoboFinance®’ revealed that investment into robotics doesn’t just meet, but can in fact exceed a company’s expectations.

At Royal DSM – a global science, health and nutrition company – it was reported that by deploying over 60 software “process robots” across nine business groups allowed the organisation to automate a staggering 89 percent of the 485,000 manual tasks associated with its global financial close process, shrank its financial close process from 15 to 3 days, and freed up 45 Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) for more valuable work. The limits of what enterprise process robotics can achieve for core business processes are seemingly limitless.

2017 as the ‘new dawn’ for robotics

In light of this, organisations should thoroughly consider how robotics can be used to achieve significant process improvement, part of which requires a strong commitment to not doing things in the way they have always been done, but rather the way they’ve always imagined processes could be done.

What many finance and shared services professionals are worried about however, is that if you remove humans from the process entirely, control will diminish. That is not the case. Indeed, it is the opposite. Automating processes end-to-end removes the siloed approach and enhances overall control.

The days of throwing more timeconsuming manual effort at critical business processes to make them run more efficiently are behind us. Process robotics, without the need for unnecessary manual intervention, offers the consistency, speed and accuracy that businesses need to stay afloat in today’s competitive global marketplace. Those organisations that embrace robotics will be the ones that survive and thrive in 2017 and beyond.

Robotics isn’t too good to be true Now we have defined robotics, it is important to understand the benefits it can bring to a company. In a financial context, process robotics brings tremendous potential to improve core financial processes and efficiencies, and more importantly, the standardisation thereof. For example, reports can be automatically generated allowing for reliable and trusted data thanks to the accompanying documentation and 100% accurate audit trails that are present at every part of the process. Moreover, built in business rules eliminate the need to micro manage and allows users to trigger actions and monitor processes, whether at a desk or on the move.

Neil Kinson Chief of Staff Redwood Software

Issue 6 | 29

AMERICAS FINANCE

Risk-Based Approach to KYC A sound concept, a complex reality When Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) legislation came onto the scene in the early 1990s, one might say it lacked finesse – it was highly prescriptive in nature, leaving little room for interpretation and forced banks and financial institutions (FIs) to tick the boxes of compliance controls. Within a decade, it started to become clear that one size actually didn’t fit all.

These regulations originally based on the risks and controls related to retail banking simply didn’t fit other business models, such as private, institutional or investment banking and wealth management. But because compliance isn’t optional, all businesses had to comply as best they could – even if that meant shoehorning retail AML control concepts to fit their own business models, while potentially missing the real risks to which they were exposed. The end result was that compliance efforts frequently failed to meet regulatory expectations.

And then came the Risk-Based Approach (RBA), a logical new approach to managing risk.

An added layer of complexity

Imagine a compliance environment where the controls match the actual risk. That was the goal of RBA – a more flexible and rational approach, shifting the focus to banks and FIs demonstrating they were addressing actual risks that AML controls exposed, rather than simply ticking (sometimes irrelevant) boxes hoping to satisfy the regulator. Prior to RBA, controls were black and white regardless of circumstances. The RBA allowed flexibility to reduce or increase controls based on the customer and the risk they posed.

While the RBA made life easier in some ways, it made it harder in others. Firms were expected to understand and assess the specific risks they faced and have a deeper understanding of risk in general.

The new approach also required a degree of interpretation and individualization by firms and their compliance departments.

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AMERICAS FINANCE

Risk-based approach and the financial action task force In 2007, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) stepped in with its first attempt at implementing an RBA, issuing a paper which stated:

“By adopting a risk-based approach, competent authorities and financial institutions are able to ensure that measures to prevent or mitigate money laundering and financing threats are commensurate to the risks identified. This will allow resources to be allocated in the most efficient ways. The principle is that resources should be directed in accordance with priorities so that the greatest risks receive the highest attention. The alternative approaches are that resources are either applied evenly, so that all financial institutions, customers, products, etc., receive equal attention, or that resources are targeted, but on the basis of factors other than the risk assessed. This

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can inadvertently lead to a ‘tick box’ approach with the focus on meeting regulatory needs rather than combating money laundering or financing threats.”

The intention of the RBA was clear: to create more pragmatic processes. The result was somewhat different, with highly complex processes emerging in many instances as a direct result of individual interpretation of the new guidelines. This led to widespread confusion throughout the industry.

The FATF then revised its guidelines in 2010. The Expert Working Group advising the FATF on the risk-based approach and FATF Recommendations in 2010 said:

“As a basic principle, financial institutions and DNFBPs (Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions) should be required to take steps to identify and assess their money laundering/financing threat risks for customers, countries or

AMERICAS FINANCE

In 2012, as part of their revision of the 40 Recommendations, the FATF issued a further definition regarding the RBA requiring countries to assess and understand their moneylaundering/financing-threat risks and to designate an authority to coordinate actions to assess and mitigate risks using a risk-based approach. It also noted that countries should require reporting entities to assess and take effective action to mitigate their money-laundering/financing-threat risks.

The 2010 and 2012 definitions delivered largely positive results: By focusing on understanding money- laundering/ financing-threat risk and then deploying effective controls to manage and mitigate those risks, the current guidelines are far more “workable” and therefore much more useful to banks and FIs grappling with a constantly increasing regulatory burden.

Two pillars of risk assessment

geographic areas, and products/services/transactions/delivery channels. Additionally, they should have policies, controls and procedures in place to effectively manage and mitigate their risks, which should be approved by senior management and be consistent with national requirements and guidance.”

This language was materially different from the 2007 FATF paper and signaled a seismic shift in clarity over what RBA means. 2010 was also the first time the FATF articulated the concept of “effective” risk-based controls, and this definition also makes national legislators responsible for defining what is deemed to be effective.

Despite being issued in 2010, this concept is still filtering through: Regulators around the world are increasingly using the language of “effectiveness” in their dialogue with industry. Effectiveness has further been pushed up the agenda of national regulators as the FATF’s fourth round of mutual evaluations specifically focuses on “effective in practice” assessments.

This evolution in the RBA has resulted in two distinct pillars of risk assessment. First, on a country-by-country basis, each individual government needs to understand their vulnerability to money laundering through national risk assessments.

Social demographics are, of course, unique to each country, so this exercise in understanding your environment forms an important pillar in a successful AML strategy.

Second, against the context of national risk, each FI must complete its own internal risk assessment, tailoring its money-laundering/financing-threat risk management program around this. However, these internal assessments can be quite complex, particularly when individual interpretation of guidelines is thrown into the mix.

What risks need to be addressed?

There are four main categories of risk to consider:

Vulnerability The first category concerns the vulnerability of a specific business operation. FATF 2012 sets out a lengthy list of offenses, and firms must guard against each and every one of these. Compliance professionals should be asking questions such as, “Are we vulnerable to, for example, people smuggling or drug trafficking?”

Create an environment that promotes money laundering?

The second category centers on the risk of a bank or FI inadvertently creating an environment that promotes or allows money laundering. Questions to ask include, “Do our controls create an environment where the money launderer can thrive? Are there any gaps in our controls that a money launderer could exploit?”

More specific risks The risks above are general in nature, and the third category comprises a selection of more specific risks, including:

Issue 6 | 33

AMERICAS FINANCE

•

•

•

Customer risk – Banks and FIs must have adequate KYC processes in place to ensure they understand whom they’re doing business They must fully understand the risks posed by a particular person or entity, including politically exposed person (PEP) risk and sanction risk.

Product vulnerability – Certain products are naturally more attractive to money launderers than for example, a checking account offers more scope for laundering than a fixed-term deposit. Factors such as the availability and flexibility of a product could make it inherently risky from a money- laundering perspective.

Geographic risk – Not all countries carry the same risks, and banks and FIs need to be aware of the specific risk environments where they Operating in high moneylaundering/financing- threat risk countries means that a more stringent control environment could be necessary.

Regulatory risk The final category is regulatory risk. There is always the risk that banks and FIs don’t adequately measure up to regulatory expectations. The stakes are high, and the financial and reputational fallout from compliance breaches is well-documented.

Regulatory risk is sometimes poorly understood and inconsistently addressed. This risk often keeps compliance professionals awake at night and, just possibly, takes their collective eye off identifying the business-specific risks outlined above. The fear of regulatory failure could well be driving a disproportionate interpretation of what is required and, perversely, contributing to increased regulatory risk.

What’s hampering risk-based approach?

Over the last decade, compliance professionals have joined the C-suite as the “new” importance of this “hot topic” has resulted in a drive to keep the institution safe. At the same time, there is often a tendency to overly complicate processes. The risk with that complexity is that the controls implemented are not commensurate with actual risk, which was the original aim of RBA.

It is clear from the FATF 2012 guidelines and the evolution of RBA that while this fresh approach has been widely implemented, it is not well understood. Processes have not been fully formed and, in some cases, are driving the wrong outcomes. Despite all the efforts of FATF, local regulators and entire compliance teams, there are still some cases where there are inadequate controls in place to manage and mitigate money-laundering/financing-threat risk.

The fact that current regulations were originally based on the risks and controls relating to retail banking has unintentionally created regulatory barriers to the effective deployment of an RBA in many sectors. The more progressive regulatory regimes recognize this and are striving to address the polarized nature of legislation and regulation to create regulatory environments where a truly risk-sensitive regime can be sustained.

34 | Issue 6

Legislation around AML and RBA was also largely written in the pre-digital age when access to the data that helps firms understand and document risk was limited. There is now a plethora of data available, but many organizations struggle to take advantage of this. Solutions are becoming widely available to help firms harness the power of information to drill down and find the risks they need to be considering.

Thomson Reuters has devoted significant resources to developing a suite of risk products and services that support a firm’s development and the operation of an effective RBA. Thomson Reuters Org ID, as one possible solution, provides a KYC-managed service that supports systematic risk identification based on identity data, and documents and carries out ongoing monitoring, alerting a firm to any changes surrounding a corporate customer and the potential risks they pose.

AMERICAS FINANCE

Back to simplicity RBA as a concept remains sound – and it is far superior to the tick-box approach it has replaced. What’s needed is simplicity of assessment and application, because the very real risk faced by firms is that they may spend vast amounts of time and effort creating a control environment that complies with regulations but doesn’t actually manage the real risks they face – all while inadvertently contributing to increased regulatory risk.

Here’s an alternative approach: Focus on simplicity – on identifying and managing the actual money- laundering/financing-threat risks a firm faces – and deploy controls that are proportionate to those risks. The result will be that firms will automatically comply with the aim and philosophy of the vast majority of AML regulations.

Neil Jeans Head of Policy & Regulation Thomson Reuters Org ID

Issue 6 | 35

Middle East

36 Issue 6

MIDDLE EAST INSURANCE

Health Insurance in Saudi Arabia Bupa Arabia is one of the largest health insurers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, meeting the insurance needs of both individual clients as well as some of the Kingdom’s largest companies.

Tal Hisham Nazer has been the Chief Executive Officer of Bupa Arabia since 2008. Under his leadership, Bupa Arabia has become one of the fastest growing and successful health insurance companies in Saudi Arabia. Bupa Arabia is part of Bupa, the global healthcare company with 32 million members in 190 countries. Global Banking & Finance Review interviewed Tal Hisham Nazer to find out more about the health insurance landscape in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Bupa Arabia’s success.

in companies compared to the business volume, in the Saudi market, as well as the problem of undercutting prices, which aims to expand sales without regard to the potential risks.

Despite the widespread use of insurance companies to cover most parts of the Kingdom.

The greatest concentration of business establishment remains in major cities, due to the lack of qualified hospitals and clinics that cover most regions of the Kingdom.

Let’s discuss the health insurance landscape in Saudi Arabia. What are current challenges you see present?

Today, there are no set standards that control the quality of the services and customer satisfaction.

Giving specialized international companies the opportunity to invest in healthcare services will enhance the market capacity. Therefore, leading to a higher level of competition and limits the continuous increase in healthcare costs.

There is no doubt that the insurance market in Saudi Arabia faces many challenges, most notably of which are, the high volume of claims, lower prices, compared to the risks, budget cuts,

The healthcare sector still needs a lot of legislation that promotes the continuous spread of insurance companies, while assuring highquality services to the beneficiary as well.

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MIDDLE EAST INSURANCE

What message do you have for those looking for insurance? What types of products and services are available for the “family” segment?

Bupa Arabia for Family is designed to meet the insurance needs of Saudi families. The Bupa Family products attributes are: • Overall medical insurance: One of our important goals is to continue to offer an overall medical insurance program that includes the treatment of patients both inside and outside the Kingdom; medical consultations at specialist doctors; congenital and genetic diseases care as well as chronic diseases care; pre-existing condition allowances; medical evacuation, and so on. We also cover patient companion costs (up to 12 years-old); and also include pregnancy and maternity coverage, dental and optical coverage, and we cover the cost of hearing aids.

These are all available under different insurance packages.

•

•

•

Coverage to suit you and your family: We offer a wide range of products that offer coverage with value and flexibility, that is wide-ranging in its benefits; all that is essential for your peaceof-mind, which is exactly what Bupa Arabia’s Family insurance products deliver.

Best in-class service: With Bupa Arabia, you don’t just get the best healthcare coverage, but the best level of service as well. We always go the extra mile with fast pre-authorization responses, easy claims, SMS message updates; and a secure, comprehensive and personalized online information system; as well as specialized medical advice and guidance, online and by phone 24/7.

The Tebtom program and the ‘Doctor on Phone’ service: It’s natural to be worried with healthcare concerns, and be reluctant to tell anyone. The Bupa

‘Doctor on Phone’ service from Tebtom, gives you peace-of-mind through confidential advice, a second opinion on any medical condition you would prefer not to discuss with anyone in person, as well as many other healthcare services.

Customer service is a priority for Bupa Arabia. Why is this a primary focus?

We are our customers’ healthcare partners; people trust us with the health of their loved ones. So, it’s natural that when they call on us, we are there for them every step of the way. Telephone calls are personal and allow for that human-to-human element that is missed through other means of communication. That’s why the call center is so important.

How do you continue to meet the everchanging needs of customers?

• •

• • •

Annual Innovation and Strategy workshops Review of data collected through the call center, addressing the top issues and needs of our calling customers “Call center quality” reports and reviews.

“Satisfaction reports and reviews” Remaining agile and proactive to adapt with the ever-changing need of our customers.

How is Bupa Arabia meeting the challenges of IT development?

With the rise of digital trends and the massive increase of mobile penetration into the Kingdom, Bupa Arabia has realized the potential of digital channels to offer unmatched services to members, that change the landscape of health insurance.

Bupa Arabia was the first in the industry to offer online services to its members.

Our members can track their claims and preauthorization requests, obtain an insurance certificate, and access their membership cards online through our website or App. At Bupa Arabia, we don’t make promises we cannot keep. We pledged to guide our members, and members of the community,

38 | Issue 6

to be with them step-by-step as they work towards living healthier and happier lives.

We also thought about ways to make it easier for our coverage members to find the clinics and hospitals covered under their network. Through the Bupa Arabia mobile app and geo-location technology our members can be given directions to the hospital or clinic they need (if they allow the option on their mobile device).

We have also invested in digital channels (online services and the Bupa Arabia mobile app) to allow our members to access unprecedented sets of health services such as those included in the Tebtom Program that include medication delivery, maternity care, home-based vaccinations, wellness services and telemedicine where by phone, mobile app, or through the Bupa Arabia website, our team of doctors will make sure members receive an exceptional level of service.

We also reach out to the entire community through the health tips and articles that we frequently post on our social media platforms and Bupa Arabia blog (blog.bupa. com.sa).

In addition, we have revolutionized the way insurance is purchased, as we were the first in the market to utilize e-commerce and sell private medical insurance policies online.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an initiative that is important and close to the hearts for those at Bupa Arabia. Can you tell us some of the ways you support socioeconomic development in Saudi Arabia?

After analyzing numerous possibilities for our initial CSR program, we decided that the strengths of Bupa Arabia could be best utilized by focusing on our core competency.

This strategy ultimately gave birth to a new program that provides free medical coverage to the most vulnerable in our society: Orphans.

MIDDLE EAST INSURANCE

There are an estimated 10,000 orphans in Saudi Arabia, 3,000 of who live in government-run, and private orphanages and 7000 of who have been adopted by families. Until now, orphanage residents relied on government-run hospitals for healthcare. These facilities, often located far from the orphanages, are frequently overcrowded, inefficient and lacking quality and resources. Transportation issues, long queues and appointments set months in advance, all combined to devastate orphan healthcare. With all of this in mind, the decision to provide free

health insurance to the 3000 orphans living in orphanages as the first phase of our program, was an easy decision. We wanted to implement this immediately.

Today whenever any of our orphans visit a hospital or clinic, we are alerted and ensure he or she is given VIP service.

Additionally, with the difficulties of raising an orphan foremost in our minds, we decided to implement a program that goes beyond simply supplying health insurance cards.

Today, we provide them with a service that makes them feel special, and cared for. Bupa Arabia is the only private health insurance company to offer free insurance to any group in the Kingdom.

Since the program’s inception in May, 2011, we have processed over 250,000 services and treatments along with 290 exceptional cases through this CSR initiative.

What is the strategic vision for Bupa Arabia?

For Bupa Arabia….

To be the largest healthcare company in the Arab world; when we touch you, whether you are our employee, a customer, or member of the community, you live a healthier and happier life.

Tal Hisham Nazer CEO Bupa Arabia Tal Nazer is a member of the board of Arabian Medical Marketing Co. Ltd. (Nawah), and was previously the Chairman of the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency (SAMA) Insurance General Committee, and is currently the Chairman of the Health Insurance Subcommittee.

In addition, since 2013, Nazer has been a member of the board of the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF); and a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) since 2005; as well as a member in WEF’s Young Global Leaders (YGL) since 2013; as well as a board member of Choate Rosemary Hall since 2015.

Nazer holds a Master’s Degree in Finance and Buyouts from The Wharton School, Pennsylvania, USA (2001) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics, from the University of California at Los Angeles (Dec. 1996).

Issue 6 | 39

MIDDLE EAST TECHNOLOGY

Five Factors Behind Digital Transformation Success Digital transformation is having a huge impact on every aspect of the way we work, live and learn. Big data, social, cloud computing and developments in mobile technology have already drastically altered the landscape of business, education, entertainment and government.

Whole businesses have been built on cloud and big data, while existing companies have used the technology to diversify into new areas of business. And any company that is not paying attention to social media and mobile innovation is frankly living in the dark ages.

The pace and scale of change that digital technology is enabling means organisations must adapt to remain relevant. And they must use digital technology to do so. In short, digital transformation is now a business imperative.

The form this takes will vary widely, but the majority of enterprises will overhaul their digital customer interfaces, along with the customer engagement systems behind them. Customer services will also become increasingly personalised, with IDC predicting that doing this at scale will be a “complex enterprise-wide digital transformation initiative”.

In addition, IDC predicts1 that in the next two years, two-thirds of Global 20002 CEOs will put digital transformation at the centre of their growth and profitability strategies while

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the scale-up of digital business strategies will drive more than 50% of enterprise IT spending within the next 24 months, rising to 60% by 2020.

However, most organizations are still in the early stages of digital maturity, working on isolated projects that lack coordination.

Even where digital transformation has taken place, it’s not always been a success: IDC found that less than half of such initiatives achieve their goals. This is often down to IT departments failing to deliver the speed or quality needed to chase new markets, respond to competitive threats or increase profits.

In contrast, the handful of organisations that fully understand enterprise-wide digital transformation are making increasingly-rapid progress, disrupting industries and leaving competitors behind in the process.

Digital transformation clearly means different things to different people and that pursuing a strategy won’t necessarily equate to the changes that are need to ensure future business success. But if businesses are able to incorporate some key ingredients into their digital transformation strategies, success will more than likely follow.

What follows is a summary of the considerations exchanged in a series of discussions with more than 150 high-level IT executives from different industries across Europe about digital and IT transformation,

highlighting what’s really needed to help CIOs thrive and overcome obstacles on their journey, from roadmap definition to multiphased implementation across applications, infrastructure and operating models.

Adopt a risk-taking attitude Transformational change is often difficult to achieve as existing IT systems, organizational setup and culture create an inertia that is hard to break from. A culture of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ persists in many organisations, to the detriment of change.

Businesses must be prepared to take risks and move away from the way things were done in the past if they are to achieve IT-driven innovation. Essentially, they should try new approaches that will help pave the way for digital transformation across the entire organization.

This could mean putting open innovation and dev ops programmes in place or assigning IT teams to specific business units.

Looking at the talent side of things, a hiring programme focused on millennials would bring in native digital skills to support the new way of doing things.

Put data at the heart of things

Data is the fuel for innovation and should be used for value creation, prediction and process optimisation. Success in creating new services and ways of working

MIDDLE EAST TECHNOLOGY

depends on the data pipelines that flow in and out of organisations.

Some organisations have taken this seriously by appointing a Chief Data Officer who will have an overview of company data and how it should be classified. They will look at the rules and regulations for various data classes to ensure they are used in the most appropriate way.

Big data and analytics are critical in this, as they provide the capability to extract more value from data than ever before, slicing and dicing information in new ways that can provide new and useful insight that could be used to enhance digital customer experience and targeted marketing.

Create a modern datacentre This secular shift requires and is propelled by a fundamental IT transformation, which embraces cloud as a primary IT architecture and consumption model, to manage millions of devices and the data deluge associated with them, to create large data lakes and enable for example predictive services. This all creates the need for a modern datacentre architecture to overcome the information siloes and rigid IT infrastructure that limits transformation and the implementation of a hybrid cloud IT infrastructure.

Hybrid cloud infrastructure is in fact a key enabler of digital transformation as it supports mobile and cloudnative workloads

as well as the existing business-critical and legacy workloads. At the same time, it supports innovative projects initiated by the business.

It is important that CIOs evaluate which workloads and data should move to the cloud so that the benefits of scalability, agility and service-based IT delivery are maximised. A strong business case should always be developed before data is moved between environments to ensure that it is being moved for the right reasons.

Foster closer ties between IT and business innovation Business innovation initiatives are often limited in their success by being separated from the infrastructure, systems and processes required to support them. This siloed approach means business departments and IT aren’t aligned, making it harder for IT to deliver exactly what is needed.

Effective digital transformation requires an IT organization that acts as a strong partner with the rest of the business that provides the necessary tools and infrastructure to support specific projects. Bringing together the skills and talents from across business and IT will ensure transformation projects deliver the intended impact.

This is particularly important given that long term stable digital transformation requires continuous innovation and integration.

Choose the right tech provider The final element needed for effective digital transformation is a technology provider that matches the ambition of the business and will be relevant in the long term. To be effective and successful partners to their customers, technology providers must provide support for a strategy and governance framework that spans operating model, infrastructure and applications, delivering measurable results in each phase of implementation to then also transform leadership and customer experience. This will truly help CIOs to thrive in the digital era.

Roberto Mircoli Senior Director Enterprise Marketing – EMEA Dell EMC 1 http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40552015 2 (n.d.). Retrieved December 08, 2016, from http://www.forbes. com/global2000/

Issue 6 | 41

MIDDLE EAST FINANCE

Microfinance Movement: Time for a Revolution?

42 | Issue 6

MIDDLE EAST FINANCE 2016 has arguably been a transformative year for financial technology – a new, digital approach to delivering financial services has offered a faster, more convenient and more useful experience to customers by combining platforms, channels and technology. Today millions of people are gaining access to financial services that were otherwise unattainable in previous years. It’s an incredibly exciting and time for the “fintech” business and its overall impact on society.

In developing countries, 2.5 billion people are ‘unbanked’ and have to rely on cash or informal financial services which are typically unsafe, inconvenient and expensive. There are many areas of technology currently being used to try and disrupt traditional banking models and enable financial inclusion within certain emerging markets.

These advancements have proven that being unbanked does not equate to unbankable, in fact they are very much still credit worthy. A new shift in thinking has opened wide the possibility to meet people where they are with the service they most need, and that shift was enabled by two simple words: digital transformation.

Digital transformation means different things to different industries, but at its core it is the same - a new way of conducting business, transactions, even life. It is an always on, always personalized, always direct means of engaging with customers when they want it, where they want it and how they want it. For mobile operators, this transformation was made possible by the convergence of three key areas: cloud capabilities, big data and the ubiquitous rise of smartphones.

Digital financial technology, or “fintech,” has expanded access to financial services for hard-to-reach populations and small businesses

at low cost and risk. New products are now possible, where they weren’t before. The combustion of cloud computing and data science, along with the proliferation of smartphones has opened up opportunities to establish financial identities for the billions who are underbanked. The use of cloud computing and data science have made complex functionalities accessible across diverse locations and markets.

The widespread use of mobile phones in emerging markets has created the conditions for large-scale expansion of mobile financial services, which will enable organizations to dramatically increase financial inclusion. However, identity presents a major challenge.

The majority of these consumers are anonymous, preventing access to essential mobile financial services. Juvo’s mission is to establish the financial identities for the 5.7 billion prepaid mobile users around the world who are credit worthy, yet financially excluded.

We are partnering with mobile operators to help provide a financial identity to these subscribers using big data to create ‘Identity Scoring’ - a concept more robust than a credit score because it takes into account behaviors, preferences and lifestyle.

Using machine learning to analyze digital footprints left by smartphone use, Juvo builds a financial identity and provides access to mobile financial services. Mobile operators are seeing an immediate lift in ARPU of 10-15 percent and a 50 percent reduction in churn. Financial services companies open the door to a previously untapped market in the billions, and individual subscribers are exposed to a host of opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have as Juvo walks them up a pathway to financial inclusion.

The world of finance is starting to recognize the immense value in this wholly untapped market, and a recent report from McKinsey1 placed a dollar amount of $3.7 trillion by 2025 on the impact that digital finance will have in emerging markets. Sophisticated technology offers the ability to meet segments that were previously unreachable before and mobile banking is of course one example of this new phenomenon. It was reported2 that in 2014 that 80 percent of adults in emerging economies had mobile phones, but only 55 percent have a financial account. With three billion new smartphone subscribers expected in emerging markets by 20203, it is clear that the potential to deliver advanced financial services is vast and is spurring a digital revolution.

2017 is set to be a big year for the fintech sector. It will be the ticket for financial inclusion for all in a global digital economy.

While the microfinance movement has its place, it isn’t a game-changer for the vast majority of the population. The revolution will come when users can be identified and assigned a financial identity that will bring real value to their lives.

Steve Polsky Founder and CEO Juvo

1

http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-andgrowth/how-digital-finance-could-boost-growth-in-emergingeconomies

2

http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-andgrowth/how-digital-finance-could-boost-growth-in-emergingeconomies

3

http://www.gsma.com/newsroom/press-release/asia-pacificadd-600-million-new-mobile-subscribers-2020-finds-latestgsma-mobile-economy-study/

Issue 6 | 43

MIDDLE EAST TECHNOLOGY

The Power of Graph

Wobi Plugs Into The Power Of Graph For Insurance Price Comparison Neo Technology’s CEO Emil Eifrem discusses the issues Wobi, Israel’s best-known price comparison website for pensions and insurance, is using graph database technology to address Graph databases have a growing reputation in the financial services sector. That’s because, unlike most other ways of looking at data, graph databases are designed from the ground up to model and uncover relationships, which means they can uncover patterns traditional representations such as SQL tables can either never spot or take too long to process. Analysts forecast wide take up as a result,.

Let’s immediately state that graph databases are not appropriate for every financial sector computing problem.

There are transactional and analytical processing needs within financial institutions that relational technology is still pitch-perfect for, such as systems of record in HR or finance.

However, let’s look at one specific finance issue – serving the price comparison market adequately. Price comparison websites have become increasingly popular because of the convenience they offer customers, set up to allow consumers to compare numerous finance products, from

44 | Issue 6

car loans to home insurance, all in one place. Consumers can then evaluate the results to make an informed buying decision. To stay ahead in the cut-throat world of finance price comparison websites, the firm knows it needs to provide a continuous stream of compelling ‘value offers,’ which can only be realistically done by analysing large swathes of customer data, fast.

Price comparison turns out to be a very interesting example of how graph database technology can come into its own when an organisation is looking to get the most from connected data out of large-scale datasets – which is what one of our finance clients, Israeli-based insurance and pensions leader Wobi, recently discovered.

With five years of successful trading behind it, Wobi is already the best-known price comparison website of its type in its market. With 500,000 customers and millions of monthly visitors to its website, on the back of its swift success, it is already looking to launch a banking and finance comparison service later this year.

MIDDLE EAST TECHNOLOGY

Wobi knew that to make its stamp on the industry it had to be able to provide customers with ‘value offers’ every time.

To do that, it needed to create a detailed financial profile of each customer, including their family status, insurance policies, pensions, savings, and accounts. The Wobi team we worked with also knew that drilling down into this knowledge was not going to be easy without the right tools.

Wobi started to try and solve these issues with an object database approach, but that proved unsatisfactory. So Wobi began looking at various database offerings – and soon realised that the graph database approach was the best option for working with these constraints while still delivering the outcomes it wanted.

30 million relationships in constant view

Big data challenge Wobi ended up deciding its best approach was a single database solution that would provide it with a granularlevel understanding of its customers that would enable it to outpace the competition. The team had to be able to work with a data engine able to drill-down and provide ‘deep dives’ when needed on individual’s history in real.

However, the structure and type of files it had stored the data in were a challenge to work with. Wobi holds its data in a tree-like structure, which means that under each customer hangs a wealth of information. Fine and good design, but that results in often large files that need to be extracted quickly and efficiently when requested.

“We are all about understanding the customer,” says the fast-growing firm’s CTO, Shai Bentin. “To do that, we need an easy way to describe our customers and build connections between them and their information. With Neo4j, I had the power to describe my data with relationships,” he told me.

“Describing a relationship is important,” Bentin added. “For example, we get new information about pensions monthly.

To model this in an object-oriented way would be lengthy, whereas with a graph database I have a relationship called ‘latest’, and a relationship called ‘previous’, and I can just do a ‘select’ and get whatever I need.”

Issue 6 | 45

MIDDLE EAST TECHNOLOGY

Once it had settled on the graph database model, Wobi opted to run with Neo4j, a graph database. Neo4j is right at the centre of Wobi’s network of 20 servers. Wobi has a team of five people dedicated to graph database development and testing work to ensure reliable data is available where and when it is needed fast.

But where graph database technology is really proving its worth is tracking the relationships that make data return value to a comparison website. The database currently runs around a million relationships a second and is handling half a million customers with an average of eight pensions, insurance policies and products, a total of 30 million relationships .

As a result says Bentin, “We can look at the customer’s account in such depth that we can tell them they must have a water leak somewhere because they have been paying way over the average for their water every month! We can also now easily see how to suggest a customer move from, say, one phone company to another, as the other

46 | Issue 6

supplier would better suits their actual expenditure,” he says.

Understanding the customer What I appreciate about the Wobi story is how clearly it shows the power of understanding relationships in today’s online business world.

It’s graph-powered, fine-detailed, awareness of individual customers and their requirements is fundamental to providing the right kind of offers users of services like Wobi seek.

Experiences like Wobi’s and others who are starting to exploit the power of graph databases underline how large the contribution of graph databases for any high-performance database need in the financial sector could be.

And as finance is a sector where information needs to be available at any time at all customer contact points and to help the customer, I think that really matters.

Emil Eifrem CEO Neo Technology

Emil Eifrem co-founder and CEO of Neo Technology, the company behind Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database (http://neo4j. com/)

2016 AWARD WINNERS Global Banking and Finance Review is privileged to honour those financial institutions who have achieved outstanding results and who stand out in their particular area of expertise in the banking and finance industry.

Global Banking & Finance Review would like to congratulate the award winners and look forward to their continued success. The awards were created to recognize companies of all sizes that are prominent in particular areas of expertise and excellence within the financial community. They reflect the involvement of leading financial organizations and recognize the accomplishment, achievement, innovation, strategy, progressive and motivating changes taking place within the financial sector.

Best STP Broker Africa 2016 Best Introducing Broker Program Africa 2016 Best Payments Processor Africa 2016 Best SME Bank Albania 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Albania 2016 Best Retail Bank Albania 2016 Best Insurance Company Albania 2016 Best Retail Bank Algeria 2016 Best Private Bank Andorra 2016 Best CSR Bank Andorra 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Angola 2016 Best Commercial Bank Angola 2016 Best Internet Bank Angola 2016 Best Insurance Company Angola 2016 Best New Investment Bank Angola 2016 Best Investment Company Angola 2016 Best Banking CEO Angola 2016 – Antonio Coutinho Best Bank for Corporate Governance Angola 2016 Best Investment Bank Angola 2016 Best Cash Management Bank Argentina 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Argentina 2016 Best Capital Markets Company Argentina 2016 Best Investment Management Team Argentina 2016 Best SME Bank Argentina 2016 Best Customer Service Financial Company Argentina 2016 Best Research House Argentina 2016 Best Trading Platform Argentina 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Armenia 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Armenia 2016 Best Corporate Bank Armenia 2016 Best Internet Bank Armenia 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Armenia Best Retail Bank Armenia 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Armenia 2016 Best Customer Service Broker Asia 2016 Best Islamic Exchange Asia 2016 Best Introducing Broker Affiliate Program Asia 2016 Best Binary Options Broker Asia 2016 Best Trading Platform Asia 2016 Best New Investment Platform Asia 2016 Fastest Growing STP Broker Asia 2016 Best Aviation Leasing Company Asia 2016 Best Credit Insurer Asia Pacific 2016 Best Forex Execution Broker Asia-Pacific 2016 Fastest Growing STP Broker Asia Pacific 2016 Best Forex Education Provider Australasia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Australia 2016 Most Innovative Stock Exchange Company Australia 2016 Best Private Bank Austria 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Azerbaijan 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory Azerbaijan 2016 Best Internet Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best SME Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best Retail Bank of Azerbaijan 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best Micro Finance Company Azerbaijan 2016 Best CSR Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Retail Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Internet Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Islamic Banking Product (It’eman Account) Bahrain 2016 Best Islamic Retail Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Islamic Credit Card Program (Easy 36) Bahrain 2016 Best Islamic Leasing Advisory Provider Bahrain 2016 Best Electronic Payment Service Provider Bahrain 2016.

Best Asset Management Bank Bahrain 2016 Best Retail Bank Belarus 2016 Best Corporate Bank Belarus 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Belgium 2016 Best Payments Solution Belgium 2016 Fastest Growing Business Bank Bolivia 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Bolivia 2016 Best General Insurance Company Bolivia 2016 Best Asset Management Company Bolivia 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Bolivia 2016 Best Business Bank Bolivia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Bolivia 2016 Best Retail Bank Bolivia 2016 Best Internet Bank Bosnia & Herzegovina 2016

Blackwell Global Blackwell Global Payment Express Ltd Tirana Bank Banka NBG Albania Sh.A Fibank (First Investment Bank) Sigal Uniqa Trust Bank Algeria Credit Andorra Credit Andorra Finibanco Angola Banco De Fomento Angola Banco Económico Global Seguros Banco Prestígio S.A Quantum Global Standard Bank Angola Standard Bank Angola Standard Bank Angola Banco Santander Río S.A. Banco Santander Río S.A. Puente Puente Banco Macro Portfolio Personal Portfolio Personal Puente Armeconombank “Areximbank-Gazprombank Group” CJSC “Areximbank-Gazprombank Group” CJSC “Areximbank-Gazprombank Group” CJSC Inecobank CJSC Anelik Bank CJSC Ararat Bank FBS Markets Inc. Bursa Malaysia Berhad Starfish FX Starfish FX Starfish FX IGOFX Firewood Global Ltd. BOC Aviation Atradius N.V. GDMFX Nico Financial NF Limited Learn to Trade Heritage Bank The Sydney Stock Exchange Erste Bank Pasha Life KPMG AGBank TuranBank DemirBank Amrahbank OJSC AccessBank CJSC VF AzerCredit National Bank of Bahrain B.S.C National Bank of Bahrain B.S.C BBK Bahrain Islamic Bank BSC Khaleeji Commercial Bank Bahrain Islamic Bank BSC Khaleeji Commercial Bank Ijara Management Company Arab Financial Services Company Gulf International Bank (GIB) Belgazprombank Belgazprombank KBC Bank Swift Banco Bisa Banco Ganadero S.A. BISA Seguros y Reaseguros SA BIM Asset Management Banco Solidario S.A. Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz Banco Mercantil Santa Cruz Nova Banka Ad Banja Luka

Best SME Bank Bosnia and Herzegovina 2016 Best Internet Bank Botswana Best Investment Banking Botswana 2016 Best Foreign Exchange Bank Botswana 2016 Best Custodian Bank Botswana 2016 Most Innovative Commercial Bank Botswana 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank Brazil 2016 Best Commercial Bank Brazil 2016 Best Agriculture Financing Bank Brazil 2016 Best Retail Bank Brazil 2016 Best Asset Management Bank Brazil 2016 Best Bank for Investor Relations Brazil 2016 Best Fixed Income House Brazil 2016 Fastest Growing Foreign Bank Brunei 2016 Best Credit Insurance Provider in Bulgaria 2016 Fastest Growing Treasury Bank Burkina Faso 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Burkina Faso 2016 Best Treasury Bank Burkina Faso 2016 Best Internet Bank Cambodia 2016 Best CSR Bank Cambodia 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Cambodia 2016 Fastest Growing Trade Finance Bank Cambodia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Cambodia 2016 Best Insurance Company Customer Service Cambodia 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Cambodia 2016 Most Innovative Insurance Product Cambodia 2016 Best CSR Company Cambodia 2016 Best Telecommunications Company Cambodia 2016 Best Bank for Premier Banking Cambodia 2016 Best Retail Bank Canada 2016 Best Private Wealth Management Company Canada 2016 Best Insurance Company Cape Verde 2016 36one Asset Management (Pty) Ltd Best Energy Broker Central and Eastern Europe 2016 Best New Asset Management Product (ABILS) Central & Eastern Europe 2016 Best Investment Bank Chile 2016 Best Bank for Loans Chile 2016 Best Infrastructure Company Chile 2016 Best AFP Chile 2016 Best Brokerage House Chile 2016 Best Internet Bank Chile 2016 Best Mobile Banking Chile 2016 Best CSR Bank Chile 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Chile 2016 Best CSR Bank China 2016 Best Foreign Bank China 2016 Best SME Bank China 2016 Best Green Bank China 2016 Most Innovative Banking Product (Enjoyable Life) China 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank China 2016 Best General Insurance Company Group China 2016 Best Wealth Management Bank China 2016 Best Forex Provider China 2016 Best New Asset Management Company China 2016 Best IB Program China 2016 Best Investor Relations Colombia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Colombia 2016 Best Banking Group Colombia 2016 Best Asset Management Company Colombia 2016 Best Mobile Payment Solution Provider Colombia 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Congo 2016 Most Innovative Banking Initiative (Women Empowerment) Congo 2016 Best SME Bank Costa Rica 2016 Best Commercial Bank Costa Rica 2016 Most Innovative Bank Costa Rica 2016 Best Retail Bank Costa Rica 2016 Best SME Bank in Cote d’Ivoire 2016 Best Corporate Bank Côte d’Ivoire 2016 Best Investment Bank Croatia 2016 Best Private Bank Cyprus 2016 Best Fund Administrator Cyprus 2016 Fastest Growing Private Bank Czech Republic 2016 Best CSR Bank Czech Republic 2016 Best Mortgage Bank Czech Republic 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Czech Republic 2016 Best Private Bank Czech Republic 2016 Best Pension Fund Provider Czech Republic 2016 Best Investment Management Company Czech Republic 2016 Best SME Bank Democratic Republic of Congo 2016 Best Eco Bank Democratic Republic of Congo 2016 Best Commercial Bank in Democratic Republic of Congo 2016 Best Private Bank Denmark 2016 Best Payment Solutions Provider Company Denmark 2016 Best Commercial Bank Dominican Republic 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Dominican Republic 2016 Best Brokerage House Dominican Republic 2016 Best It Banking Solutions Provider East Africa 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Egypt 2016 Best Non- Life Insurance Company Egypt 2016 Best Islamic Retail Bank Egypt 2016 Best Leasing Company Egypt 2016 Best Corporate Bank Egypt 2016 Fastest Growing Cash Management Bank Egypt 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank Egypt 2016

Sparkasse Bank dd Barclays Bank-Botswana Stanbic Bank Botswana Stanbic Bank Botswana Stanbic Bank Botswana First National Bank of Botswana Limited Banco Caixa Geral Brasil Banco Do Brasil S.A. Rabobank Banco Bradesco BNP Paribas Banco BMG Sparta Fundos Maybank Brunei Coface Bulgaria Ecobank Burkina Ecobank Burkina Bank of Africa Burkina Faso Hong Leong Bank (Cambodia) Plc. Maybank (Cambodia) Plc Maybank (Cambodia) Plc ABA Bank (Advanced Bank of Asia Ltd) Canadia Bank Forte Insurance (Cambodia) Plc Forte Insurance (Cambodia) Plc Emcare – Forte Insurance (Cambodia) Plc Smart Axiata Co., Ltd Smart Axiata Co., Ltd Vattanac Bank BMO Bank of Montreal Desjardins Private Wealth Management Garantia Seguros Best New Hedge Fund Product (36one Hedge Portfolio Class S) Cayman Islands 2016 42 Financial Services A.S. Phoenix CRetro Reinsurance Company Limited Banchile Inversiones Banco Santander Chile Intervial Chile S.A. Cuprum AFP Banchile Inversiones Banco De Chile Banco De Chile Scotiabank Scotiabank DBS Bank (China) Limited DBS Bank (China) Limited Ping An Bank Industrial Bank Co., Ltd Industrial Bank Co., Ltd Industrial Bank Co., Ltd People’s Insurance Company (Group) Of China Limited Standard Chartered Bank BMO Capital Markets Everence Financial Group Corporation (EFG Corporation) Juno Markets Grupo Aval Banco De Bogota Grupo Aval Grupo Sura Veritran Standard Bank DRC Finca Banco Improsa Sa Banco Lafise Banco Lafise Banco Lafise Versus Bank Societe Generale de Banques en Côte d’Ivoire Zagrebacka Banka D.D. Bank of Cyprus Alter Domus Raiffeisenbank Ceska Sporitelna, A.S. Ceska Sporitelna, A.S. Allianz Pojišťovna Ceskoslovenska Obchodni Banka, A. S. Kb Pension Company Conseq Procredit Bank Congo S. A Procredit Bank Congo S. A Rawbank Sa SEB Denmark Coinify Banreservas Banreservas Alpha PIO-TECH Solutions Egyptian Gulf Bank S.A.E Arab Misr Insurance Group (Gig) Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt ORIX Leasing QNB Alahli Barclays Bank Barclays Bank

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2017

Fastest Growing Trade Finance Bank Egypt 2016 Best Investment Bank Egypt 2016 Best Retail Bank Egypt 2016 Best SME Bank Egypt 2016 Best Bank for Trade Finance Activity Egypt 2016 Best Bank for Treasury Activities Egypt 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory Service Egypt 2016 Best Investment Banking Company Egypt 2016 Best Brokerage House Egypt 2016 Best Islamic Commercial Bank Egypt 2016 Best Retail Bank El Salvador 2016 Best Commercial Bank El Salvador 2016 Best Asset Management Company Estonia 2016 Best Credit Insurance Company Estonia 2016 Best Pension Fund Estonia 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Ethiopia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Ethiopia 2016 Best Internet Bank Ethiopia 2016 Best Trading Application Eurasian Economic Union 2016 Best Credit Insurer Europe 2016 Best Multi-Asset Liquidity Provider Europe 2016 Best Social Trading Platform Europe 2016 Best White Label Solutions Provider Europe 2016 Best European Long Term Growth Fund 2016 Best Online Trading Academy Europe 2016 Best Binary Options Broker Europe 2016 Best Core Banking Solutions Provider Europe 2016 Best Asset Management Company Finland 2016 Best Commercial Bank Gambia 2016 Best Internet Bank Gambia 2016 Best Banking Technology Gambia 2016 Best Finance Company for CSR Initiatives GCC 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Finance Company in GCC 2016 Best Finance Smart Solutions Provider in GCC 2016 Best Asset Manager GCC 2016 Best Digital Bank Georgia 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Georgia 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory Georgia 2016 Best Investment Bank Georgia 2016 Best Investment Brokerage Company Georgia 2016 Best Retail Bank Georgia 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank Georgia 2016 Best Bank for Social Media Germany 2016 Fastest Growing M&A Advisory Germany 2016 Best CSR Bank Germany 2016 Best M&A Advisory Germany 2016 Best Boutique Merchant Bank Germany 2016 Best New Asset Management Company Ghana 2016 Best SME Finance Company Ghana 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory House Ghana 2016 Best Investment Banking Company Ghana 2016 Best Research House Ghana 2016 Best Corporate Bank Ghana 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Ghana 2016 Best E-Commerce Bank Ghana 2016 Fastest Growing Trade Finance Bank Ghana 2016 Fastest Growing Health Insurance Company Ghana 2016 Best Low Latency Connectivity Solutions Provider 2016.

Best Corporate Governance Bank Greece 2016 Fastest Growing Asset Management Company Greece 2016 Fastest Growing Mutual Funds Provider Greece 2016 Best Retail Bank Grenada 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Grenada 2016 Best Retail Bank Guinea 2016 Best CSR Bank Guyana 2016 Best Commercial Bank Guyana 2016 Best SME Bank Honduras 2016 Best General Insurance Company Hong Kong 2016 Fastest Growing Fund Manager Hong Kong 2016 Best Corporate Bank Hong Kong 2016 Best Funds Management Hong Kong 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Hungary 2016 Best Internet Bank Hungary 2016 Best Woman Banking CEO Hungary 2016 – Ms. Éva Hegedüs Best Investment Bank Iceland 2016 Best Commercial Bank Iceland 2016 Best CSR Bank Iceland 2016 Best Internet Bank Iceland 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Indonesia 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Indonesia 2016 Best CSR Bank Indonesia 2016 Best Bank for Priority Banking Services Indonesia 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Indonesia 2016 Best SME Bank Indonesia 2016 Best Treasury Management Bank Indonesia 2016 Best Institutional Broker Indonesia 2016 Best General Insurance Company Indonesia 2016 Best Forex Broker Indonesia 2016 Best Mutual Funds Provider Indonesia 2016 Best Reinsurance Company Indonesia 2016 Best New Life Insurance Company Indonesia 2016 Best Family Takaful Provider Indonesia 2016 Best Bank for Social Media Indonesia 2016 Best Bank for Co-Branded Credit Cards (Permataherocard) Indonesia 2016 Best Islamic Retail Bank Indonesia 2016 Best Corporate Bank Israel 2016

Barclays Bank Arab African International Bank QNB Alahli QNB Alahli QNB Alahli QNB Alahli The Concord Group EFG Hermes EFG Hermes Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) Banco Agrícola Banco Agrícola LHV Asset Management Kredex Credit Insurance Ltd LHV Asset Management Berhan International Bank S.C. Zemen Bank S.C. Nib International Bank Libertex Atradius N.V. Saxo Bank Saxo Bank Saxo Bank Carlisle Management Company Academy of Financial Trading IQ Option Profile Software Helsinki Capital Partners Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) aafaq aafaq aafaq United Securities JSC BasisBank JSC BasisBank Galt & Taggart Galt & Taggart Galt & Taggart JSC Liberty Bank Pasha Bank Fidor Bank Berenberg GLS Gemeinschaftsbank eG IEG Investment Banking Group Acxit Capital Partners Nordea Capital Limited Beige Capital Savings & Loan Strategic Hedge Capital Strategic Hedge Capital Strategic Hedge Capital Zenith Bank (Ghana) Limited Zenith Bank (Ghana) Limited Zenith Bank (Ghana) Limited BSIC GHANA LTD (SAHEL SAHARA BANK) Acacia Health Insurance Company Gold-I Ltd National Bank Of Greece S.A. Alpha Trust Alpha Trust Republic Bank Grenada Limited Republic Bank Grenada Limited Societe Generale de Banques Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited Banco Del País AIG Insurance Hong Kong Limited Gen 2 Partners United Overseas Bank (UOB Hong Kong) BOCI-Prudential Asset Management Limited KBC Bank Gránit Bank Zrt Gránit Bank Zrt Kvika Bank Landsbankinn Hf. Landsbankinn Hf. Landsbankinn Hf. BNP Paribas Indonesia Pt Bank Maybank Standard Chartered Bank ANZ Pt Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk OCBC NISP Bank DBS Maybank Kim Eng Pt Asuransi Axa Indonesia Finex Pt Mandiri Manajemen Investasi Pt. Reasuransi Internasional Indonesia (Reindo) Pt Asuransi Jiwa BCA (BCA Life) Pt Sun Life Financial Indonesia Permata Bank Permata Bank Permata Bank Bank Hapoalim

Best Retail Bank Israel 2016 Best Equity House Israel 2016 Best Bank for Social Media Italy 2016 Most Innovative Banking Technology Italy 2016 Best CSR Bank Jamaica 2016 Best Retail Bank Jamaica 2016 Best Corporate Bank Jamaica 2016 Best SME Bank Jamaica 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Jamaica 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Jamaica 2016 Best Banking Product (Video Teller Machine- VTM) Jamaica 2016 Best New Financial Advisory Firm Japan 2016 Best Government & Infrastructure Financing Bank Jordan 2016 Best SME Bank Jordan 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Jordan 2016 Best Bank for Premium Banking Jordan 2016 Best Islamic Bank Jordan 2016 Best Islamic Banking CEO Jordan 2016 – Mr. Sami Al-Afghani Best CSR Islamic Bank Jordan 2016 Best Leasing Company Jordan 2016 Best Project Finance Bank Jordan 2016 Best Co-Branded Credit Card (Visa Signature Cobranded Card with Qatar Airways) Jordan 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Jordan 2016 Best IT Banking Solutions Provider Jordan 2016 Best Corporate Bank Kazakhstan 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank of Kazakhstan 2016 Best Internet Bank Kazakhstan 2016 Best SME Bank Kazakhstan 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Kazakhstan 2016 Best E-Commerce Bank Kazakhstan 2016 Fastest Growing Non-Life Insurance Company Kazakhstan 2016 Best Agribusiness Bank Kenya 2016 Fastest Growing Cash Management Bank Kenya 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Kenya 2016 Fastest Growing SME Bank Kenya 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Corporate Bank Kenya 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Retail Bank Kenya 2016 Best Reinsurance Company Kenya 2016 Fastest Growing Reinsurance Company Kenya 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Kenya 2016 Best Commercial Bank Kenya 2016 Best Mobile Banking Kenya 2016 Best Islamic Retail Bank Kenya 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Kenya 2016 Best Internet Bank Kosovo Best CSR Bank Kosovo 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Kosovo 2016 Fastest Growing Investment Bank Kuwait 2016 Best CSR Company Kuwait 2016 Best Retail Bank Kuwait 2016 Best Loyalty Program Kuwait 2016 Best Brokerage House Kuwait 2016 Best General Insurance Company Kuwait 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Kyrgyzstan 2016 Best Retail Bank Kyrgyzstan 2016 Fastest Growing Trade Finance Bank Kyrgyzstan 2016 Best Commercial Bank Kyrgyzstan 2016 Best Retail Bank Lao People’s Democratic Republic 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Laos 2016 Best SME Bank Laos 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Laos 2016 Best Internet Bank Laos 2016 Best PPP Project Latin America 2016 Best FX and Binary Customer Support Company Latin America 2016 Best Government & Infrastructure Financing Bank Latin America 2016 Best Retail Bank Latvia 2016 Best Investment Bank Latvia 2016 Best Credit Insurance Company Lebanon 2016 Best Health Insurance Provider Lebanon 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Lebanon 2016 Best Bank for Investor Relations Lebanon 2016 Best Asset Management Bank Lebanon 2016 Best Islamic Corporate Bank Lebanon 2016 Best Strategic Advisory Firm Lebanon 2016 Best Retail Bank Lesotho 2016 Best Corporate Bank Lesotho 2016 Best Internet Bank in Lesotho Best Retail Bank Liberia 2016 Best Internet Bank Liberia 2016 Best Wealth Management Company Liechtenstein 2016 Best Commercial Bank Lithuania 2016 Best SME Bank Lithuania 2016 Best Corporate Bank Luxembourg 2016 Fastest Growing Private Bank Luxembourg 2016 Best Retail Bank Luxembourg 2016 Fastest Growing Asset Management Company Luxembourg 2016 Best Fund Management Luxembourg 2016 Best Trade Finance Company Luxembourg 2016 Best Retail Bank Macau 2016 Best Corporate Bank Macedonia 2016 Best Banking CEO Macedonia 2016 – Mr. Vladimir Eftimoski Best Retail Bank Macedonia 2016 Best Corporate Bank Madagascar 2016 Best Retail Bank Madagascar 2016

Bank Hapoalim Bank Leumi le-Israel B.M. ING Bank FinecoBank ScotiaFoundation (Scotiabank) ScotiaFoundation (Scotiabank) FirstCaribbean International Bank (Jamaica) Limited National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (JNCB) NCB Insurance Company First Global Bank Ltd – Jamaica First Global Bank Ltd – Jamaica Business Bank Group Ltd Standard Chartered Bank Capital Bank of Jordan Arab Jordan Investment Bank Arab Jordan Investment Bank Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank Comprehensive Leasing Company Housing Bank for Trade & Finance Housing Bank for Trade & Finance Housing Bank for Trade & Finance PIO-TECH Solutions Kazkommertsbank Qazaq Banki Kazkommertsbank JSC Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan ForteBank JSC JSC Alfa-Bank Kazakhinstrakh JSC Transnational Bank Ltd Ecobank KWFT Bank Jamii Bora Bank Ltd Gulf African Bank Gulf African Bank Kenya Reinsurance Company Zep Re (PTA Reinsurance Company) Standard Chartered Bank Kenya Equity Bank Kenya Limited National Bank of Kenya National Bank of Kenya National Bank of Kenya Banka Ekonomike BPB Bank BPP Bank Warba Bank Ali Abdulwahab Al Mutawa Commercial Gulf Bank Gulf Bank EFG Hermes AIG MEA Limited – Kuwait Jubilee Insurance Company Demir Kyrgyz International Bank CJSC CJSC BTA Bank OJSC Optima Bank International Commercial Bank Lao Limited Lao-Viet Insurance Company BFL (Banque Franco-Lao Ltd) Joint Development Bank Banque Pour Le Commerce Exterieur Lao Public (BCEL) Rustas de Lima GDMFX Groupo Financiro Interacciones SEB Latvia ABLV Bank, AS The Lebanese Credit Insurer Sal (LCI) Fidelity Assurance & Reinsurance CoS Sal Bank Audi Sal Bank Audi Sal BLOMINVEST Bank S.A.L Arab Finance House (Islamic Bank) S.A.L Creed Capital Standard Lesotho Bank Standard Lesotho Bank Nedbank Guaranty Trust Bank Liberia Limited Guaranty Trust Bank Liberia Limited Kaiser Partner DNB bankas Siauliu bankas Banque Internationale à Luxembourg SA DNB Banque Internationale à Luxembourg SA Pure Capital S.A. Carlisle Management Company NORTHSTAR Europe S.A. Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) Stopanska Banka A.D. Bitola Stopanska Banka A.D. Bitola Stopanska Banka A.D. Bitola Banque SBM-Madagascar Bank of Africa-Madagascar

Mr. Muhammad Hanif, CEO, PT Mandiri Manajemen Investasi

Steve Hansen, Chief Operating Officer for Starfish FX and Dav Liew, Chief of Strategic Marketing in Asia for Starfish FX (left to right)

Kiril Tsenkov, Deputy Development Director, GDMFX

Mr. Bolaji Ayodele, Managing Director, Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Limited and Mr. Dodou Bojang, Head Corporate Affairs, Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Limited (left to right)

Mr. Thi Huy Thanh, Foreign Exchange Manager, Saigon Commercial Bank, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hieu, Deputy General Director, Saigon Commercial Bank and Mr. Phan Huy, Money Market Manager, Saigon Commercial Bank (left to right)

Ms. Kristine Umali, Commercial Attache and Director, Embassy of the Philippines Ambassador Evan P. Garcia of the Republic of the Philippines in the United Kingdom Gilda E. Pico, President and CEO, Landbank of Philippines Ms. Catherine Rowena B. Villanueva, First Vice President, Corporate Affairs Dept, Landbank of Philippines Jocelyn Cabreza, Executive Vice President, Landbank of Philippines Phil Fothergill, Journalist and Video Producer (left to right)

Fastest Growing SME Bank Malawi 2016 Best Cash Management Bank Malawi 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Malawi 2016 Best Internet Bank Malawi 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Malawi 2016 Best Customer Service Insurance Company Malawi 2016 Best General Insurance Company Malawi 2016 Best Asset Management Company Malawi 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Malawi 2016 Best Commercial Bank Malawi 2016 Best Investment Bank Malawi 2016 Best Retail Banking Products Malawi 2016 Best Retail Bank Malawi 2016 Best SME Bank Malawi 2016 Best Commercial Bank Malaysia 2016 Best SME Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Institutional Broker Malaysia 2016 Best General Insurance Company Malaysia 2016 Best Islamic Asset Management Company Malaysia 2016 Best Internet Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Financial Advisory Firm Malaysia 2016 Fast Growing SME Bank Malaysia 2016 Best New Payment Solutions Provider Malaysia 2016 Best CSR Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Islamic Microfinance Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Malaysia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Malaysia 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Provider Maldives 2016 Best Takaful General Insurance Company Maldives 2016 Best Fund Administrator Malta 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Malta 2016 Best SME Bank Mauritius 2016 Fasted Growing General Insurance Company Mauritius 2016 Best Investment Bank Mauritius 2016 Best Private Bank Mauritius 2016 Best Corporate Advisory Service Provider Mauritius 2016 Best E-Commerce Bank Mauritius 2016 Best Foreign Commercial Bank Mauritius 2016 Best Private Equity Fund Administrator Mauritius 2016 Best Retail Bank Mauritius 2016 Fastest Growing Private Bank Mauritius 2016 Best Bank for International Banking Services Mauritius 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Bank Mena 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Mexico 2016 Best Forex Bank Mexico 2016 Best Derivatives Broker Mexico 2016 Best Leasing Company Mexico 2016 Best SME Financing Company Mexico Best Foreign Trade Finance Bank Mexico 2016 Best Banking CEO Mexico 2016 – Dr. Gerardo Salazar Best SME Bank Mexico 2016 Best Asset Management Company Mexico 2016 Best Islamic Real Estate Financing Company Middle East 2016 Best Cash Management Bank Middle East 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Middle East 2016 Best Islamic Banking Technology Provider Middle East and Africa 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Moldova 2016 Best Commercial Bank of Moldova 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank Moldova 2016 Most Innovative Bank Moldova 2016 Best Banking Product (Transfer P2p) Moldova 2016 Best Health Insurance in Mongolia 2016 Fastest Growing General Insurance Company Mongolia 2016 Best Internet Bank Mongolia 2016 Best SME Bank Mongolia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Mongolia 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Mongolia 2016 Best Retail Bank Mongolia 2016 Best New SME Fund Raising Company Mongolia 2016 Best Insurance Company Montenegro 2016 Best Equity House Morocco 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Provider Morocco 2015 Best Custodian Bank in Morocco 2016 Best New Corporate Bank Mozambique 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Mozambique 2016 Most Innovative Retail Banking Mozambique 2016 Best Agribusiness Bank Mozambique 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Mozambique 2016 Best Internet Bank Mozambique 2016 Best Mobile Banking App Mozambique 2016 Best Pension Fund CEO Mozambique 2016 Best Corporate Bank Myanmar 2016 Most Innovative Retail Bank Myanmar 2016 Best Corporate Bank Namibia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Namibia 2016 Best Retail Bank Namibia 2016 Best Project Finance Bank Namibia 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory Company Namibia Best Commodities Finance Bank Netherlands 2016 Best Real Estate Bank Netherlands 2016 Best Private Bank Netherlands 2016 Best SME Bank Netherlands 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Netherland 2016 Most Innovative Online Bank Netherland 2016

Opportunity Bank First Merchant Bank Nedbank Nedbank Ecobank Charter Insurance Co. Ltd. United General Insurance Company Limited Nico Asset Managers Limited Vanguard Life Assurance Company Limited Eco bank CDH Investment Bank FDH Bank Limited FDH Bank Limited FDH Bank Limited HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad OCBC Bank Malaysia Berhad Maybank Kim Eng Zurich Insurance Malaysia Berhad CIMB-Principal Islamic Asset Management Hong Leong Islamic Bank Berhad Standard Financial Adviser Sdn Bhd Malayan Banking Berhad Asiapay (M) Sdn Bhd Bank Muamalat Malaysia Berhad Hong Leong Bank Berhad Bank Rakyat Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad United Overseas Bank Allied Insurance Company of the Maldives Amana Takaful Maldives Plc Valletta Fund Services Limited FCM Bank MauBank Ltd Jubilee Insurance Mauritius Limited Afrasia Bank Afrasia Bank ABAX SBM Bank (Mauritius) Ltd Barclays Bank ABAX SBM Bank (Mauritius) Ltd Bank One Limited ABC Banking Corporation Kuwait International Bank Investabank S.A Monex Bank DERFIN S.A. DE C.V. UNIFIN FINANCIERA SAB de CV SOFOM ENR Financiamiento Progresemos BANCOMEXT Groupo Financiro Interacciones Groupo Financiro Interacciones Sura Asset Management Qatar First Bank National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) ICS Financial Systems Moldasig CB ‘Moldova-Agroindbank’ SA JSCB “EXIMBANK-Gruppo Veneto Banca” BC Moldindconbank SA BC Moldindconbank SA Bodi Insurance LLC Soyombo Daatgal Golomt Bank Capital Bank of Mongolia Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia National Investment Bank Khan Bank Horizon Partners LLC Uniqa Montenegro Attijari Intermediation Zurich Assurances Maroc Attijariwafa Bank Ecobank Mozambique Sa FNB Mocambique Sa FNB Mocambique Sa Banco Terra Moçambique Banco Unico Banco Unico Millennium bim Mocambique Previdente SGFP– Aldo Tempe CB Bank United Amara Bank Limited (UAB) Windhoek Bank Nedbank Namibia Limited FNB Namibia Holdings Ltd Standard Bank Namibia IJG Securities ABN AMRO ABN AMRO ING Private Bank Netherlands ING Private Bank Netherlands Knab Knab

Best Agriculture Financing Bank Netherlands 2016 Best Agriculture Financing Bank New Zealand 2016 Best Institutional Equities Trading Provider New Zealand 2016 Best Corporate Bank in Nicaragua 2016 Best Retail Bank in Nicaragua 2016 Best Corporate Governance Bank Nigeria 2016 Most Innovative Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Private Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Retail Bank Nigeria 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Nigeria 2016 Best SME Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Agri-Business Bank Nigeria 2016 Best CSR Bank Nigeria 2016 Most Innovative Mobile Banking App Nigeria 2016 Best New Microfinance Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Mutual Funds Provider Nigeria 2016 Most Innovative Asset Management Company Nigeria 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Nigeria 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company in Nigeria-2016 Best New Islamic Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Corporate Bank Nigeria 2016 Fastest Growing Mortgage Bank Nigeria 2016 Best Real Estate Investment Management Company Nigeria 2016 Best Asset Management Company Nordics 2016 Best Forex Education North Africa 2016 Best Forex Provider North America 2016 Best Investment Bank Oman 2016 Best Social Media Bank Oman 2016 Best Health Insurance Company Oman 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Oman 2016 Best New Islamic Savings Product (Bushra) Oman 2016 Best Retail Bank Oman 2016 Best Customer Service Insurance Company Oman 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Oman 2016 Best E-Commerce Bank Oman 2016 Best SME Bank Oman 2015 Best IT Services Provider Oman 2016 Best Commercial Bank Panama 2016 Best Retail Bank Panama 2016 Best Investment Bank Panama 2016 Best SME Bank Paraguay 2016 Best Investment Management Team Paraguay 2016 Best Capital Markets Company Paraguay 2016 Best Commercial Bank Paraguay 2016 Best Retail Bank Paraguay 2016 Best Retail Bank Peru 2016 Best AFP Peru 2016 Best Insurance Company Peru 2016 Best Asset Management Company Peru 2016 Best Mobile Money Platform Peru 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Peru 2016 Best Auto Loan Bank Philippines 2016 Best Investment Banking Company Philippines 2016 Best Agri Business Bank Philippines 2016.

Best Cash Management Bank Philippines 2016 Best Corporate Governance Bank Philippines 2016 Best CSR Bank Philippines 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Philippines 2016 Best Bank for Debt Capital Markets Philippines 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Philippines 2016 Most Innovative Banking Product (Bank On Wheels) Philippines 2016 Best Core Banking System Implementation Philippines 2016 Best SME Bank Philippines 2016 Best Real Estate Development Company Philippines 2016 Best Investor Relations Company Philippines 2016 Best Corporate Bank Poland 2016 Best Internet Bank Poland 2016 Best Retail Bank Poland 2016 Best Trading Platform Poland 2016 Best Investment Bank Poland 2016 Best Commercial Bank Portugal 2016 Best Internet Bank Portugal 2016 Best M&A Bank Portugal 2016 Best Retail Bank Portugal 2016 Fastest Growing Bank for Capital Markets Portugal 2016 Fastest Growing Investment Bank Portugal 2016 Fastest Growing Private Bank Portugal 2016 Best Bank for Advisory Banking Portugal 2016 Most Innovative Private Bank Portugal 2016 Best New Digital Bank Portugal 2016 Best General Takaful Provider Qatar 2016 Best Islamic Investment Banking Company Qatar 2016 Best Foreign Exchange Bank Qatar 2016 Best Premium Banking Services Provider Qatar 2016 Best Life Takaful Provider Qatar 2016 Best CSR Bank Qatar 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Private Banking Company Qatar 2016 Best Corporate Bank Qatar 2016 Best Digital Bank Romania 2016 Best Insurance Company Romania 2016 Best Corporate Governance Bank in Russia Best Customer Service Bank Russia 2016 Best Investment Bank Russia 2016 Best SME Bank Russia 2016 Best Mortgage Bank Russia 2016 Best Internet Bank Russia 2016

Rabobank Rabobank EVI Global Markets Banco Ficohsa Nicaragua, S.A Banco Ficohsa Nicaragua, S.A Zenith Bank First Bank of Nigeria Limited First Bank of Nigeria Limited First Bank of Nigeria Limited Union Bank of Nigeria Plc Diamond Bank Plc Unity Bank Plc. Guaranty Trust Bank Plc Guaranty Trust Bank Plc Finca Microfinance Bank Limited Standbic IBTC Asset Management Standbic IBTC Asset Management FBN Insurance Custodian and Allied Plc Jaiz Bank Plc Ecobank New Prudential Mortgage Bank Fine and Country West Africa SEB Asset Management BFX Baron Forex Education & Consulting BMO Capital Markets National Bank of Oman Bank Sohar National Life and General Insurance Co, SAOC National Life and General Insurance Co, SAOC Alizz Islamic Bank NBAD Oman AXA Insurance Gulf, Oman Bank Dhofar Bank Dhofar Bank Dhofar Macro Software Systems LLC Allbank Corp Banco General MMG Bank Corporation BBVA Puente Puente Banco Continental Banco Continental BCP AFP Integra Pacifico Seguros Sura Asset Management PerĂş Ericsson Mibanco Philippine Savings Bank First Metro Investment Corporation LANDBANK of the Philippines Unionbank of The Philippines China Banking Corp LANDBANK of the Philippines CTBC Bank China Banking Corp China Banking Corp Philippine National Bank China Banking Corp CTBC Bank Robinsons Land Corporation Robinsons Land Corporation PKO Bank Polski PKO Bank Polski PKO Bank Polski easyMarkets Deutsche Bank Polska Millennium bcp Banco de Investimento Global, S.A. (BiG) Banco PortuguĂŞs de Investimento (BPI) Banco Santander Totta Banco Finantia Banco Finantia Banco Finantia Deutsche Bank Ag, Sucursal Portugal Banco Invest Banco BNI Europa Qatar Islamic Insurance Qatar First Bank QNB Al Khalij Commercial Bank (Al Khaliji) Q.S.C. Qatar Islamic Insurance Barwa Bank Qatar First Bank Mashreq Qatar Garanti Bank S.A. Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari BNP Paribas AO UniCredit Bank Otkritie Bank Vozrozhdenie Bank Bank Saint-Petersburg Promsvyazbank

Mr. Bui Trung Kien, Deputy General Director, ABBANK

Mr. Rafael Moreno Valle, Chairman & CEO of Financiamiento Progresemos

Mr. Rodrigo Lebois, UNIFIN Founder and President

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Best Project Finance Bank Russia 2016 Best Corporate Bank Russia 2016 Most Innovative Bank Russia 2016 Best Bank for Investor Relations Russia 2016 Best New Online Bank Russia 2016 Most Innovative Banking Initiative “W-Initiative “ Rwanda 2016 Best Internet Bank Rwanda 2016 Best Insurance Company Rwanda 2016 Best Micro Finance Bank Rwanda 2016 Best Retail Bank Rwanda 2016 Best Commercial Bank Rwanda 2016 Best CSR Bank Rwanda 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Rwanda 2016 Best SME Bank Rwanda 2016 Best Islamic Retail Bank Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Islamic Leasing & Finance Company Saudi Arabia 2016 Best CSR Bank Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Bank for Social Media Channels Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Private Bank Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Finance Comparison Website Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Health Insurance Company Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Wealth Management Product (Al Waed Fund) Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Takaful Insurance Operator Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Loyalty Programs (Aseel & Woow) Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Real Estate Investment Company Saudi Arabia 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory Senegal 2016 Best Insurance Company Serbia 2016 Best XSR Bank Serbia 2016 Best Pension Fund Provider Serbia 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Seychelles 2016 Best Foreign Bank Seychelles 2016 Best Retail Bank Sierra Leone 2016 Best SME Bank Singapore 2016 Best CFD Trading Provider Singapore 2016 Best Insurance Product (AXA Optimus) Singapore 2016 Most Innovative Online Banking Application Singapore 2016 Best Boutique Private Bank Singapore 2016 Best Digital Customer Engagement Program Singapore 2016 Best Mobile Trading App Singapore 2016 Best Online Trading Platform Singapore 2016 Best Corporate Bank Slovakia 2016 Best Retail Bank Slovakia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Slovenia 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Slovenia 2016 Best Retail Bank South Africa 2016 Best Private Bank South Africa 2016 Best Asset Manager CEO South Africa 2016- Mr. Mothobi Seseli Best Emerging Payments Company South Africa 2016 Best Alternative Payment Technology Provider South Africa 2016 Best Forex Education Provider South Africa 2016 Best New Forex Broker South Africa 2016 Best Equity House South Africa 2016 Best Private Equity Firm South Africa 2016 Best Fixed Income Fund Management Company South Africa 2016 Best Corporate Finance Advisory South Africa 2016 Best Securities Broker South America 2016 Best Company CEO South East Asia 2016 (Mr. Aloke Lohia) Fastest Growing IB Program South East Asia 2016 Fastest Growing New ECN Broker South East Asia 2016 Most Innovative FX Social Trading Solutions South East Asia 2016 Best Project Finance Bank South Korea 2016 Best Commercial Bank South Korea 2016 Best Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development Southeast Asia 2016 Best Bank for Social Responsibility Southeast Asia 2016 Best Alternative Credit Specialist Southeast Asia 2016 Best Home Finance Bank Spain 2016 Best Private Bank Spain 2016 Most Innovative Retail Bank Spain 2016 Best Broker Spain 2016 Best Investment & Securities Outsourcing Provider Spain 2016 Best CSR Bank Spain 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Home Finance Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best SME Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Insurance Company for CSR in Sri Lanka 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Sri Lanka 2016 Best CSR Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Most Innovative ATM Platform Sri Lanka 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Internet Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Investment Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Best Islamic SME Leasing & Finance Company Sri Lanka 2016 Most Innovative Islamic Investment Product (Wakala) Sri Lanka 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Sri Lanka 2016 Most Innovative Banking Product (Daskam) Sri Lanka 2016 Fastest Growing Finance Company Sri Lanka 2016 Best Micro Finance Service Provider Sri Lanka 2016 Best Telecommunication Company-Sri Lanka 2016 Most Innovative Holding Group Sri Lanka 2016 Best Insurance Broker Sri Lanka 2016 Best Corporate Bank Suriname 2016 Best Internet Bank Suriname 2016

ING Commercial Bank Russia JSCB Avangard Alfa-Bank Credit Bank of Moscow Touch Bank (Part of OTP Group) Access Bank Rwanda Ecobank Soras Group Unguka Bank Cogebanque Bank of Kigali Bank of Kigali I&M Bank (Rwanda) Limited Banque Populaire du Rwanda Ltd Al Rajhi Bank Arab National Bank Al Yusr Leasing & Financing The National Commercial Bank The Saudi Investment Bank Banque Saudi Fransi Al Rajhi Bank Bank Aljazira Souqalmal.Com Bupa Arabia Saudi Kuwaiti Finance House Aljazira Takaful The Saudi Investment Bank Sedco Capital Impaxis Capital Generali Osiguranje Srbija Komercijalna Banka Dunav Voluntary Pension Fund Management Company Sacos Life Assurance Company Ltd Barclays Bank Seychelles Limited Guaranty Trust Bank (SL) Ltd OCBC Bank IG AXA Singapore ANZ Banking Group Limited Bordier & CIE ANZ Banking Group Limited OCBC Securities Private Limited OCBC Securities Private Limited VUB Bank VUB Bank SKB banka d.d.

Sid Banka D.D. Standard Bank Investec Argon Asset Management Call Pay Call Pay Learn to Trade HotForex Sasfin Sasfin Sasfin Sasfin Credicorp Capital Indorama Venture Public Company Limited IGOFX Tradesto Corporation MFX Broker Korea Development Bank KEB Hana Bank -Han Financial Group Vietnam Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Agribank) Vietnam Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Agribank) EFA Group Banco Popular Espanol Sa Banca March Caixa Bank Activotrade Valores Inversis Caixa Bank NDB Bank HDFC Bank Seylan Bank Habib Bank AIA Insurance Lanka Plc AIA Insurance Lanka Plc Sampath Bank Plc Sampath Bank Plc Nations Trust Bank Plc Commercial Bank of Ceylon Plc NDB Investment Bank Al-Falaah, Islamic Business Unit of LOLC Finance PLC Al-Falaah, Islamic Business Unit of LOLC Finance PLC Pan Asia Banking Corporation Plc Pan Asia Banking Corporation Plc Kanrich Finance Kanrich Finance Sri Lanka Telecom Plc Sunshine Holdings Plc Senaratne Insurance Brokers (Pvt) Limited Republic Bank (Suriname) N.V. Hakrinbank N.V

Best Digital Bank Swaziland 2016 Best Investor Relation Bank Sweden 2016 Best General Insurance Company Switzerland 2016 Best Fund Manager in FoHF Switzerland 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Switzerland 2016 Best Commodity Trade Finance Advisor Switzerland 2016 Best Commercial Bank Taiwan 2016 The Best Internet Bank- Taiwan 2016 Best Retail Bank Taiwan 2016 Best Leasing Company Taiwan 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Taiwan 2016 Fastest Growing Corporate Bank Taiwan 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Taiwan 2016 Fastest Growing SME Bank Taiwan 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Taiwan 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Taiwan 2016 Best Wealth Management Bank Taiwan 2016 Best Commercial Bank Tanzania 2016 Best Foreign Exchange Bank in Tanzania 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Tanzania 2016 Best Retail Bank Tanzania 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Tanzania 2016 Fastest Growing General Insurance Company Tanzania 2016 Best SME Bank Tanzania 2016 Best Equities Broker Tanzania 2016 Best Securities Broker Tanzania 2016 Best Bank for Auto Financing Thailand 2016 Best Bancassurance Distribution Network Thailand 2016 Best Investment Banking Thailand 2016 Best Retail Bank Thailand 2016 Best SME Bank Thailand 2016, Best Trade Finance Bank Thailand 2016 Best Mobile Trading Platform Thailand 2016 Best General Insurance Company Thailand 2016 Best Social Media Bank Thailand 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Thailand 2016 Best Investor Relations Company Thailand 2016 Best Corporate Bank Trinidad and Tobago 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Trinidad and Tobago 2016 Best Internet Bank Trinidad and Tobago 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Tunisia 2016 Best Credit Insurance Company Tunisia 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Tunisia Best Islamic Bank Tunisia 2016 Best Leasing Company Tunisia 2016 Best Forex Advisory Tunisia 2016 Best Corporate Bank Turkey 2016 Best Corporate Governance Bank Turkey 2016 Best Investment Bank Turkey 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank Turkey 2016 Best Private Banking Turkey 2016 Best Retail Bank Turkey 2016 Best SME Bank Turkey 2016 Best Bank for Social Media Turkey 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Turkey 2016 Best Health Insurance Turkey 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Turkey 2016 Best Institutional Brokerage Firm Turkey 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Retail Bank Turkey 2016 Best New Takaful Provider Turkey 2016 Best Banking Contact Centre Experience Turkey 2016 Best Internet Bank Turkey 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Turkey 2016 Best CSR Company Turkey 2016 Best Factoring Company Turkey 2016 Best Forex Broker Turkey 2016 Best Forex Customer Service Broker Turkey 2016 Best Pension Fund Manager Turkey 2016 Best Credit Insurance Company Turkey 2016 Best Asset Management Company Turkey 2016 Best New Asset Management Company Turkey 2016 Best Research Database Turkey 2016 Best Brokerage House for Islamic Bonds Turkey 2016 Best Automated Auto Financing Credit Management System Turkey 2016 Best Corporate Bank UAE 2016 Best Investor Relations Bank UAE 2016 Best Social Media Bank UAE 2016 Best Health Insurance Service Provider UAE 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company UAE 2016 Best New Credit Card Programs UAE 2016 (World MasterCard Credit Card and Red MasterCard Credit Card) Best Cash Management Bank UAE 2016 Best Corporate Governance Bank UAE 2016 Best Digital Bank UAE 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application UAE 2016 Best Wealth Management Bank UAE 2016 Best Retail Bank UAE 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank UAE 2016 Best Customer Experience UAE 2016 Best Fixed Income Fund Manager UAE 2016 Best Real Estate Investment Company UAE 2016 Fastest Growing Islamic Corporate Bank UAE 2016 Best Islamic Banking Marketing Campaign (Jwayez) UAE 2016 Best Islamic Finance CSR Company UAE 2016 Best Finance Comparison Website UAE 2016

Standard Bank Swaziland Swedbank Zurich Insurance Company Ltd Thalia Sa Habib Bank Structured Commodity Corporate Finance (SCCF) Sarl CTBC Bank Taipei Fubon Bank CTBC Bank Chailease Holding Fubon Insurance DBS Bank Taiwan DBS Bank Taiwan DBS Bank Taiwan Cathay United Bank Nan Shan Life Insurance Co King’s Town Bank CRDB Bank Plc I & M Bank (T) Ltd Accessbank Tanzania CRDB Bank Plc Standard Chartered Bank Kenya Limited UAP Insurance Diamond Trust Bank Tanzania Limited Orbit Securities Co Ltd Orbit Securities Co Ltd Thanachart Bank TMB Bank The Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Limited (SCB) Krungthai Bank Pcl Kasikornbank Pcl Kasikornbank Pcl Maybank Kim Eng Southeast Insurance Plc Bank of Ayudhya Public Company Limited (Krungsri Bank) Thai Life Insurance Plc. Indorama Venture Public Company Limited First Citizens Bank Limited Republic Bank Limited Republic Bank Limited Societe Tunisienne De Banque Cotunace Assurances Comar Et Hayett Zitouna Bank Arab Tunisian Lease BFX Baron Forex Education & Consulting Abank Garanti Bank Aktif Bank Garanti Bank Yapı Kredi Bankası A.Ş Yapı Kredi Bankası A.Ş Denizbank Kuveyt Türk Yapı Kredi Bankası A.Ş Acibadem Saglık Ve Hayat Sigorta A.S. MetLife Burgan Securities Albaraka Turk Katilim Emeklilik Ve Hayat A.S. Odeabank Odeabank Odeabank Halk Yatirim (Halk Invest) Garanti Factoring A.S. Destek Menkul Degerler As (Domino Forex) Destek Menkul Degerler As (Domino Forex) AK Asset Management Euler Hermes Turkey AK Asset Management Marmara Capital Merkezi Kayit Kurulusu A.S. (MKK) Halk Yatirim (Halk Invest) ALJ Finans National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) Dubai Islamic Bank Commercial Bank of Dubai Aafiya Oman Insurance Company Rakbank Emirates NBD Bank PJSC Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) Mashreq Bank Emirates NBD Bank PJSC Emirates NBD Bank PJSC Mashreq Bank Emirates NBD Bank PJSC Mashreq Bank Waha Capital Emirates REIT Ajman Bank Ajman Bank Amlak Finance PJSC Souqalmal.Com Amlak Finance PJSC

Best Sharia Compliant Property Finance Company UAE 2016 Best CSR Bank UAE 2016 Best Islamic Banking CEO – UAE 2016 – Mr. Mohammad Abdullah Tanqia FZC Best Commercial Bank Uganda 2016 Best Internet Bank Uganda 2016 Best Investment Bank Uganda 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Uganda 2016 Best Mobile Banking Application Uganda 2016.

Best Banking Product (Karibu Account) Uganda 2016 Best Retail Uganda 2016 Best SME Bank Uganda 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Uganda 2016 Best General Insurance Company Uganda 2016 Best Housing Finance Bank Uganda 2016 Most Innovative New Exchange Platform Uganda 2016 Best Forex Education Provider UK 2016 Best Trading Platform UK 2016 Best Corporate Bank Ukraine 2016 Best Retail Bank Ukraine 2016 Best Customer Services Bank Ukraine 2016 Best SME Bank Ukraine 2016 Best Health Insurance Company Ukraine 2016 Best Commercial Bank Uruguay 2016 Best Trading Platform Uruguay 2016 Best Investment Management Team Uruguay 2016 Best Capital Markets Company Uruguay 2016 Best Retail Bank Uruguay 2016 Best Internet Bank Uruguay 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Uruguay 2016 Best Online Trading Academy USA 2016 Best Corporate Trust Bank USA 2016 Best Investment Company Uzbekistan 2016 Best Leasing Company Uzbekistan 2016 Best SME Bank Uzbekistan 2016 Best Fund Management Company Vietnam 2015 Best Life Insurance Product for Enterprises in Vietnam 2016 Best Bancassurance Partnership Vietnam 2016 Best Bank for ATM Network and Services Vietnam 2016 Best Bank for CSR Vietnam 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Vietnam 2016 Fastest Growing Retail Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Financial Advisory Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Banking Initiative for Self Employed Customers Vietnam 2016 Best Internet Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Banking Auto Loan Product Vietnam 2016 – SeACar Best Mobile Banking Application Vietnam 2016 Best Priority Banking Services Vietnam 2016 Best Retail Bank Vietnam 2016 Most Innovative Retail Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Savings Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Credit Cards Vietnam 2016 Best Consumer Finance Company Vietnam 2016 Best Real Estate Developer Vietnam 2016 Best Life Insurance Product in Vietnam 2016 Most Innovative SME Bank Vietnam 2016 Best Brokerage House Vietnam 2016 Best Equity House Vietnam 2016 Best Delivery Finance Product Company Vietnam 2016 Fastest Growing Custodian Bank Western Africa 2016 Fastest Growing Financial Services Company Western Europe 2016 Fastest Growing Alternative Investment Company Western Europe 2016 Best FX & CFD Research Western Europe 2016 Fastest Growing Commercial Bank Zambia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Zambia 2016 Best New Corporate Bank in Zambia Best CSR Bank Zambia 2016 Best Internet Bank Zambia 2016 Best Investment Bank Zambia 2016 Best Agri-Business Bank Zambia 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Zambia 2016 Best Retail Bank Zambia 2016 Best Non-Life Insurance Company Zambia 2016 Best Bank for International Banking Services Zambia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Zimbabwe 2016 Most Innovative Banking Product- Youth Account Zimbabwe 2016 Best Life Insurance Company Zimbabwe 2016 Best Bank for Investor Relations Zimbabwe 2016 Best Microfinance Bank Zimbabwe 2016 Best New Bank for Card Services Zimbabwe 2016 Best New Retail Bank Zimbabwe 2016 Best New Investment Platform Asia 2016 Best Commercial Bank Middle East 2016 Fastest Growing IB Program South East Asia 2016 Best Banking CEO Qatar 2016 Best Trade Finance Bank Qatar 2016 Doha Bank Best Banking Applications (Website & Mobile) Application Qatar 2016 Best New Takaful Provider Oman 2016 Best Asset Management Company Sri Lanka 2016 Best Investment Banking Company Sri Lanka 2016 Best Islamic Finance Education Provider Sri Lanka 2016 Best Customer Service Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best Corporate Bank Azerbaijan 2016 Best Banking Product (Currency Cards) Lebanon 2016 Best Retail Bank Lebanon 2016

Sharjah Islamic Bank Sharjah Islamic Bank The Best Performing Wastewater Utility in The UAE Under Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) Structure 2016 Stanbic Bank Standard Chartered Bank Stanbic Bank Finance Trust Bank Ltd Standard Chartered Bank Stanbic Bank Barclays Bank Bank of Africa – Uganda Ltd Jubilee Life Insurance Company of Uganda Ltd UAP – Old Mutual Uganda Limited Housing Finance Bank ALTX Africa Group Ltd (AAG) Learn to Trade easyMarkets Universal Bank Ukrsotsbank (Unicredit Bank) First Ukrainian International Bank Kredo Bank Ingo Ukraine Bank Santander Puente Puente Puente BBVA BBVA BBVA Academy of Financial Trading MUFG Union Bank, N.A. Orient Capital Management Uzbek Leasing International A.O. Ipak Yuli Bank BAOVIET Fund Management Company BAOVIET Life Saigon Commercial Bank Vietnam Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Agribank) SeABank Vietnam Prosperity Bank (VPBank) An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABBANK) National Citizen Commercial Joint Stock Bank (NCB) CommCredit (Powered by VPBank) Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB) SeABank Vietnam Prosperity Bank (VPBank) Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) Limited VietinBank Asia Commercial Bank Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB) Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) Fe Credit Vingroup Joint Stock Company BAOVIET Life Vietnam International Bank (VIB) BAOVIET Securities Joint Stock Company BAOVIET Securities Joint Stock Company Donga Money Transfer Company Attijariwafa Bank JFD Group JFD Wealth JFD Brokers Barclays Bank Barclays Bank First Capital Bank Zambia Barclays Bank Standard Chartered Bank Citibank Zambia Limited Stanbic Bank Cavmont Bank Cavmont Bank Nico Insurance Indo Zambia Bank Ltd Stanbic Bank Zimbabwe People’s Own Savings Bank (POSB) First Mutual Holdings Ltd CBZ Bank FBC Holdings Steward Bank Limited Steward Bank Limited IGOFX Doha Bank IGOFX Doha Bank Doha Bank Doha Bank Takaful Oman Insurance S.A.O.G. Capital Alliance Partners Capital Alliance Partners First Global Academy Yapi Kredi Bank Yapi Kredi Bank LGB Bank LGB Bank

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ASIA INTERVIEW

Celebrating 96 years of strong partnerships

Founded in 1920 by entrepreneurs, China Banking Corporation is celebrating 96 years of strong partnerships. Global Banking & Finance Review spoke with Ricardo R. Chua, President and CEO of China Banking Corporation about the key to successful corporate governance, the current business and banking environment in the Philippines and China Bank’s future strategy.

What are the risks and challenges you see facing the business environment in the Philippines?

The Philippines will continue its economic growth momentum amid several downside risks. The country is expected to remain one of the fastest growing markets in Asia / SE Asia given this year’s GDP growth of around 7%.

The expected US Fed policy rate hike in December and the presence of political uncertainties (i.e. Donald Trump’s protectionist stance and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s pivot towards China and Russia) may somewhat erode capital values, BPO sector expansion, and trade flows. Higher oil prices, while normally negative for the country, can be offset somewhat by the overseas Filipino workers (OFW) remittances (currently around $ 26 billion this year), maintaining its 3-4% slight upward trajectory as the recent OPEC oil agreement has pushed up oil prices -- can give the Arabian countries (where around 30% of the OFWs are based) a significant boost to its budget / construction industry.

However, the contraction could be partly offset by our country’s healthy domestic market boosted by the current administration’s commitment to job creation, human capital development, and infrastructure projects. The upbeat domestic market will allow banks to expand their balance sheets and maintain healthy asset quality.

Additionally, the wind down of access to the BSP deposit facilities may push liquidity back into the banking system, which will increase the deposit base of the bigger banks.

How does China Banking Corp help companies and enterprises raise the necessary capital they need?

The Bank assists companies especially the mid-cap clients to explore financing solutions that would benefit them. The Bank is continually looking at ways to enable these clients to lower their borrowing costs and improve their capital structure to be used for their business expansions. The Bank has, in the past few years, made key hires to acquire the expertise, skills, and knowledge to help and advise clients achieve the most optimal mix in their capital structure.

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ASIA INTERVIEW

The bank has also developed one of the most diverse and effective institutional and retail distribution network that would eventually help potential borrowers achieve the lowest and most cost effective solutions for their funding requirements.

In what ways does your corporate banking division assist clients in managing their risk and enhance their revenue?

The corporate banking division offers various financial services and products to aid customers’ businesses. Credit facilities offered may be revolving or non-revolving, in Peso or foreign currency (primarily U.S. Dollar) denominated, and secured or unsecured. The division assists clients in their funding requirements through close collaboration with our investment banking. Aside from lending products, the corporate banking division also offers cash management services, deposit services and investment advisory services to create operational and cost efficiencies for its customers. The Bank’s cash management services address customers’ disbursements, collections and liquidity needs. It also has liquidity solutions which aim to promote transparency of balances and transactional movements to allow corporate clients to take full control and optimize their working capital. These services are executed primarily through the Bank’s proprietary online banking platform, China Bank Online which provides ease of transaction and an additional layer of security for the clients’ funds.

As a leader in corporate governance why is it so important and what do you believe are the key elements to successful corporate governance?

Good corporate governance is one of the most important cornerstones in ensuring the sustainability of our business. Indeed, by upholding the highest ethical standards in conducting our business, we have earned the trust and confidence of our stakeholders and our business partners.

In banking, trust is everything. By building on this trust and complementing it with leading edge technology, efficient systems and processes, and by running our business with a highly trained professional team, we are able to attract the best customers

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and business partners, lower our cost of funds, and ultimately, build a strong brand franchise with loyal customers.

Profit with honor is indeed an admirable business philosophy. It has been crucial in China Bank’s success over the last 96 years. We endeavor to elevate our corporate governance structures and processes to global standards, constantly monitoring developments and benchmarking against best practices. One significant trigger was when we first accessed the offshore markets with our US$125 million floating rate certificates of deposit (FRCD) issue in 1996 and 1997. We have always been transparent and forthright to facilitate understanding of China Bank’s true financial condition and the quality of our corporate governance, but when we had our FRCD issue, there was so much more disclosure required, and this prompted us to step up our corporate governance efforts to gain the trust and confidence of international creditors and investors. Shortly after our FRCD issue, corporate governance became an important issue in Asia in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. And as the business landscape changes with the increased competition, tighter regulations, and technological innovations, we remain resolute in our commitment to proactively strengthen our governance practices to make China Bank more resilient and to deliver greater customer and shareholder value.

China Bank is led by a vigilant and high functioning board of directors and management team with unquestionable integrity, dedication, and competence. Our leaders fully embrace the Bank’s mission, vision, and values; they chart China Bank’s path to success, guided not only by the Bank’s principles, but also by the principles of good corporate governance—fairness, accountability, integrity, and transparency.

Our leaders set the tone of governance and ensure that mechanisms for disclosure, protection of the rights of shareholders, the equitable treatment of shareholders, and the accountability of the Board of Directors and Management are in place and diligently implemented in accordance with the highest ethical standards and strictest regulatory compliance. Together, the Board and Management maintain a collaborative and

productive work environment that drives high performance and quality orientation, consistent with our commitment to deliver strong customer and shareholder value.

What impact are foreign investors having on the Philippine banking sector?

The impact of the foreign investors on the Philippine banking industry would be mixed as domestic firms will be challenged to defend their niche through mergers & acquisitions and product differentiation to compete with the new entrants. On the other hand, having foreign investors would mean expansion on the customer base of local firms that will result to more opportunities for business expansion and employment.

This will also facilitate the transfer of technology that will encourage innovation and improvement in efficiency but may post risks to exporters over changing comparative advantage. The entry of foreign banks in the Philippines would mean tighter competition – that will encourage the local banks to beef up capital, hire & retain good professionals and to continuously launch innovative services.

Also, the liberalization will drive interest rates down due to increased price-based competition. To overcome challenges, the government and the Central Bank of the Philippines (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) must work together to streamline procedures and information databases for ease of business and risk management and generate more high-quality jobs locally to limit human capital outflow.

What is the long-term business strategy for China Banking Corp?

China Bank’s core strategies are: acquire customers, deepen relationships, and to be the best bank for its customers. The Bank will strive to remain a major player with a sizeable presence in the small to medium enterprise (SME) and middle markets, while maintaining its niche in the Chinese business community. The Bank also expects to take advantage of bigger business opportunities following the public launch of China Bank MasterCard, integration of Planters Development Bank (PDB) with the thrift banking arm, China Bank Savings (CBS), and the setup of the Bank’s investment house, China Bank Capital Corp (CBCC).

ASIA INTERVIEW

GILBERT U. DEE, Vice Chairman of the Board HANS T. SY, Chairman of the Board RICARDO R. CHUA , President and Chief Executive Officer

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ASIA INTERVIEW The Bank will expand its presence in the urban, rural, and unbanked areas and put up branches in prime locations within the National Capital Region to utilize the branch licenses for restricted areas awarded by the BSP as part of its incentives for the PDB acquisition.

It will continue to deepen relationships with its existing clients and develop new corporate and commercial accounts coming from the ‘new economy’: utilities, telecommunication, infrastructure, business processing and logistics, with the goal of raising market share for both Peso and Dollar-denominated lending. On the commercial side, the Bank will defend its niche in the SME and middle markets by strengthening its account management complement and building its credit underwriting and loans processing capacity. The Bank will leverage on its experience in lending to Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs to grow its share of their new businesses, tap the next generation of business owners, and meet the requirements of its parent company SM Group’s network of suppliers, contractors and tenants. Finally, on retail lending, it will strengthen both its internal client sourcing scheme and branch referral program and effectively bundle housing & auto loan products and credit cards with mainstream banking services.

The Bank will build up its investment securities portfolio, diversify holdings into better-yielding corporate & sovereign issues that would generate more fees from bond trading and distribution, and raise corporate funding to supplement the deposit build-up at the branch level. The addition of CBCC will also broaden the range of services available to the Bank’s institutional clients and generate additional fee-based income and compensating business for the group.

The CBS-PDB tandem would be able to generate better returns by leveraging on its combined presence in the commercial, middle, and SME space through the setup of business centers and provincial sales offices. It will tap business prospects from the SM Group’s supply chain and convert Contract-to-Sell (CTS) financing to end-user home financing facilities and continue to offer its teachers’ loans.

The Bank will strive to achieve a holistic view of clients’ needs regardless of market segment and create consistent results and experiences, not only in the branch, but also across all channels— ATM network, phone & mobile banking, and China Bank Online.

Newly opened branches would carry the new branch design with existing branches to follow. In the area of business intelligence, a dedicated research team will analyze customer demographics and behavior to determine which products best meet clients’ profile and preferred banking channels, eventually improving customer satisfaction and retention. Additionally, key banking policies & procedures will be reviewed and streamlined, together with the upgrade of several business systems such as online banking platform for both corporate and retail clients, Treasury, and remittance, among others.

China Bank will strengthen its human resource complement by growing the existing manpower base, hiring & deploying management trainees, and rolling out training programs covering customer service, sales management, leadership, and project management & execution.

PRESIDENT AND CEO, CHINA BANKING CORPORATION

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ASIA INTERVIEW Ricardo R. Chua, president and CEO since 2014 and previously executive vice president and COO since 1995, has been a driving force behind China Bank for many years, although the history of his beginnings here hardly fit the storyline of an overnight success. He joined the Bank in 1975 as a 23-year-old young deputy, one of the many key hires of the institution that was ripe for transformation. Armed with a degree in accounting and a Masters degree in business management from the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), he had no prior exposure to banking, but this did not deter him from doing great things in the Bank.

“I was assigned to run bank wide operations which provided me in depth understanding on how to run the Bank,” Ric says.

There was no manual for training of young officers back then, so he designed his own program. He started at the bottom, rotating through stints at all kinds of tasks, including audit, tellering and clerical work.

Then he worked at the bank branches to give himself a ground-level appreciation for the operations, culture, and challenges of the Bank. Two decades and many hats and learnings later, he became COO.

Leadership philosophy: Employees make the company At the core of Ric Chua’s leadership philosophy is his belief that the Bank is built on the collective story of the men and women who have served the institution—in other words, the Bank’s workforce. He believes in hiring and nurturing the best and the brightest; and that this continuing commitment to professionalism and excellence has prepared the Bank for a highly competitive banking industry.

This philosophy that underlies what he calls the “China Bank DNA” believes that what sets a great organization apart from others is the strength of its people, who in turn are passionate about making a difference in the lives and businesses of their customers – hence the corporate mantra “Your Success is our Business.” This customer-centric approach was reinforced during China Bank’s 90th anniversary celebration with the campaign – “More Than Your Banker.

The Right Partner.” -- conveying the bank’s

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legacy of enduring partnerships lasting many generations, anchored on the trust bestowed by clients and depositors, but earned the hard way thru consistent hard work and integrity.

For Ric, the challenge going forward is to continue to have a strong management team – one that is a blend of book-smart and street-smart people. He emphasizes the importance of being grounded. His own experience as a branch manager during his first years in the Bank has given him valuable lessons in banking.

“I love to talk about how to take care of our customers—it’s not the textbook approach. We don’t want to lose that DNA and character of the Bank of understanding the customer,” he says.

In his messages to the management team and exhortations to the people in the field particularly the branches, Ric Chua strongly emphasizes that with the origins of China Bank as a bank put up by businessmen for businessmen, we should all “think like entrepreneurs” and not act like paper pushers, because it only in this way that you could anticipate the needs of your customers and respond to this needs and requirements.

This exhortation brings to life the bank’s Mission Statement that Ric Chua crafted in 1994 together with the Management team, which says “We shall be a primary catalyst in the creation of wealth for our customers, driven by a desire to help them succeed, through a highly motivated team of competent and empowered professionals, guided by an in depth knowledge of their needs and supported by leading-edge technology.

China Bank’s visionary Ric has long been regarded as a “visionary” in China Bank – pushing for the Bank’s IT modernization, including the acquisition of a new core banking system rolled out in August 2015. Under Ric’s guidance, China Bank replaced its legacy system with the robust and more powerful Finacle Core Banking Solution from Infosys—part of the overall upgrade and enhancement initiative to support the Bank’s expanding operations and drive customer growth.

In 2007, he initiated the strategic alliance between Manulife Philippines and China Bank, giving birth to the bancassurance business MCBL or Manulife China Bank Life Assurance Corporation. This exclusive partnership has proven to be mutually beneficial to both parties, providing China Bank customers with a wider array of insurance and investment products and contributing a significant source of feebased revenues. The partnership has also contributed up to a quarter of Manulife Philippines business.

He also led the Bank’s acquisition of Manila Bank in 2007, which was relaunched as a savings bank subsidiary China Bank Savings as the consumer banking arm of the China Bank group.

The acquisition of a provincial thrift bank Unity Bank gave China Bank the platform for a new consumer segment of salary loans for teacher. A couple of years ago, he successfully carried out the acquisition of Planters Development Bank, which was merged in 2015 into China Bank Savings, bolstering its portfolio in the SME sector.

He continued to further grow the institution by initiating the formation of China Bank Capital Corporation, the investment house subsidiary of China Bank, providing clients with a wide range of services that include debt and equity capital raising and underwriting, project finance, mergers and acquisitions, and more.

Currently, Ric is spearheading the “digital banking project” coupled with a parallel initiative to refresh the China Bank brand and branch design —a progressive attempt

by China Bank to compete in this era of digital banking and virtual convenience by providing superior customer experience across all channels.

“We have seen the role of technology evolve from merely providing the hardware and software to efficiently handle a greater volume of transactions to providing the platforms and managing the ecosystems that will enable the delivery of superior customercentric experience across all channels,” Ric says. “This approach drives the digital transformation initiatives we are currently undergoing under my personal supervision.”

Success on his watch

ASIA INTERVIEW Under Ric’s leadership, China Bank’s credit rating was upgraded by international ratings agency Fitch Ratings to ‘BB+’ from ‘BB’, with a Stable outlook. The upgrade was based on the “expectation that the Bank will maintain broadly-steady asset quality, adequate capital buffers, and stable funding and liquidity profiles as it grows and potentially gains market share.”

With Ric at the helm, China Bank has been a recipient of the Bell Award for Corporate Governance by the Philippine Stock Exchange—the only bank among the awardees in the publicly-listed company category and the only listed company to have won for five consecutive years. In 2016, he received the award for Asia’s Best CEO (Investor Relations) – Philippines at the 6th Asian Excellence Awards presented by Corporate Governance Asia.

When asked for a motto he lives his life by, he answers: “Be bold and passionate in seizing opportunities; be disciplined in pursuing your dreams to the end.” Proof that he follows this mantra to the letter is the level of success he has helped China Bank rise to – a level that sees the institution as one of the most trusted banks in the Philippines.

Other accomplishments Ric is a member of the China Bank Board since 2008 as the chairman of the Management Committee, vice chairman of the Credit Committee, and a member of the Executive Committee. He likewise serves in the Boards of China Bank subsidiaries China Bank Savings, CBC Properties and Computer Center, Inc., and China Bank Capital Corporation.

He is a founding director of BancNet, Inc., the largest ATM consortium in the Philippines, serving for several terms as chairman and vice chairman, and was again elected BancNet president for 2016 – 2017. In the recent past, he was likewise a director of CBC Venture Capital Corporation, the Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC), and other directorships outside of China Bank.

Ricardo R. Chua President and CEO China Banking Corporation

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ASIA TECHNOLOGY

Denial.

Resistance.

Adaptation.

The Three Phases of SSH Key Management It has been said that there are several stages to grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. There is often a similar reaction when it comes to realizing that the back door to our enterprises has been open for a long time due to poorly managed SSH user keys.

SSH user keys are a means of authentication, similar in some ways to a password. Whether it is access to our Oracle databases, payment processing systems, trading platforms, network devices, Linux based IOT devices or Amazon cloud, SSH and SSH user key-based access is pervasively used. It connects our processes together for application-to-application data transfers, and the way our administrators and developers can conveniently access their environments.

What is unique about SSH user keys, and why should we be concerned?

•

Anyone with an SSH client in your organization and access to a server can generate an SSH key pair.

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•

•

SSH user keys don’t expire, meaning they continue to provide access unless they are removed from the locations where they reside.

SSH user keys don’t necessarily correlate themselves to an identity, meaning we can’t easily assess which person or what process the key pair is associated with.

This equals access to our most critical infrastructure, which is completely out of control.

The Financial Sector Today: “The Wild, Wild West” of SSH User Keys For the last two decades, the provisioning, de-provisioning and recertification process of SSH user key-based access in most financial institutions could be described as the “wild, wild West.” Whereas SSH has primarily been seen as encryption protocol and, to a lesser degree, as a means of access to our most critical infrastructure, it has often been the unwanted stepchild of the prioritized security

ASIA TECHNOLOGY

initiatives. Who really wants to share with the CISO and CIO that the organization currently has hundreds of thousands or even millions of unmanaged access credentials?

lockdown of where that private key could actually be used from, and no lockdown of what commands that SSH session between the application could run.

The workflow has gone like this: An application owner is tasked to create a connection to another application to securely move data between them. The application owner assigns an administrator to set up the connection. The administrator sets up the connection, generates and deploys themselves the SSH user keys to automate the authentication of the connection, and then tests the connection to confirm that everything is working. If everything connects properly and the data moves between the applications, the job is considered done and forgotten.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, Federal Reserve Bank, Indian Reserve Bank, BaFin, the European Central Bank and PCI auditors are beginning to flag this out-of-control access within financial institutions.

The problem here is everything that did not happen in this process.

The administrator was able to generate access without oversight or approval. No inventory of the connections the key-based access established was kept. No monitoring of the key was enabled. No

Furthermore, data points from the environments of these large financials are uncovering millions of SSH user key-based connections to their most critical infrastructure that cannot be tracked back to owners within the financial institution. In many cases, this access carries root-level implications, the highest degree of privileged access. Astonishingly, up to 90 percent of this SSH user key-based access is obsolete.

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However, the implications and flagged audit items are not stopping there. Auditors are also finding scenarios of insiders using SSH key-based access to bypass privileged access controls, providing themselves backdoors to applications and infrastructure. Accounts and users sharing key-based credential run rampant, and it is commonplace for users to leverage keys to gain greater access across the environment than they should have.

Phase 2: Resistance

It is an issue that financial institutions can no longer ignore and must be addressed within their identity access management frameworks.

4.

Phase 1: Denial We are seeing breaches in which the misuse of SSH has played a significant role in exfiltration of critical data. In fact, in the Snowden and Sony breaches, there is significant evidence that SSH user keys were extensively used to gain access to critical servers and data. Poor to non-existent SSH key management and encrypted access control played a significant contributing factor to both of these major headlines.

A critical question is: “How would an enterprise know if SSH user keys had been used to gain unauthorized access to servers and exfiltrate data if we don’t have any inventory of SSH user keys and are not monitoring their usage and how they are provisioned, revoked and recertified?” Well, we wouldn’t and we don’t.

In addition, many organizations have little to no visibility into their encrypted SSH and SFTP traffic, thereby rendering our intrusion detection systems, data loss prevention systems, anti-virus and SIEM tools ineffective in identifying threats in real time where SSH is potentially being used maliciously.

After denial comes resistance. This usually entails the following: 1.

2.

3.

Please don’t scan my environment to show me the size of the problem, because then I will have to fix it.

But I have so many other more important initiatives.

There are too many stakeholders involved to solve this.

We are moving to the cloud, so this won’t be a problem.

Let’s go through these statements so we can move to the phase of adapting our organizations to acceptance of this massive problem.

1. Please don’t scan my environment to show me the size of the problem, because then I will have to fix it.

A scan of the environment is an eye-opening and humbling experience. It will provide insight into risk around segregation of duty access controls from non-production to production environment. It will demonstrate gaps in how we manage third-party access to our environments, give us insight into access that has not been recertified in two or more years and demonstrate where we have key-based access with weak encryption. It will highlight how deeply a malicious actor could penetrate into our environment with a single stolen private key. The primary issue is how we gain control of this access regarding how we provision it, revoke it and recertify it.

2. But I have so many other more important initiatives.

What could be more important than securing the primary back-down in terms of access to our most critical infrastructure?

How can we continue to ignore hundreds of thousands to millions of access credential to our most critical infrastructure?

3. There are too many stakeholders involved to solve this.

SSH unites our organizations when it comes to access and data flows. It cuts across our on-premises assets and is used by third-party suppliers to gain access to our systems remotely and transfer data to our systems. It is used by our developers to move code throughout the DevOps supply chain as we create new applications.

It is used to gain access to our cloud and to transfer data and connect applications between our midrange servers and our mainframe.

The SSH-related access challenge organizations face actually have the chance to bring many organizational functions closer together. First and foremost, SSH user key and encrypted access is an identity and access management issue. However, cryptographic services, security operations and infrastructure all play a significant role in effectively addressing the issue. It’s not really an issue of too many stakeholders; it’s more about identifying who has the ownership to solve the problem.

4. We are moving to the cloud, so this won’t be a problem.

Regardless of your plans for migrating services and applications to the cloud, SSH will continue to play a key role when it comes to access and the movement of data.

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Many large enterprises engage in what is known as a “lift and shift” when it comes to the first step of cloud migration. For SSH user key-based access, this means that we have simply migrated the access challenges we faced on-premises into our cloud.

Additionally, in the automation stack of the DevOps process, SSH user key-based access is the developers’ tool of choice to move code from source code repositories like Github to test and build automation tools like Jenkins, all the way through to how we upload the code to a cloud application. We must take into consideration that developers have access through the supply chain closer than ever to development environments. This access also needs to be controlled effectively.

Phase 3: Adaptation Once we have overcome denial and resistance, there are effective ways to gain visibility, control and ongoing governance of our SSH user key-based access.

First, because in most cases SSH user key-based access has not been part of the overall provisioning processes of organizations’ identity management frameworks, we have to solve the visibility challenge. Visibility consists of developing a mapping of private and public keys to their corresponding interactive or application-to-application connection. This can be achieved through scripted approaches, some of the privileged access management solutions and those dedicated to managing SSH user keys.

At the same time, there are other, easily available tools that can help us understand how frequently keys are authenticating and from where. This is known as verbose logging and can be activated in the SSH daemon; it is essential because it provides us the needed intelligence about what keybased access in our environment is valid and what access may no longer be needed.

It also can help us identify if private keys are authenticating from IPs that are not recognized by our network.

Controlling the bleed of unauthorized SSH user key-based provisioning is probably the primary challenge organizations need to address. Through a process called “lockdown,” where authorized keys are relocated from users’ home directories to a central rootowned location, only users with root-level access are able to generate new SSH user keys going forward. But be careful here; if you lock down access without having a provisioning process in place, you may frustrate many of your administrators, developers and application owners. Communication of the process and oversight is essential to the success of this process.

The end game is automation. On average, if a skilled user sets up an SSH user keybased trust and validates that the connection is working, it may take five minutes.

An unskilled SSH user, on the other hand, may take 30 minutes or more. If we do the math, we are generating thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of SSH user keys a year, and the costs really begin to add up. Automation can be achieved through scripting, solutions dedicated to SSH user key management and even orchestration tools.

Denial and resistance are common reactions when we feel threatened or surprised by something we think we should have been aware of. We don’t want to believe that what is being told to us is true. SSH user key management is an issue that provokes this reaction among security professionals.

The good news is that there is an adaptive process to help us gain visibility, continuous monitoring and governance of SSH user key-based trusts. This is a path to a more secure tomorrow.

Matthew McKenna Chief Strategy Officer SSH Communications Security Matthew brings over 15 years of high technology sales, marketing, and management experience to SSH Communications Security and drives strategy, key account sales, and evangelism. Prior to joining the company, Matthew served as a member of the executive management team of ADP Dealer Services Nordic and Automaster Oy, where he was responsible for international channel operations and manufacturer relations.

In addition, he was responsible for key accounts including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, and Scania CV. Before this, Matthew played professional soccer in Germany and Finland.

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ASIA BUSINESS

Evgeny Latypov, Excutive Director of Business Bank Group explained that the core to success in any business starts from internal policies, mainly from a company’s corporate responsibility, service and design policies and technological advancement.

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Evgeny Latypov Executive Director Business Bank Group

ASIA BUSINESS

Global Business with Business Bank Group

In a globalizing world shaped be increased interactions, worldwide markets for products and services, and an ever-growing role for information technology, many product-driven companies require assistance from advisory firms to reach their full potential. Despite this great need, and hence opportunity, depressingly most consulting advisory firms fail to survive in today’s competitive environment. The reason is simple: they look with a tunnel vision towards only the financial growth of their clients. Such companies fail to recognize the importance of designing services that result in a mutually-beneficial, dependent relationship for all participants. Achieving such a result is not difficult when key goals are kept in mind.

Service Design: ALL-WIN-APPROACH First, implemented strategies must be inclusive, providing benefits for the most participants possible. Actions will have direct impact on the client, investor, and service provider.

Impact will also carry over to the client’s customers and even the communities in which client operates. Business Bank Group (BBG) provides an example of a successful approach through BBG Credit. A unique cross-border loan, BBG Credit enables the purchase of used vehicles from Japan and the USA. Started as a financial consulting service for Japanese used cars exporters, it was aimed at increasing sales and securing market position in Georgia and Armenia. Through its design, it quickly became apparent that sales were positively addressed and clients were increased. Because of the growing market demand for the service, all parties involved have benefited from a rising volume that eventually attracted more investors, assuring growth for BBG and Japanese exporters. The moral here is that benefits did not flow to only one participant. Therefore, all felt invested. Creating such a multi-faceted benefit chain is clearly advantageous.

Technological Advancement Technological advancements are universally positive, helping businesses and organizations save time and production costs. This requires, however, proper attention and cannot be ignored.

Building on these provides a competitive advantage. Speeding up and managing communication delivery, staying in tact, and taking advantage of fintech tools are key components in gaining competitive advantage in Financial Consulting.

Consulting services cannot fall behind.

Team Management A company is only as good as its staff, and a staff dedicated to the company will succeed. For consulting companies, an employee who believes in the company can inspire more confidence in clients. Employee satisfaction is key as it inspires loyalty, resulting in a willingness to perform better and go out of one’s way for the team. Satisfied employees are extremely loyal to their organization and stay engaged even in difficult times. Best efforts are not a result of pressure or fear, they come from a connection to the team. Employee satisfaction, combined with professional training, is central to the goal of providing clients of any industry that with the assurance that their needs will be met. Therefore, looking internally first and taking steps specific to your organization is an important aspect of consulting.

The results speak for themselves as today BBG is a trusted consultant covering all continents and our portfolio includes companies and organizations of any scale (examples include Be Forward, Japan,– 415 million USD in sales; Aros Marine, Lithuania – 350 employees globally; World Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation – 104 member countries, the Embassy of Afghanistan in Japan, Nine Six Films – a Japanese startup company offering unique way of video filming).

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ASIA TECHNOLOGY

LOCATION INTELLIGENCE Anil Mathews, Founder & CEO of Near discusses location intelligence What is location intelligence and what benefits does it offer the finance sector?

Anil Mathews: Essentially, location intelligence is the missing ingredient of context. It blends geographical perspective, the ‘where’, with the other key contextual data points — the ‘what, who, when, and why’ — to create a single, complete picture of individual or enterprise activity.

The result is real-time, actionable insight that not only provides a better understanding of the factors involved in a particular action, such as a consumer deciding to buy a car, but also when and where that consumer might make future purchases — and how they can be influenced.

For the financial sector, such information is invaluable in every area from retail to real estate. Using location intelligence businesses can identify the links between geographical factors — like spatial attributes, the weather, urbanization, and environmental constraints — and activity at an individual, and organizational level. With a bird’s eye view of economic context, businesses can ensure their strategy is one step ahead of emerging trends, market shifts, and competitors.

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What examples are you seeing of financial services using location intelligence to make more informed business decisions?

Anil Mathews: Location intelligence has so many applications as a decision-making tool that the industry is only just beginning to discover. Right now, its finance-specific uses fall into two categories: single and periodical.

In the single-use camp we are seeing location intelligence informing new investments within areas such as mining, agriculture, retail, and commerce. When it comes to periodic use, it tends to be called upon for larger scale investments in areas like transportation services, public utilities or health, inventory management, and logistics.

Both areas, however, utilize the same core insight, namely: general spatial viability, consumer dynamics in relation to prosperity of people in particular regions — and the products or services they regularly buy — and other geographic considerations encompassing local culture, crime rates, or local attractions.

This information can form an accurate basis for decisions great and small. Whether it’s everyday tasks like establishing credit risk, small business potential for loans and mortgage suitability, or deciding whether to invest in public companies, which new ventures to support and how to manage private equity, location intelligence is indispensible.

ASIA TECHNOLOGY

How can location intelligence help combat financial fraud and crime?

How can location intelligence help financial services reach Millennials?

Anil Mathews: Fighting financial fraud and crime in the real world is an age-old battle and now the rise of digital has extended the frontline to the virtual space. To stay on top of these issues tools that tackle both are essential and this makes location intelligence a key line of defense.

Anil Mathews: Millennials live a high proportion of their lives via smart, web-enabled devices that go with them everywhere and produce endless streams of data about what they do, where they do it, and how they prefer to communicate. And for financial services providers hoping to engage millennial attention, extracting the right insights from this rising tide of location-specific data is vital.

It can be used to set transaction limits that keep consumer and organizational spend safe. If a purchase is made from a location that does not match previous purchase and investment patterns — or a pre-defined area that can range from a country, state or even household — the transaction will be marked as potentially fraudulent and can be stopped.

Similarly, fraud in areas such as income, property, and sales tax can be identified using location insight gained from credit card usage.

Where consumers live, the places they visit, and how often they travel can all help to build a picture of standard behavior. Any unexplained irregularities that indicate additional income can be investigated to uncover possible fraud.

According to the results of a global study conducted by Telstra in collaboration with Near, 58%1 of millennials prefer personalized financial advice and 49% feel it should be delivered via a mobile app. With accurate location intelligence, financial service providers can build individual consumer profiles that enable them to quickly and accurately adapt their offering, and communications, and keep up the fast pace of millennial expectation.

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ASIA TECHNOLOGY

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What is the future of location intelligence in the finance sector?

Anil Mathews: Location intelligence is becoming an intrinsic element of increasing efficiency and effectiveness within the finance sector, and in the future it is set to be more so.

At a high level, it will soon have a greater influence over multi-sector ventures, tracking and optimizing ROI on investments, and economic planning activities — such as economic zones and free trade corridors — as countries try to reinvent political and administrative borders. On a smaller scale, location intelligence is due to continue on its current course in areas like risk assessment and expand into new frontiers, like retail and facilities analytics.

Within the next few years, I believe it will be instrumental in making e-commerce frictionless, as well as streamlining urban planning, logistics, and overall optimization of investments in private and public infrastructure. It sounds bold, but the wheels are already in motion.

What advice would you give financial services looking to better utilize their customer data?

Anil Mathews: Unify data and make it actionable. At the moment, the sector is struggling with the ‘water, water everywhere’ scenario in that there is plenty of information available about consumers — financial status data in one place, transactions and consumption data in another — but it is stored in silos and therefore of little use.

There is an urgent need for financial services providers to embrace tools that amalgamate their fragmented pools of information and turn them into cohesive, actionable insight.

Only by understanding the full context of each consumer or enterprise decision will they be able to enhance service quality and outshine the competition.

Anil Mathews Founder & CEO Near

Source: 1 https://www.telstraglobal.com/millennials/assets/gatedcontent-millennials-mobiles-money.pdf

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ASIA BANKING

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Three

ASIA BANKING

Things Banks Can

Learn

From Pokemon GO Issue 6 | 83

ASIA BANKING

The wildly popular Pokemon Go app has broken all records, with more than 10 million downloads in its first week and 45 million daily users in July. At its peak, the app surpassed Twitter in terms of daily active users, and had a higher average user time than Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and WhatsApp. Given the near universal success of Pokemon Go and the way in which mobile users embraced it, is there anything banks can learn from its sudden success that help them appeal to customers and enrich their experience? The answer is yes, there is much to learn from Pokemon Go. Here are three core takeaways.

1. Syncing Works Perfectly: According to its users, who dub this the best available feature of Pokemon Go, the syncing works perfectly. If we catch a Pokemon on one of our devices, it immediately shows up on other devices as well. Not only that, any changes made to a Pokemon account are reflected instantly in real time. In fact, this feature negated the impact of the app’s greatest weakness – constant crashing, freezing and failing to load maps.

This is exactly the kind of experience that customers are looking for in their bank. Customers want the ability to make transactions across channels and be able to view them across devices; enabling them to make critical decisions promptly. Similarly, a consistent brand experience across all channels – be it mobile, online or in the branch – is critical to customer experience. Seamless integration must be a bank’s top priority across all of its channels, with visually rich and interactive customer experiences.

2. Unique Experience: What do the iPhone, Facebook and Pokemon Go all have in common, apart from the fact that they are hugely successful products/services? In essence, each of them has one single differentiator that makes it a catalyst for success – that customers each use the same product, but have a different experience. Think about like this – when it comes to Pokemon Go, the game is the same across the globe; however, the experience is customised for each user based on either their location or whether they choose to walk or remain at home.

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For banks, the lesson is the importance of delivering a bespoke customer journey which provides the personal touch for each customer. Banks must understand that each customer is unique, and today’s consumers have much higher expectations of the companies that they interact with. Whether profiling customers to cross-sell products, rewarding them for loyalty, or transforming their overall banking experiences – it must make the customer experience memorably unique.

3. Customers as walking billboards: Pokemon Go closely combines the virtual world with the real world. In doing so, the app has uncovered the Holy Grail of advertising – turning its users into walking billboards. All of those people playing the game on the road, at monuments, at sports events, in parks, or when out with their friends, have turned themselves into excellent brand ambassadors. This kind of behavior is even better than much-vaunted “word of the mouth” publicity; seeing peers, colleagues and friends playing the game, encourages others to join in. The app has also opened up new revenue opportunities, including ‘licensed locations’ where ‘chauffeurs’ take players around for a nominal fee.

Banks must find a way to incorporate this behavior into their operations by offering innovative, useful solutions to customers that turn them into brand fans. Imagine how excited a customer will be to see their spending pattern in 3D? Or, how excited a sales team be if their brochure can be converted into an engaging digital experience for conversation?

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Augmented reality (AR) can enrich and personalise user experience; further, through the intertwining of virtual and real worlds, customers can really ‘live’ an experience. AR also complements banks’ Internet of Things (IoT) strategies, which links virtual and real life even more closely. If effectively used, this can make for ’digital brick and mortar branches’.

While technology such as AR is currently at nascent stage in banking, the rate of growth and adoption of AR in other fields, and by consumers, means the financial industry will be forced to adapt to it in time. To learn the lessons of Pokemon Go, banks must imagine each transaction a customer performs as a ‘digital advert’, which simultaneously provides alternative revenue streams – in doing do, the potential for embracing immersive, digital experiences cannot be ignored.

Balasubramanian Vijayakumar Senior Manager – Corporate Banking VirtusaPolaris

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FX rates fluctuate.

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* Global Banking & Finance Review, 2011-2016. BMO Capital Markets is a trade name used by BMO Financial Group for the wholesale banking businesses of Bank of Montreal, BMO Harris Bank N.A. (member FDIC), Bank of Montreal Ireland p.l.c, and Bank of Montreal (China) Co. Ltd and the institutional broker dealer businesses of BMO Capital Markets Corp. (Member SIPC) in the U.S., BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. (Member Canadian Investor Protection Fund) in Canada and Asia, BMO Capital Markets Limited (authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) in Europe and Australia. “BMO Capital Markets” is a trademark of Bank of Montreal, used under license. “BMO (M-Bar roundel symbol)” is a registered trademark of Bank of Montreal, used under license. ® Registered trademark of Bank of Montreal in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. ™ Trademark of Bank of Montreal in the United States and Canada.

ASIA INVESTMENT

Sydney Stock Exchange Deputy Chairman and Non-Executive Director, Mr. George Wang, Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre and APX Settlement CEO Mr. David Lawrence with their Most Innovative Stock Exchange Award Australia 2016

Sydney Stock Exchange wins Most Innovative Exchange The Sydney Stock Exchange (SSX) has been awarded Global Banking and Finance’s Most Innovative Stock Exchange Company Australia Award for 2016. Sydney Stock Exchange Deputy Chairman and Non-Executive Director, Mr. George Wang, said “This award is the result of a lot of hard work. For a longtime the exchange has been developing a real connectivity between Australia and Asia, especially with China and India, the two biggest markets within the region. Relationships take time, and the rewards of our efforts are starting to pay off.”

Sydney Stock Exchange Chairman, Mr. Eric Barr, is extremely pleased of the work the Sydney Stock Exchange is doing. Mr. Barr then started discussing the globalization and technology developments the market is confronting, saying “The rapid growth in technological developments and constantly increasing internet speeds has caused the world to become a lot smaller place. Our Stock Exchange is both technology focused and globally aware. In this world, you need to be.

From a technology perspective, we are being incredibly innovative with our work on Blockchain, creating a solution we believe can disrupt the existing processing and settlement system. As we are seeing around the world, old business models are being threatened. Companies seeking capital are being more directly connected to investors. You have to think about what this means for brokers, advisers, exchanges, etc.

As an exchange, we are being innovative and adaptive to change. We are embracing the new environment as we believe we will prosper within it”.

Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre, said “It’s pleasing to be recognized by this prestigious global award, vindicating all the work we have been doing and our unique position and market offering in the Asian region. We are expanding Australian capital markets by providing a necessary link to Asian capital markets, in particularly China and India, the two biggest emerging markets in the world”.

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ASIA INVESTMENT

Sydney Stock Exchange Board members (from L to R): Front row - Non Executive Director Mr. Greg Bundy, Deputy Chairman and Non-Excutive Director, Mr. George Wang, Chairman and Non Executive Director Mr. James Eric Barr, Second row - APX Settlement CEO Mr. David Lawrence, Director of Market Development (Australia & India) Ms. Loretta Joseph, General Manager – Market Supervision Mrs. Anita Zhao, Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre

Mr. Sacre said that one of the key drivers of business is to connect Australia to Asia. Mr. Sacre said that ‘The underlying philosophy of our exchange is growing that interconnectivity between Australia and Asia. Part of that focus is working closely with industry to ensure that we can offer a solution that matches the requirements of those companies looking to list. By working closely with key industry participants, we expect to develop the right balance of accountability when it comes to our key markets, principally technology, resources, agribusiness, healthcare, and property”.

Mr. Sacre added that “We believe that we have won this award due to the innovation we are showing on the technology side of our business and for the innovation shown in our customer value proposition”. He continued stating “At the Sydney Stock Exchange, the team recognize the need to be nimble and innovative. Our newly installed start of the art trading system and our refreshed listing rules really drive home that message, making our exchange a strong and attractive market for growth companies looking to list.”

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Additionally, Mr. Sacre pointed out that earlier in the year the Sydney Stock Exchange was the first Australian Exchange to join the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative. Mr. Sacre said “At SSX we are committed to operating an ethical, transparent and sustainable marketplace. In Australia and throughout Asia sustainable investing strategies and practices are becoming increasingly important. SSX is pleased to join the SSE initiative and we look forward to working in cooperation with the Sustainable Stock Exchange experts to improve sustainability practices within our listed companies and making an impact on the investment community”.

Mr. Wang and Mr. Sacre were both recently in China, meeting with senior members within the Finance Industry, Government and Corporate Sectors in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Mr. Sacre said “The interest in Australia from China is substantial. Additionally, the interest in China from Australia remains very strong. The job of the exchange is to bring these international opportunities together”.

ASIA INVESTMENT

Sydney Stock Exchange Deputy Chairman and Non-Excutive Director, Mr. George Wang and Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre

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ASIA INVESTMENT

Sydney Stock Exchange Deputy Chairman and Non-Excutive Director, Mr. George Wang and Sydney Stock Exchange General Manager – Listings, Mr. Joseph Law with the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiative

Mr. Sacre noted that “My meetings in China echoed that we, as an exchange, are on the right path. Facilitating the process of those with capital meeting up with those with the right ideas and opportunities, which leads to growth are what we are about. Helping growth businesses deliver on their expectations. Our role, as I see it, is to bring companies and markets together. Speaking specifically about China, capital markets in China are comparatively young, probably just over 30 years old. Many of the senior managers and owners of Chinese companies are incredibly sophisticated and brilliant business managers and leaders, but they are unfamiliar with the rules and regulations which exist in the West. Many want a Western Market listing due to the brand value associated with an international listing. Australian Capital Markets are a lot more mature, with a history extended over 100 years. Compliance rules and international

listing requirements are, therefore, very different and a lot more stringent in Australia when compared to Chinese requirements. Australian listing rules and requirements, issues like continuous disclosure, governance issues pertaining to board discussions with local directors, etc can seem quite foreign to many large, successful Chinese companies. They need to know how to operate in Australia. To list in a foreign market is attractive to them, but simultaneously concerning from an administrative perspective. Our team at the SSX is a multi-cultural team with a significant degree of experience in both Australian and Asian Capital markets. Our diverse, multi-cultural team can use their unique blend of international and domestic capital market skills to educate Chinese companies on Australian listing requirements, thus allowing us to successfully bridge Australian and Asian Capital Markets.”

Sydney Stock Exchange Board members (from L to R): Chairman and Non Executive Director Mr. James Eric Barr, Non Executive Director Mr. Greg Bundy, Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre, APX Settlement CEO Mr. David Lawrence, Deputy Chairman and Non-Excutive Director, Mr. George Wang, General Manager – Market Supervision Mrs. Anita Zhao, Director of Market Development (Australia & India) Ms. Loretta Joseph,

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From a technological development perspective, Sydney Stock Exchange has been working closely on what they anticipate will be an industry leading Blockchain based settlement solution. Mr. Sacre commented said “Sydney Stock Exchange and our related entity, APX Settlements, are working on a Blockchain Based Settlement Solution. The intention of this work is to create an instantaneous settlement and transfer upon trade platform to be used by both the Sydney Stock Exchange and other exchanges. We have successfully prototyped a blockchain based smart register for the real-time issuance and allocation of securities. The value of this work is that it will reduce the risks,time and costs associated with settlement, savings which can be poured back into the liquidity of the market”.

APX Settlements CEO, Mr. David Lawrence, said “SSX’s commitment to innovative development in distributed ledger technology for equity market settlement and registration and

the rethinking of old industry practices and meeting customer needs in a more efficient manner is an excellent example of the innovative and ‘different thinking’ being adopted”.

Mr. Wang commented that “The work that Sydney Stock Exchange is doing is about creating opportunity for companies to really work together within the Asian markets, connecting Australia with Asia. Being able to help companies commercialize their ideas is a real driver for Tony and the team at the Sydney Stock Exchange. I believe their work will start reaping real dividends for companies within the region. Connecting great Australian ideas, and promoting the value and brand of Australian companies to Asia, where they are highly sort after, is a win for Australian companies and Asian investors. It keeps jobs and profits in the region, which is good for the growth and overall economic development of the region.”

Sydney Stock Exchange Deputy Chairman and Non-Excutive Director, Mr. George Wang, Sydney Stock Exchange CEO, Mr. Tony Sacre, APX Settlement CEO Mr. David Lawrence attending Sino-Australia Investment, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Roundtable Conference in SSX Trading hall

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Africa

MIDDLE EAST FINANCE

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AFRICA MIDDLE EASTINTERVIEW FINANCE

Banking in The Gambia Mr. Bolaji Ayodele CEO and Managing Director of Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd spoke with Global Banking & Finance Review about the banking industry in The Gambia and the role of Guaranty Trust Bank (G) Ltd. How do you view the banking landscape in The Gambia? What impact are regulations having?

The Government of The Gambia has “Vision 2020� as a development blueprint. The longterm strategy document which seeks to transform the country into a middle-income country shows government commitment to a private sector led development agenda. This is comforting to businesses.

The Gambia Banking Industry is over 100 years and has 11 commercial banks, one Islamic bank, and all regulated by the Central Bank of The Gambia.

According to the latest monetary policy report by the Central Bank of The Gambia, due to sound policies put in place by the Central Bank, the financial indicators of the banking sector remain safe and sound. The industry risk-weighted capital adequacy ratio averaged 36.5 percent in March 2016, higher than the required minimum of 10.0 percent. Total assets increased to D29.4 billion in the year to end-March, or 4.8 percent from a year ago attributable primarily to 13.0 percent increase in investments, with the industry recording a total net profit of D604MM in 2015.

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AFRICA

Mr. Bolaji Ayodele CEO and Managing Director Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd Mr. Bolaji Ayodele joined Guaranty Trust Bank Plc in 1994, after a brief stint with Chartered Bank Ltd Nigeria where he served in the Foreign Operations Department in 1993. Prior to his deployment to The Gambia in 2005 as General Manager, Mr.Ayodele was the Zonal Co-ordinator for Operations, Northern Nigeria, where all the GTBank branches in the Northern part of Nigeria were under his purview.

Mr. Bolaji Ayodele was appointed Managing Director and CEO of Guaranty Trust Bank (Gambia) Ltd in July 2014. Prior to his appointment, he has served as Deputy under two erstwhile Managing Directors.

Mr. Ayodele holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Lagos, Nigeria (1991), a Post Graduate Diploma (PGD) in Business Administration from Enugu State University of Science & Technology (1999) and an MBA in Business Administration from Enugu State University of Science & Technology (2002). He has also attended several management courses at some of the world’s leading business schools.

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AFRICA INTERVIEW What are some of the major opportunities and challenges facing the banking sector in The Gambia?

The banking sector in The Gambia like other markets in Africa has its fair share of both opportunities and challenges.

However, it is my opinion that the opportunities outweigh the challenges.

The sustained growth of the sector over the years and the fact that most commercial banks have been recording profit is a testimony to this. The Central Bank of The Gambia has been efficient in performing its regulatory role which is really encouraging.

Another opportunity for banking in The Gambia is the high number of the unbanked population. Recently, the Governor of The CBG announced that the unbanked population is about 80%. This means there is great potential for growth.

The country also enjoys relative peace and stability which is good for business and continues to attract investors.

Significant investments have been made in the information technology infrastructure in the country which has enabled banks team up with GSM service

providers to provide services such as mobile banking. The investment in technology has encouraged competition among banks for the provision of IT based services. I believe the customers are the clear winners in this. The Gambia has an enthusiastic and trainable workforce. It is also important to note that the country has a youthful population which could enhance growth and is also a potential for continued innovation.

However, despite the opportunities, there are significant challenges for banks in The Gambia. The sector is underdeveloped and relatively small. The income levels are low which affects savings. The lack of trust and confidence in conventional banking by some communities in society continue to pose a serious challenge to banks.

However, with mounting awareness created by banks, we have noticed some positive changes in that regard.

Treasury bill rates have registered a significant increase over the years. This has resulted in a corresponding rise in interest rates which reduces customers’ borrowing appetite and also poses loan recovery challenges. The volatility of the foreign exchange market is quite challenging too.

Last year you launched mobile banking services, a first of its kind in The Gambia.

Can you tell us more about this?

The GTBank mobile banking is a free banking platform that allows customers to do transactions directly from their mobile phone, e.g., buy credit, change pin, check balance, BBan Enquiry, Funds Transfer (Own Account and Third Party) and receive mini statements. No credit, no internet required. It offers them convenience and real-time transactions and helps reduce transaction costs.

The goal of mobile banking is to expand that freedom to users even more, by making sure the user is not even required to be near a computer or to step into a branch.

It does not require any application/ software to be downloaded to the handset. It thus enables complex transactions as well which may not be possible through SMS. It is secure and much faster than traditional SMS-based transactions. The other good thing about it is that it is a session based communication, so it does not store any data on the phone and transactions terminate as the session ends.

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AFRICA INTERVIEW Can you tell us more about the electronic solutions Guaranty Trust Bank has to offer?

Our focus since inception has always been to provide top quality service for our clientele. Our robust IT platform has enabled us to introduce to the market a bouquet of IT products and services aimed at making banking much more easy for our customers.

We have the only electronic branch in The Gambia. The self-service branch houses Visa/MasterCard enabled ATMs and is open 24/7. It has computers which grant our customer access to our internet banking platform.

In The Gambia, one has to buy electricity units before it is supplied. In order to make the purchase of electricity easier for our customers, we enabled our ATMs for Cash Power Vending. What that mean is, our customers can walk to any of our ATMs and buy electricity units with their ATM cards. We also have airtime vending service. This allows our customers to purchase Mobile Phone Credit for any Gambian GSM Network with the GTBank Verve Card.

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Our Internet Banking Platform allows customers to perform online banking transactions with the use of a Token device to ensure a faster, safer and more convenient experience. The GTBank portable Internet Banking Security device allows customers to monitor their accounts, conduct third party transfers, change their password, stop cheques, confirm cheques, and request for standing order.

We have Point of Sale (POS) Terminals in major restaurants, supermarkets, and hotels. Our POS Terminals allow anyone who holds verve domestic cards, VISA and MasterCard to do their shopping without necessarily carrying physical cash.

The GTBank POS Terminals have other benefits which include; checking account balance, statement printing and funds transfer between GTBank accounts. These are some of our technology solutions.

Customer relations are very important in banking, how do you ensure customers are receiving the best customer experience available?

GTBank is a customer service oriented bank, and our focus has always been to offer top quality service. In order for our

customers to have the best experience, our corporate bank, commercial bank, public sector and retail groups offer personalized services to various facets of the economy. With each of these Groups, we operate on a participatory and professional front. On the one hand, we strive to actively acquire the knowledge needed to service our customers and on the other hand we impart informed knowledge on how our customers can improve their businesses. This way, we provide total banking solutions that meet every customer’s needs.

Each of our customers is assigned to one of our highly professional relationship managers and account officers. The RMs and AOs maintain a close professional relationship with customers they manage.

This increases customer loyalty to the bank.

Our open door policy also requires that customers can walk into our offices at anytime and that there is always someone to attend to their needs and requests.

We also ensure a fast and reliable turnaround time in our service delivery.

We are popular for our prompt response to customers’ needs and requests. We

AFRICA INTERVIEW ensure that our branches and banking halls are well kept, and our staff is always available and willing to smile at customers which is truly comforting.

We are aware of the growing trend in electronic relationship management, with email being one of the fastest ways to respond to customers. However, in GTBank we believe that picking up the phone and talking directly to the customer increases customer trust and confidence in the bank and brings the customer closer to the bank.   We also conduct regular products and services survey. The surveys allow our customers to give us feedback regarding our services. This helps us understand what they need and what improvement is expected on existing products/services.

How is Guaranty Trust Bank (G) Ltd supporting the social economic development in The Gambia?

We have influenced so many changes in the banking industry with our establishment in The Gambia in 2002. Customers now enjoy improved customer services in the provision of all conventional banking products and

service. We have given financial support to all sectors of the economy in the form of short, medium to long-term financing.

Our bank is also in partnership with The Gambia Revenue Authority in the collection of taxes for the Government.

Our involvement in all development sectors of the economy has been substantial. We pioneered a successful Medium Term Loan Syndication Facility for a local telecom company. In our role as the Mandate Lead Arranger, we put together a consortium of 4 banks.

In the tourism sector; being the only VISA Principal member in The Gambia and therefore the only merchant acquirer that can issue Point of Sale Terminals to Hotels, Restaurants, Supermarkets e.tc, we have also deployed VISA/MasterCard enabled ATMs for Tourist to have access to their Funds 24/7.

employing young graduates. We also train and encourage our staff to study and develop their careers in various specialized areas of banking and finance.

What are your future plans for development?

In the years ahead, we hope to consolidate the gains made over the years and to continue to be the Bank of choice for both Gambians and non-Gambians especially investors. We recently validated our 5-year strategic plan which will run from January 2017 to December 2021.

Among many other things, the plan places much emphasis on the development of tailor-made services to address the needs of our teeming customers. We want to maintain our lead role as the innovative bank in our industry. IT-driven products/ services would continue to be at the centre of all future plans.

In our continued support of tourism development in The Gambia, GTBank, and International Finance Corporation (IFCCommercial arm of the World Bank.), CoFinanced the infrastructural Development of a Leading 5 Star Hotel in the Country.

In Employment, we have a policy of

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AFRICA INSURANCE

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Understanding the Value of Cyber Insurance

AFRICA INSURANCE “Cyber insurance” continues is being adopted by an increasing number of businesses across a range of industries. The fact that specific insurance is available shows that the business appreciation of the risks / costs associated with a cyber-incident are now widely recognised. According to PwC, the global cyber insurance market is expected to grow to $5bn in annual premiums by 2018.

Challenges for insurers The basics of insurance are quite simple: aggregate the statistical likelihood of incidents over a population, multiply it by the cost per incident to determine the payout, add in a profit margin and spread the “cost” over the population. For the members of that population, that means that if lightning strikes you in particular, you’ve covered a significant portion of the financial cost; and if it doesn’t, the cost is acceptable to alleviate the larger risk.

As we all know, the costs around successful cyber-attacks for businesses can be considerable, especially where major web properties / applications, personal customer / employee or key business information is involved. And, unfortunately, these tend to be exactly what attackers are after.

The challenge for insurance companies in the security space is the lack of historical data to drive predictive models for future incidents. Without enough data, they cannot accurately predict the likelihood of an incident and any associated costs. To cover this risk, insurance companies have been forced to increase the profit ratio.

But as the number of cyber insurance providers and policies increase, the historical data is growing. As insurers build their historical and predictive data sets, and publish the factors that drive their policies, a more accurate understanding of the business costs and risks of IT security will emerge.

A successful DDoS attack can be costly, and the cost can’t be measured purely by looking at lost earnings.

There are also increased operational costs, opportunity costs – and the big one – brand and reputational damage. Many of the costs can minimised if the right defensive services, solutions and processes are employed.

Anti-DDoS solutions exist to protect the availability of the services offered and / or utilised by businesses, but this is just one of their purposes. They are also there to increase the cost for an attacker to carry out a successful attack. In a world where some targets are protected and others aren’t, attackers can identify and avoid those with protection. This deterrence value is hard to measure as it means that the number of attacks a particular target sees decreases while other targets will see a proportional rise in activity.

Getting the most value out of security Cyber-insurance should take these factors into account, but the current lack of widely available empirical data means in most cases this is not currently the case. This creates a huge opportunity for specialist insurance providers, offering creative insurance policies.

For businesses, while the costs and risks around successful cyber-attacks continue to be more widely acknowledged, cyber insurance is becoming more widely adopted. Insurance doesn’t obviate the need for adequate defenses though, businesses need to be able to defend themselves.

15 years ago the CIO’s biggest challenge was the same as the CISO’s biggest challenge today “align the company’s technology with the business.” Security should not be perceived as another IT tax.

Cyber risk around DDoS One of the most prevalent types of attack causing issues for businesses is the Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS). DDoS attacks have recently been in the news due to a number of very high volume attacks generated from Internet of Things (IoT) botnets. These volumetric attacks flood the internet connectivity of the target with traffic, knocking it offline and ensuring that no one can gain access. Very large volumetric and more complex DDoS attacks have become frequent due to the weaponisation of DDoS. Services which allow anyone to launch a damaging attack are now readily available and easy to operate.

Darren Anstee Chief Security Technologist Arbor Networks

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AFRICA FINANCE

Lessons from retail marketing for the financial services industry Customer data attitudes and postures: Breaking down siloes for a better view Financial businesses are known to be heavy data users because of their fundamental service offering. Yet one of the most data-intensive elements of financial services is within the marketing department, as customers are segmented, weighted and targeted with offers and communications.

Learnings from the retail sector The rapid growth of omnichannel retail has proven the value of treating customers as individuals by providing tailored

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approaches. Retailers recognised the benefits of personalised communications and promotions early, going far to boost engagement and loyalty. The retail industry has demonstrated just how important personalisation is to building a feeling of customer care and confidence.

The financial sector is not isolated from this trend. Just as retail shoppers, financial services customers have high expectations from their service providers. They’re looking for a tailored, consistent experience from all of their providers which moves

with them between channels and products.

Financial services firms must recognise changing habits and preferences and adjust their product and service mix to meet consumers’ needs too. It’s essential they respond to the increasing demand for convenience by adjusting distribution channels and offering mobile services, while remaining relevant to varying demographics. This requires far more than a change in attitude. It demands a revolution in the way banks use their data to inform decision making.

AFRICA FINANCE

When used effectively, customer data can help institutions pinpoint market trends, predict demand, and assess risk for improved offerings. Financial services institutions lead the way by blending billions of rows of customer and transaction data. That’s how they identify and retain at-risk customers, improve contact centre agent behaviour and optimise distribution networks. The result is reduced costs, improved convenience and a better customer experience.

Given the information security and privacy issues bound up with the data that financial institutions hold, and the personal and professional impact that misuse or leaks could have, the marketing function within financial services business face a very high data quality bar.

The secret to success comes from identifying specific attributes of customers and segments to provide tailored strategies which help the organisation target and retain customers in the most appropriate way – with total

accuracy. If a supermarket advertises a too expensive brand at a consumer, no harm is done. But if an inappropriate credit offer is proposed to a banking customer then expectations may be raised before massive disillusionment.

It is predictive modelling that enables the creation of a sophisticated algorithm of the entire customer journey across business segments, breaking down any siloes of information within the business.

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AFRICA BUSINESS

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AFRICA FINANCE Deriving data value

Putting it into practice

Financial businesses are of course necessarily protective about their data, and usage is generally tightly restricted to the line of business for which it is collected. Sharing across departments is historically limited if not absent altogether.

Without finding a way to change this, it’s impossible to gain a complete picture of all customer interactions.

One example where this new view of data use has been put into practice comes from ReMark International, provider of insurance distribution services to global organisations including HSBC, Barclaycard, AXA and AIA. ReMark uses Alteryx to prepare and blend its data to produce faster insights.

While breaking down siloes and connecting data within may seem like a big obstacle, there are analytical tools that firms can use to empower business analysts (that is, business people who can analyse their own data). Tools which let them access, blend and analyse data from multiple systems and sources to uncover hidden insights without relying on IT specialists or programmers.

Enabling business users with data analytics is the only way firms can start providing more tailored, engaging experiences based on a multidimensional view of each customer.

And the benefits won’t just begin and end with just the customer. Access to sophisticated, user-friendly self-service data analytics capabilities will also deliver untold benefits for risk management and compliance, enabling banks to assess and optimise risk exposure across business units.

For this initiative, ReMark focuses on customer lifetime analytics, using ‘joined up’ predictive models on customer response, conversion and lapse in order to understand the most powerful predictors that drive customer activities across the pre- and post-sales cycle.

For Mandy Luo, ReMark’s Chief Actuary and Head of Data Analytics, taking a predictive modelling approach rather than a broad strategy has helped achieve a 1525 per cent uplift in customer responses.

With a focus on customer-centricity and looking at customer lifetime analytics, her team creates customer segments not just based on tendency to ‘buy’, but also tendency to ‘pay and stay’.

Mandy believes that the industry understands that it is insufficient to only focus on any single customer activity, but that it is still exploring how this can be improved through modelling and analytics. This is where data analysis teams can add massive value – but not just statistical experts. Self-service analytical tools allow general business users within departments to put their business awareness and skills to use, harnessing data in new ways to take more informed actions.

Once an organisation has learnt to open the business to legitimate and safe data use and expanded its marketing consciousness, then it is really able to flex its marketing muscle and use a data-led approach to customer targeting and management. The results depend on the goal, but can offer bigger, better and more efficient marketing campaigns, leading to higher sales, satisfied customers and empowered employees.

The activity has resulted in customers being three times more accepting of upsell or cross-sell offers.

Chiara Pensato Director - EMEA Alteryx Inc

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AFRICA FINANCE

Innovation is opening the door to a Real Future of Financial Inclusion The pace of change and disruptive innovation happening around us is exhilarating.

We are not only rethinking and reimagining how people shop, bank, dine, and travel, we have an incredible potential to address a very real societal problem: the growing number of unbanked and underbanked individuals. At last count, McKinsey & Company1 estimated that 2.5 billion of the world’s adults are currently unbanked, with just short of 2.2 billion of these in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Financial inclusion is about much more than just having a bank account. At its root level, it is a key element of social and economic inclusion. It is about helping people participate in today’s connected economy.

Reaching the unbanked and underbanked population is a win for both sides – it can provide new customers for banks, while connecting people to financial services that can help them manage their money, save and obtain access to a wider range of welfare benefits.

Many large technology and banking providers are already looking at how we can address this problem, alongside governments who are introducing new policies to support this. The challenge is to create meaningful opportunities to bring banking services to underserved communities.

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The problem of financial inclusion is global, and it is not just a third world problem. It is true that in developing economies, only 59% of adults2 have a traditional bank account.

In India, more than 233 million people have never been to a bank. But highly developed economies have challenges too. A World Bank study showed that 11% of adults in high-income economies do not have traditional bank accounts.

One3 U.S. government study showed that 28% of US households are underbanked, and another recent study4 estimated that 93 million people in Western Europe are financially underserved. While solutions like online payments, mobile banking, and prepaid cards have made important strides in promoting financial inclusion, these sobering numbers make it clear that there is still a great deal of work to do.

AFRICA FINANCE

There are many ways that technology can help open the vaults of banking to the unbanked and the underbanked. Among these are: •

Video tellers: Imagine an ATM where you can talk live with a bank teller 24 hours a day on a video screen.

This technology allows banks to bring a wide range of always-on services at a fraction of the cost of a fully-staffed branch. Banks can now operate branches in low-income and rural neighbourhoods where it wasn’t economical or sustainable in the past.

Furthermore, customers have much more freedom in when they bank someone who is holding down two or three jobs can now talk to a live teller at 2:00 am just as easily as 2:00 pm.

In some parts of the world, people have to walk miles to reach a bank, so imagine the possibilities that can be created by bringing services to them in an affordable way.

•

Accessibility solutions: New technology innovations such as accessible ATMs now make it easier for people with vision and hearing impairments, and all types of disabilities, to access convenient financial services. NCR has a long history of creating accessible ATMs - something we’re particularly proud of is our current work building accessibility features for ATMs that match the highly regarded accessibility features on smartphones and tablets so people with disabilities can bank at an ATM just like they bank online.

•

The cloud for microbusinesses: Financial inclusion isn’t just about individuals. It also means giving small businesses the tools they need to compete, and this is something that doesn’t get enough attention. The cloud is opening new doors for SMBs, who can now take orders, manage inventory, accept payments and forecast demand on a mobile device at a price they can afford. This is a powerful competitive advantage and a great equalizer – you can have the same reach and access to big data and analytics as a small business that a billion-dollar corporation has.

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AFRICA FINANCE

These kinds of innovations are already in existence, and ready to roll out. However, if countries are to better support financial inclusion through technology, there are several steps they must take. First, they must have a clear national strategy, such as the goal set by India to ensure every household in the country has a bank account by 2018. This is where the government needs to play a pivotal role in encouraging financial inclusion.

all of the technologies that are essential to financial inclusion. Without it, other technology solutions will not succeed.

Second, public-private partnerships are essential to ensure that new technologies reach underserved populations that need them. Governments and technology providers need to work together to ensure that the latest technology is embraced and capable of reaching a wider audience.

To open more doors to financial inclusion, we must not get locked into existing technologies – the pace of innovation is too fast for that. Government rules must be flexible and technology-neutral to allow the best technologies that drive financial inclusion to flourish, and technology providers need to ensure they are embracing the latest technology innovations in their products to be able to reach an ever-larger banking population.

Third, more support is needed to extend the rollout of fast, reliable broadband technology, as this will underpin almost

Perhaps most importantly, countries must take an omni-channel approach to financial inclusion. While tools such as digital banking are immensely powerful, not everyone will have access to every solution, or will want digital channels. Likewise, physical channels themselves are not always the answer.

Marija Zivanovic-Smith Vice President of Corporate Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs NCR Corporation Source: 1 http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/ourinsights/counting-the-worlds-unbanked

2 http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGLOBALFIN/ Resources/8519638-1332259343991/world_bank3_Poster.pdf http://missionassetfund.org/wp-content/uploads/Evalshort-web-FINAL.pdf 4 http://newsroom.mastercard.com/news-briefs/europesfinancially-excluded-unmasked-in-new-report/

3

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AFRICA INTERVIEW

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AFRICA INTERVIEW

Digital Banking in Angola Banco Economico was founded in 2002 under the name Banco Espírito Santo Angola by a Portuguese banking group. In 2014, given its main shareholder resolution (Banco Espirito Santo, Portugal) the shareholder structure changed profoundly, and the bank was rebranded to Banco Economico.

Banco Economico is a commercial bank, covering both individual and corporate clients, commercially organized around seven client segments: private, affluent and retail banking for individuals, top corporate, SME, oil, gas and institutional banking for corporate clients. Each segment is served by a devoted commercial team. The bank has 75 branches, including 12 corporate centers, one private banking center and one affluent center and the best digital channels in Angola.

Eduardo Pinto, COO of Banco Económico has been working in financial services for 23 years. He spent almost 7 years in Accenture and the last 16 years in management positions in banks in Portugal, Spain, Libya and Angola and joined Banco Económico three years ago as COO, to lead its digital transformation.

Why is incorporating technology into banking key?

What challenges has it brought?

Technology is a key factor for banking service anywhere in the world in today’s banking paradigm.

Technology is critical to respond to the growing demand of clients for convenient services, available 24 hours a day, anywhere. Mobility on banking services is a must, and it is totally supported by technology.

Technology is also fundamental to produce quality services, to control operations and lower risks of banking activities, and to generated efficiency, which is required to have a competitive pricing.

The main challenges to Banco Económico were to find the right partners to help us design and develop our multichannels solution as we already have a complete and robust infrastructure.

What role does the internet and mobile banking play in the banking sector of Angola?

In Angola mobile and internet are growing fast. With it, the development of internet and mobile banking is also growing. The vast majority of the banks already provide internet banking for individual and corporate clients with different grades of service, from just inquiries and internal transfers to a full-fledged service like our EconomicoNet. Mobile banking Apps are less common, and only 6 or 7 banks out of the 30 operating on the market have this service. The usage of digital channels in upper and corporate segments is growing very fast.

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EconomicoNet App YOUR BANK ALWAYs AT HAND

EconomicoNet App Available for Smartphones

Android

IOS

Acessing your account, checking balances. making transfers, reinforcing time deposits, charging your phone and more, is even easier with EconomicoNet App. Connect to this innovative and secure way of accessing your bank, to conduct banking operations and have a more comfortable and rested day-to-day.

For more information contact your manager, call: EconomicoDirecto 222 693 610/ 923 166 266 or acess: www.bancoeconomico.ao.

Somos futuro.

AFRICA INTERVIEW

•

Security is a major concern for internet customers. What does Banco Economico SA do to help ensure a secure environment?

Security has been a major concern from day one, and the bank has focused on two dimensions: technology and clients concerns and behavior.

The bank aims to provide absolute confidentiality, integrity, and service availability.

On the technology side, the bank has been using up to date industry solutions and tools to protect personal and transactional data, such as cryptography, endpoint detection, and response, non-signature approaches for endpoint prevention, user and entity behavior analytics, web filtering or even remote browsing, among others. The bank also performs period security checks done by independent security experts.

On the client behavior and concerns approach, the bank’s committed to the following activities:

Having a vision of the bank we wanted to be, being able to define the adequate strategy, execute it in a phased and effective way, with full support from our Board of Directors, where the key factors for success. Additionally, the engagement and enthusiasm of our digital channels and applications management teams and our technology partner was also very important. Finally, the fact, that we are totally committed to offering the best internet service to our clients in Angola.

•

Can you tell us more about the electronic solutions Banco Economico SA has to offer?

In 2014 Banco Economico deployed a multi-channel platform that allowed the bank to launch different channels, with similar usage experiences and leveraging on common services, for faster deployment and reduced cost.

In April 2014 EconomicoNet CORPORATE was the first service launched based on this architecture. It is a corporate internet banking solution, with enriched transactional services, that currently covers almost all corporate services (all kinds if inquiries and transactions and the ability to subscribe some products, namely term deposits) with the exception of credit products.

•

Information on bank’s policies, procedures and practices and alerts to risks;

•

Advice clients to keep their systems updated and use endpoint protection solutions;

•

Keep clients informed about the latest cyber security risks;

•

Protect transactions with two / three-factor authentication;

In 2016 we launched two new services. EconomicoNet App, our mobile banking service for iOS and Android devices and Consut@Cartão an innovative service for corporate credit cards users.

•

Force the use of strong passwords and force them to be updated;

•

•

Provide customers with 24/7 call center support.

•

As a leader in Internet banking, what initiatives do you feel have contributed to your success?

On the last quarter of 2013, we have designed the bank’s strategy to become the leader in digital banking based on four pillars following a digital transformation plan which included: digital channels, digital processes, MIS and CRM and infrastructure and security.

In mid-2015 we have launched the new EconomicoNet, for individual customers which is also a full-fledged service, with the richest service coverage in Angola.

What other innovative products or services have you created to meet customers’ needs?

For Banco Economico’s executive team, to respond to the needs of the different client segments with innovative products is a must. Given that, the bank has been developing innovative services on the Angolan banking market.

In October we have launched two new digital services: EconomicoNet App, two apps (iOS and Android) Apps; Consult@Cartão, a web-based solution for corporate cards users.

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AFRICA INTERVIEW

Additionally, the bank has launched in 2016 and is preparing to launch in the coming week’s new services, namely: • • • • •

Domestic collection services; Directs debits; ATMs payments; Cash collection services; Innovative tax payment services.

•

What are your future plans for development?

We have just launched EconomicoNet App for iOS and Android mobile and Consult@ Cartão.

C

On 2107 we will focus on: •

•

•

M

A new service for banking and nonbanking clients. We are evaluating the implementation of a Mobile Payments / Mobile Wallet service; Additional functionalities on current digital channels; Usability changes, to further improve user experience.

Eduardo Pinto COO Banco Económico

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Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

Europe 118 Issue 6

EUROPE BANKING

Customer Engagement in Retail Banking Jason Hemingway, CMO of Thunderhead discusses how retail banks can take advantage of new technology to gain detailed insight into their customers.

Service is king for retail banks. How can they use technology to get the edge in a hugely competitive industry?

“Technology is sometimes perceived as a threat to traditional retail banks, but as they struggle to meet the ever increasing expectations of digitally savvy consumers and respond to growing competition from fintech firms, technology could also be their saviour.

“The key to delivering good service and developing long lasting relationships with customers is a deep understanding of the inthe-moment wants and needs of each individual customer, whenever and wherever they interact, and a commitment to meet these requirements consistently across the business.

“Like any relationship, understanding starts with listening. Banks needs to listen to each individual customer journey in real time and use this insight to meet customer expectations every time, irrespective of department, device or touchpoint.

This is where new technology can play a huge part.

“Using the latest technology, it’s now possible for retail banks to see, in real time, their customer journeys across channels – such as website, mobile app, call centre, and in-branch – and join up these interactions to provide a seamless and consistent experience. They can use this technology to connect departmental and technology siloes, and ensure that at every touchpoint they have the most relevant and appropriate conversation with the customer based on their individual needs.

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EUROPE BANKING

With the right technology, doing this at scale is a reality today, and if retail banks are serious about customer centricity and maintaining a competitive advantage, they should be exploring the ways new technology can help them. Customers aren’t going to wait around.”

Customer journeys are more complicated than ever – taking place in-branch, on mobile, online and via telephone. How can banks keep on top of this?

“The first step is to recognise that the journey is the customer’s journey, not yours.

At Thunderhead we developed the concept of the ‘customer-managed journey.’

“The next step is to get an understanding of the journeys your customers are taking.

Some organisations use journey mapping, but while this approach demonstrates a commitment to trying to understand the journey, it’s limited in what it can deliver.

It’s a slow and labour intensive process that can, at best, only deliver a static view and one that’s based on an insideout view of the customer, planning how the brand ‘thinks’ customers will behave across touchpoints.

“To stay on top of customer journeys, brands need the ability to visualise them in real time and understand what their customers are doing so they can take the appropriate action.

“This may sound like a daunting task, especially for a large organisation with legacy technology and many different departments, but by using the right technology it’s relatively simple to begin listening to the customer journey. It’s an iterative process that can start with looking at specific touchpoints to uncover where the quick wins are and what will provide the fastest value to the business and the customer. Over time, this can be extended to touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey and be used to drive the necessary collaboration and customer centricity throughout the organisation.”

Trust continues to be an issue for banks. Do they need to adapt their communications to strengthen relationships with customers?

“Trust is the foundation of customer relationships and is key to building engagement. Creating trust is based on delivering value to the customer consistently over time. Every customer must be treated as if they’re the most important.

“There is nothing more frustrating than being the recipient of bad marketing – unsolicited marketing messages, offers for irrelevant products, or even products you already have – this does not engender trust.

We are now in an age where badly targeted, aimless, marketing spiel is unacceptable, and is increasingly confused with fraudulent activities like phishing scams.

“To build stronger and more engaged relationships with their customers, banks already have the core customer information they need to get started, but they must augment this with customer preferences and journey insights to ensure that communications, interactions, and experiences are personal and relevant at every step in the journey.”

How do you think marketing will change for retail banks in 2017?

“Customer engagement will grow in importance and in 2017, customer experience will truly become the battleground for competitive advantage in banking. The marketing team will play a key role in this as they become wholly responsible for the end-to-end customer journey and the driving force behind making the changes needed for banks to become truly customer centric.

“This will mean focusing resources on the customer journey, using journey analytics to understand and improve experiences, and focusing efforts across the business to break down silos, creating a seamless conversation that truly meet the needs of each unique and individual customer.”

Jason Hemingway CMO Thunderhead

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How professional firms will use mobile technology to engage with their clients in 2017 2016 is the year that the mobile became supreme. The tipping point came early with the publication of the 2016 Ofcom report into ‘Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes’, which revealed that Smartphones had replaced computers for Internet use and two thirds (65%) of all adults now use their Smartphone to go online.

In today’s mobile world, the Smartphone is the ‘glue’ that binds people and information, businesses and their clients together. A new world is opening up.

But where is this new mobile world set to take professional firms such as accountants, financial advisers and lawyers in 2017?

There can be no doubt that the business world is changing because of the rate of mobile adoption of devices such as Smartphones and Tablets and their use will undoubtedly increase over the next 12 months.

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These devices are now used for all kinds of business activity: for talking to customers, for raising quotes, creating invoices, capturing receipts and for searching for information, guidance and help that is relevant to their business. A Smartphone or Tablet holds all that’s important to that person, whether its choice of Music App, Sports App or Financial App.

Capturing data digitally

The transformation of the tax system by HMRC to fit the digital age will result in major changes to the way accountants interact with their clients. The new system is still in the planning stage with a consultation period ending in November 2016. Following that, the time scales for the introduction of the new Making Tax Digital regime will be announced and Business UK will need to adapt to making quarterly returns online.

This change represents a real opportunity for accountants to harness the power of mobile technology and change the way they communicate with their clients.

EUROPE BUSINESS

Because businesses will need to electronically record their income and expenses and submit a summary of that information electronically to HMRC, accountants can help make the process simpler by providing a collection point for this data. And the most obvious place to collect and share this data in the new mobile world is via an App.

A custom App quickly becomes the first point of contact for the client and it can also provide on-the-go access to online accounts and to the client’s accounting software of choice including Xero, Kashflow, Sage or Quickbooks etc.

The client submits all the core information required using the App in a way that will help them get used to the process in advance of the introduction of the new regime and smooth the transition.

With an App, it is possible to provide a unique and high value way to provide clients with advice and help at their fingertips in a way that until now has not been possible. Every time the owner opens his or her Smartphone, the firm’s icon is immediately visible and it provides an easy and effective way to reinforce the position as a key business adviser by bringing all the information, calculations and systems into one easily accessible place.

An App also proactively promotes the firm and its’ services to staff, business partners and prospects.

Effective messaging within an App

Every week it seems there are reports of law firms having their emails hacked and clients ending up transferring funds to fraudsters’ accounts. And this problem extends to all professional service firms that hold confidential client financial information and will not go away until an alternative to email is found.

The Ofcom report found that Apps are seen as a trusted method for interaction and people use the same few all the time so this would appear to be the natural next step for firms looking for optimal security. All messages can take place within the App, which ensures that the client knows that any message has come from his or her accountant and not someone claiming to be so. These ‘Push Notifications’ are created easily and sent to the client’s Smartphone instantly and research shows that they are always read, with a 93% open rate. The other bonus is that these push notifications are shown to be six times more effective than email marketing.

Mobile is the way forward and professional firms will need to be visible on their clients’ Smartphones? Apps help cement relationships by becoming the go-to anchor point in the always-on, mobile world.

Whenever the client needs information, the accountant is literally just a tap away – even when the office is closed. Only today, it goes much further than that. The App is not just a symbol of modern thinking; it’s a tool that has a key role to play in reducing the cost of advice and developing new ways to engage consumers. It’s this ease of accessibility that is helping accountants to ‘lock-in’ their clients’ loyalty.

Mobile technology is a tool for business to leverage in a similar way to websites 10 years ago. Apps have now gone mainstream and will continue to grow in popularity in 2017 with Smartphone users spending 90% of their time within an App. With all the evidence pointing to a clear preference for business communication within an App, professional firms will need to rethink how they engage with their clients. As it is clients that are driving this change, we predict that 2017 will be the year there is a landslide change in their use. Apps are the way forward.

Joel Oliver CEO MyFirmsApp™ Joel Oliver is CEO of MyFirmsApp™, the world leader in App and mobile technology in the Professional Service Sector. Download a copy of a new guide ‘A Lighthouse in the Digital Fog’ at http://www.myfirmsapp.com

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How to

Keep Pace with the

Changing Global

Manufacturing Landscape Whilst manufacturing earnings and exports continue to stimulate economic prosperity, the nations that are at the top of the global manufacturing landscape are changing. To stave off the competition, those countries – such as Germany, the UK and the US – with a historical manufacturing legacy, are needing to invest in high-tech infrastructure and education to keep ahead of the pack; something that is triggering a technological renaissance, according to PWC1. As the digital and physical worlds of manufacturing converge, advanced technologies have become even more essential for manufacturers and their wider competitiveness.

Keeping smart

A recent Deloitte Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index2 showed that the traditional manufacturing hubs are continuing to dominate the manufacturing landscape. Whilst these countries, on the whole, are expected to hold their own in the top ten over the next five years, it expects Asia Pacific nations such as India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia to all make great strides by 2020. Deloitte puts this increased market competitiveness down to their low

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labour costs, agile manufacturing methods, demographic trends and market growth.

Deloitte highlights that “Smart Factories” in the US, Japan and Europe, as well as Industry 4.0 initiatives, will need to play a decisive role to ensure they keep ahead of the emerging global competition from the East in the future.

The need for a digital transformation

According to another report from PwC3, Industry 4.0 initiatives – undergoing a digital transformation to remain competitive – will add, on average, 2.9per cent to revenues and contribute a 3.6 per cent cost reduction per annum over the next five years. First movers who combine high investment levels with advanced digitisation are set to achieve even more dramatic gains. To succeed, manufacturers – especially older manufacturing businesses – will need robust data analytics capabilities and need to focus on developing the internal culture to drive the transformation.

It is interesting to compare the industry attitudes of business leaders throughout the globe in regard to the risks and oppor-

tunities of business growth. A recent Epicor study found whilst 56 per cent of executives in China cite technology as an important factor in helping business growth in the past twelve months; whilst 29 per cent in the UK and only 12 per cent in Sweden thought the same. When asked what factors promote the growth of medium-sized companies in particular, technology leadership was higher, with 68 per cent among respondents from China, 38 per cent in the UK and 25 per cent in Sweden agreeing.

A potential skills gap

In tandem with technology, a skilled workforce is, according to the same Deloitte study as above, the most significant factor in aiding competitiveness in the manufacturing industry. In fact, the recruitment, development and retention of staff is just as important as adopting new collaboration models across an organisation.

There was more agreement from respondents to the Epicor survey when it came to the importance of a skilled workforce to drive business growth. 52 per cent of decision-makers from Germany, 52 per cent in India and 48 in Australia all agreed in its

EUROPE BUSINESS

importance. The UK was the only real anomaly, with only a third of respondents (32 per cent) citing a skilled workforce as being imperative, perhaps due to the UK having such a shortage of skills engineers4.

However, 63 per cent of respondents from the UK conceded that technology was the best way to compensate for the shortage.

Compared to 51 per cent of respondents from Germany, and only 22 per cent of respondents from Sweden.

When it comes to using technology in order to free employees from mundane tasks, there was agreement, with 76 per cent of China, 78 per cent of India and two thirds (66 per cent) of UK business leaders agreeing it was important.

Keeping ahead of the pack

There is no doubt that continuing to embrace technology will play a significant role in the manufacturing sector. Digitally transforming the production processes can lower costs, accelerate enablement and ensure that a manufacturer is able to fend off the competition. Global competitors, especially new market entrants, are gaining ground due

to their own investment of technology; and by their very nature they are often more agile and able to respond to changing market demands quickly.

Yet, it is important that manufacturers not only focus on the digital transformation of the production process but also understand the importance of access to real-time data.

With ERP (enterprise resource planning), manufacturers can think about their businesses from a fresh perspective, focus on core growth activities and drive efficiencies.

Nick Castellina, Vice President, Principal Analyst Aberdeen Group: “Top performers must select a solution that can combat manufacturing pressures and emulates a modern technology environment.

This means selecting functional, collaborative solutions that support real-time decision making, agility, and collaboration through capabilities such as mobility and analytics. Indeed, top-performing manufacturers select user-friendly, but powerful, solutions that enable users to easily access the information they need, and convert that information to actions and smart decisions that enable growth.”5

Stuart Hall Sales Director Epicor Software - UK and Ireland

Source: 1 [1] http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/perspectives/2016manufacturing-trends

2 [2] Deloitte im 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index, http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/ manufacturing/articles/global-manufacturingcompetitiveness-index.html 3 [3] PwC: Industry 4.0: Building the digital enterprise, http://www.pwc.de/de/digitale-transformation/industrie4-0-unternehmen-weltweit-investieren-massiv-indigitalisierung.html 4 [4] http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/ article-3592534/Britain-s-demand-jobs-revealed-pay.html 5 [5] http://www.aberdeen.com/research/11292/11292-rreasy-erp-manufacturing/content.aspx

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Cyber Insurance: Protecting the Financial Industry

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It’s no surprise that the financial services industry is a major target of cybercrime.

According to a recent Lloyd’s research into the knowledge and awareness of cyber risk among European enterprises, nearly 9 out of 10 banking and finance businesses have suffered a cyber breach in the last five years. It costs cyber criminals time and money to pull off complicated attacks and the target has to be valuable enough to justify that expense. For criminals, having access to customer bank balances is an obvious source of intrinsic value, but competitors may also target financial institutions in order to steal valuable trading algorithms, gain insight into trading positions and strategy or numerous other forms of financial business IP or trade secrets.

However, threats exist internally as well as externally – and they can be both deliberate and entirely unintentional. Malicious insiders and accidental breaches can cause just as much damage.

Over the past few years, cyber-attacks targeting banks have resulted in countless interruptions to business. In November 2016, an attack breached 20,000 accounts at Tesco Bank. The company had to refund customers £2.5m and is currently facing potential fines. Earlier this year, in January, millions of clients were affected as HSBC saw a DDoS attack take down its internet banking for a number of hours The systems were successfully defended, but users were still locked out for hours on the first pay day of the year. Another breach, which was discovered just a couple of weeks ago, affected India’s third largest private sector lender – Axis Bank. An offshore hacker had entered the system. In 2015, Dridex, a form of malware used by cyber-gangs to steal payment card data, enabled criminals to steal around £20m in the UK alone. Today, data is the lifeline of the financial services industry. As a result, legislative bodies are forcing companies to better protect their customers from the fallout of cyber events or face the consequences of their inaction.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR will introduce strict data handling laws from 2018. Any organisation dealing with EU citizens’ data will need to report breaches within 72 hours of their discovery.

Additionally, fines of up to €20 million or 4% of global annual turnover – whichever is highest - will be imposed in cases when data was insufficiently secured. Incidents such as the Tesco Bank breach could result in fines up to £1.9bn under the new GDPR regulation. The costs of breaches are felt far beyond the timescale of an attack due to regulatory investigations and severe financial penalties, as well drops in share prices and long-term impacts on business reputation and customer attrition. These can all cause immediate loss of customers and an ongoing decline in customer acquisition rates.

As a reputational risk, it’s encouraging that cyber security is now increasingly considered to be an executive responsibility in the banking and finance sector. 47% of CEOs now take personal responsibility for managing cyber breaches. However, awareness of the GDPR shows that the media push around the new rules has raised only superficial awareness amongst business leaders, given that 53% of those leaders claim they know “little” or “nothing” about how the GDPR can affect their business.

To be fully prepared, businesses must face cybercrime and wider cyber breaches with a proactive attitude. Although 9 in 10 financial institutions reported a cyber breach in the last five years, only 46% are concerned that this may happen again. Considering the stir that fintech is causing this industry it’s only to fair to assume that as businesses continue to embrace technology we’ll inevitably experience an increase in cyber breaches.

Wherever digitalisation and profits lead, cybercrime is quick to follow.

Cyber breaches come about as a result of countless, highly complex forms. Phishing emails for example are often indiscernible from legitimate email – especially for the average employee. Whaling targets specific individuals through cleverly individually crafted emails, impersonating a senior executive, colleague or business partner. Ransomware, one of the most popular forms of attacks, allows perpetrators to encrypt the entire data footprint of an organisation, demanding ransom in exchange for the decryption key. This can

effectively halt company operations and threaten critical data. However, it is not just cyber criminals that organisations need to be aware of. Insider threats and accidental breaches are also pressing risks that must be proactively addressed – businesses need to focus on “securing the human” as well as the technology.

Given this unavoidable relationship between tech, business and cybercrime, it’s crucial that companies stay educated and informed on their exposure to cyber risk, and the best ways to mitigate and transfer the risk. As the threat evolves it’s not enough to build a wall – businesses need to have support in the aftermath of a breach. Cyber insurance has developed into much more than just a financial pay out - it provides companies with the knowledge and best practice to protect themselves from cyber-threats, and can protect a financial company’s balance sheet by providing the support and consultancy needed to recover when the worst does happen.

Put simply, businesses are not fully prepared unless they have cyber insurance in place. The nature of threats is constantly developing, and differs from business to business – it is vital to ensure that the issue is in the hands of experts. Managers and decision makers owe it to their customers and employees to make sure their business is appropriately protected and insured. That process starts now.

Dan Trueman Unit Head of Cyber with Novae Lloyd’s

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MIFID II: SHOULD NEW REGULATIONS STIPULATE VOICE RECORDINGS BE RECORDED FOR LONGER? Over the years, one of the big questions asked by compliance officers is whether the transcription of voice recordings to text should oblige regulated trade firms to retain recordings for longer.

In some jurisdictions there is a difference in the required retention period between textual electronic communications, such as email and Bloomberg messages, and that of voice recordings. In Europe the difference in the retention period is removed by the rules proposed by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) under the MiFID II regulation. Under MiFID, all records, text and voice, will be required to be retained for a period of five years. By contrast, in the United States for example, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) rules require voice calls to be retained for one year while text communications are retained for five years.

MiFID II and voice recordings MiFID II also requires firms to conduct surveillance of their employees’ communications to ensure the firm is compliant with market rules. Effective surveillance on voice calls will require the deployment of clever technologies that can extract the ‘substance’ of these highly specialised conversations and deliver risk and scenario based insights to a knowledgeable reviewer who can then determine if any wrongdoing has occurred.

We are subsequently seeing the rise of speech-to-text, a technology that transcribes what is said on a voice recording into a textual representation of the call. But does this text, produced from a call recording, make a call an electronic communication?

The answer is no. The derived transcribed text record is not a communication per se and therefore cannot be included in the communications retention rules.

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Indeed, it’s important that businesses are aware that under MiFID II: •

•

•

•

•

Converting speech to text does not allow a firm to discard the original recording – as that would be a clear breach of the requirements.

The original record must always be preserved Once analysed, and a text version is created, there is no requirement to retain the transcription The associated metadata of a call, such as the time, date and numbers dialed, along with the servers and systems that a call is tagged with, are not derivative data. All call metadata must be retained for as long as the call audio itself is retained If the transcribed data is re-sent by electronic means (email, for example) then that new communication needs to be retained for the appropriate amount of time as a communication in its own right If a call transcript is available, and has been used as part of the surveillance process to flag a call for further review, then in the event of a regulator request for call logs, it should be recorded in the same way that you would if delivering an email that had already been reviewed in your submission to the regulator

facsimile copy of the original recording. It may contain errors and it is much harder to convey inflection, pauses and – critically – intent in transcribed speech than when listening to a call recording.

Most financial markets records retention regulations require electronic communications and voice recordings to be preserved, as far as possible, in their original form. This has always been problematic for voice recordings, as any voice engineer will attest. The quality of audio recordings is always a balance between the space required for storage and the audio’s fidelity and usability. Fortunately, newer communication devices are offering pristine audio for compliant call capture, retrieval and analytics to meet regulator requests.

Financial organisations are increasingly investigating transcription and speech analytics capabilities that will be used to increase productivity and detect bad behaviour. Ultimately, however, transcriptions should not increase the retention period for voice recordings. There are too many elements of a call that are subjective, and turning it into text will not provide a true representation of the call itself. Instead, organisations should be focusing on finding means of capturing calls more efficiently and effectively so that they can remain compliant without the risk of any misunderstandings.

New Technologies for Compliant Call Capture, Transcription There are more reasons that suggest that transcripts should not change the retention period. While transcription technologies have improved substantially in accuracy and language coverage in recent years, no technology will be 100 percent accurate.

While incredibly useful in surveillance and productivity, the transcription will not be a

Robert Powell Director of Compliance IPC Systems

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EUROPE INTERVIEW

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Current Banking

Trends in Macedonia Global Banking & Finance Review spoke with Mr. Vladimir Eftimoski, CEO of Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola to find out the current banking trends in Macedonia.

What are the current trends you see taking place in the banking sector in Macedonia? What are the challenges and opportunities? Â Macedonian economy is in a specific and complex condition.

Early parliamentary elections have been delayed twice so far and for a moment the political crisis overflew the banking system resulting in withdrawal of part of the retail deposits.

What is positive and perspective is that retail clients relatively fast recognized that the banking system in the country is safe and stable, thus the deposit return process commenced, even increasing the scope before the crisis. Unfortunately, in the beginning the will and responsibility of those who should have surpassed the political crisis was missing, but is now finally resolved by dialogue and arrangement. Other trends in the banking sector mainly depended on amendments to a range of regulations which directly and indirectly caused changes in the banking market. Starting from amendments to the Public Notary Law, Enforcement Law, up to the decisions of the Central bank related to the treatment of writing-off non-performing loans and foreign transactions. As a result, in the last period, the banking sector as well as the entire economy was rather inert. Crediting trend is not increasing but is anyhow stable and positive, while deposit portfolio, except for the short crisis period from AprilMay, can be evaluated as positive and exceptionally stable. These challenges for the group of medium-sized banks, as Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola, are extremely advantageous. They represent a possibility for greater increase of the market share and opportunity to clear our loan portfolio. We have quite successfully utilized the banking market inertness; thus by 30.06.2016 the Bank increased total assets by 14%, dominated by retail loans by 39% compared to the same period last year. The Bank has additionally cleared up nonperforming loan portfolio.

The participation of nonperforming loans in the total loan portfolio is 2.97% and the nonperforming loan coverage ratio is 123.2%, being an extraordinary sound indicator for the Bank operation.

How are customer behaviours and the increased movement towards cashless transactions changing banking in Macedonia?

Related to this issue Macedonia is advantageous compared to the countries in the region. We have good communication infrastructure, strong mobile network coverage and Internet access throughout most of the country. Most of the population gravitates in the Skopje region, reducing even further the need of better infrastructure connections. In this setup majority of corporate clients are focused to electronic services and payments, while retail still prefers cash payments, especially aged groups of clients and retired persons. The trend of cashless payments and electronic services, is intensified with the renewal of the client base and replacement of pensioners with a new client base. The banking system, but especially medium-sized banks such as Stopanska Banka a.d. Bitola, are focused on introducing new and optimizing existing electronic services. In the past period, the Bank has upgraded the bank electronic system, introduced M-payment System, the website upgrade process is ongoing, and issue and processing of two new brands of MasterCard has started. To induce the trend of use of these services, in addition to introducing relevant bonus schemes and beneficial provisions for their use, technical support is provided to aged clients indicating their advantages, possibility of 24-hour access and facilitation related to fast services without queuing and personal presence.

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Let’s talk for a minute about product development. What drives product creation at Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola? What role does technology play?

Our bank pays special attention to its permanent development in the banking industry, as well as to the needs of younger generation clients. It is of particular importance that this occurs in conditions where the clients have still not changed their habits entirely, and to serve them properly, a widespread branch network is required throughout the country. In addition to investing in new services and technologies we are oriented to their promotion and marketing. Product and service development is not a guarantee that they will be accepted in the market. The constant need for their promotion and clarification to the clients, is what differentiates us from the other banks in the market. Our promotion and sales are not oriented only in direction of meeting targets. Our basic mission with the promotion is presenting the benefits offered by the new services and technology.

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Has the demand for credit from corporates increased?

Macedonia is a country with a small open economy, where as a principle, external economic movements do not have major impact on the domestic product demand and spending. In other words, we are a small-scale production country in absolute numbers, and irrelevant of how much we produce, the quantity can be absorbed by foreign markets, if competitive products are offered. Consequently, our corporate sector was not considerably affected by the world economic crisis, thus the need for borrowing did not reduce. However, in conditions of internal political crisis, the investors’ concern increased as numerous investment projects were postponed. Therefore, as I mentioned in the beginning, the resolution of this political deadlock is a key factor for further development of our economy.

Corporative loan cycle increased, but with different investment purposes.

EUROPE INTERVIEW

In the past long-term investment loans were required, but now the emphasis is put on liquidity, working capital and investment refinancing. These changes encompass further increase of corporate loans, which now estimates to 10% on annual level. Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola relatively fast adapted to the new situation. Now our credit conditions and products and focused on SME segment where there is greatest need for borrowing. In 2015 it raised by 15% which is over the market increase. This increase mainly occurred in the SME segment, which is more profitable compared to segment of large corporates.

In what ways does your corporate banking division assist clients in managing their risk and enhance their revenue?

Risk management is one of the key factors accounted in our Bank, in terms of balance growth and development of the Bank. We have a special sector and a special service in charge of risk management.

Such operational organization is in compliance with the world’s banking standards dividing sales and risks. Sales Sector is responsible for monitoring business and clients’ plans by analysing their balance, while Risk Sector executes monitoring, but in terms of risks. This sector perceives soft-spots in their balances, makes analyses of the cash flow during the loan period and the financial repayment capacity of the relevant client. In this analysis, sales are mainly focused on advisory and analytical aspects of income increase, while the organizational part of risk management makes analyses whether the relevant client has dimensioned its business in optimum profitable range and whether its liquidity and solvency is sufficient to realize the undertaking.

This symbiosis of both analyses are key for the client to undertake sufficiently acceptable risk to increase its profitability, and at the same time avoiding the exposure of the Bank to a loan risk.

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Global Oriented Merchant

Banking Group Offering Institutional Capital Market Services

EVI Global Group Limited Level 31, Vero Centre, 48 Shortland Street Auckland, New Zealand EVI Global Group Limited is registered under FSP310986

EUROPE INTERVIEW Do you have any ongoing projects you’d like to share with us?

Stopanska Banka a.d. Bitola is continuously developing numerous projects. In addition to constant internal projects to optimize our operations and operational technology, we permanently develop projects in terms of introduction of new services and products. We are currently completing three key projects aimed at development of new, user-friendly website, introducing two new MasterCard products with contactless payment, M-payment service and a multichannel distribution system. And we will not stop here. We have a number of projects upgrading our information system. This will additionally simplify and accelerate the processes, helping us to become more competitive and efficient in the market.

support further development and growth of the Bank. The assets from sales of the corporate bond will be used for credit activities in corporate sector which will support the Bank growth in the next five years. In this period, we will intensify our performance, increasing our market share, profitability and efficiency. Our intention is to impose ourselves as a factor in the Macedonian banking market, with dominant domestic capital that will be interesting for acquisition or recapitalization by a foreign strategic partner. This approach, in the technology segment as well as the other financial operational segments, will distinguish Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola as a most innovative, modern and efficient bank in the Macedonian banking market.

What are your current development plans?

At the moment we are focused on an activity that has not been executed by any bank or company in Macedonia. We are in process of issuing corporate bond as a hybrid financial instrument. This idea is part of the strategy to attract strategic investors that will

Mr. Vladimir Eftimoski CEO Stopanska banka a.d. Bitola

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The Subscription Economy – a new way to travel Brits have traditionally been focused on owning things – from cars to record collections. However, the ‘ownership’ obsession is on its way out and is paving the way to the subscription economy.

The rise in this non-ownership culture is changing the way people interact with businesses and their surroundings. At the heart of this shift are people who are happy to subscribe to the outcomes they want, when they want them, without an outright purchase.

Our expectations have changed drastically: on-demand services increasingly sit at the top of consumer lifestyle essentials, with the likes of Spotify and Amazon Prime creating new business models which are leaving competitors behind. They marry on-demand instant services with personalised recommendations all informed by other users’ recommendations and the easiest, manageable subscription models.

Importantly, these services are built upon an aggregation of third party sellers into an easily accessible marketplace, be they Amazon retailers’ products, music company recordings or films. This could be seen as a threat to third party providers as they are then challenged to give con-

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sumers what they want, at the right price and with the service levels they demand.

However, it is also a real opportunity to reinvigorate these third parties and grow the total marketplace for all. Music streaming provides a good example. Following the music industry’s catastrophic collapse in the late 90s, Spotify resurrected sales through its subscription-streaming model, turning the industry profitable once again.

Reports indicate the retail value of music subscription-streaming services has hit $1bn in the first half of 2016 up by more than $500m in just one year.

The mind-set of modern day consumers has changed, and it’s not just in the consumption of entertainment, but almost every aspect of life. The movement away from ownership will see the subscription culture transform an array of industries, with transport next on the consumer agenda.

The shift in transport

This shift towards the transport service model - or Mobility as a Service (MaaS) - is being driven by two mutually reinforcing trends. Firstly, there is the

generational shift to the sharing economy. Millennials are technology natives who have lives built on networking and sharing. This has seen companies such as Airbnb and Deliveroo flourish and has now extended its reach to transport with BlaBlaCar, Zipcar, Enterprise Car and JustPark emerging and growing. The modern-day traveller now expects transport to be easily accessible, convenient and seamless.

Secondly, the growth of mobile and wireless connected devices in home and pocket, coupled with fast connectivity speeds, has catalysed this generation.

This light infrastructure enables on-demand internet based choice and booking wherever or whenever needed. Add real time traffic updates, delay notifications, platform alterations and intelligent journey planners, and the full the mobility service economy is now available at the tap of a smartphone screen.

The next stage - the truly fundamental shift in the transport service model will be the bringing together of all the siloed transport, buses, taxis, trains and car clubs, into a full subscription MaaS service.

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This type of service is beginning to take shape: in Birmingham, a trial called Car Freedom is providing a one stop service to older people. The service matches them with the right mobility and provides all the support they need (including customer service and peer to peer support), when they receive a concessionary pass; transitioning to reducing their car use or giving up the car completely. A similar service, PicknMix, is being designed by young people, to offer the same support for their own mobility transitions. Whim, a Finnish app aims to provide packages of mobility to suit all needs without the need to own a car.

This requires a fundamental shift to service and support – only made possible by placing the user at the heart of design. New ways of packaging transport, delivering support, creating transport marketplaces and having integrated ways to pay, including subscription models can match changing and evolving needs. The requirement to own a car will reduce and ultimately become a thing of the past.

Spotify has excelled by identifying a culture shift and addressing the change with a solution which worked for the user, ultimately growing the market for music and rejuvenating an entire industry. Transport must now follow.

The UK transport industry is on the edge of a fundamental shift to an integrated service economy. There is still a need for infrastructure spending and upgrades but the focus must now be to obtain the most from that infrastructure, managing demand and pulling the whole transport system together to attract and retain new users.

A major step toward this required level of change is happening right now as The Bus Bill continues its way through the House of Lords. It will see local authorities in England and Wales given the power to franchise its bus services. This will enable them to set routes, frequencies, pricing and quality standards that can support local residents.

A shift in the UK?

Where are we going?

This Bill will allow the often confusing price structures and route layouts to be simplified and enable Oyster-like smart ticketing. This will allow MaaS to flourish by making it easier to embed such stable public transport services into a package of mobility.

The transport industry is going places; however, it must move to the subscription economy to take that large leap forward.

With the right package of transport, combined with personalised support, the mobility service subscription based economy can grow the market for non-owned transport and consign the term “public transport” to the history books.

Dr Steve Cassidy Managing Director, Viaqqio ESP Group

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What’s Next for Blockchain: Disruptive Technology and New Regulations Blockchain technology has received a lot of attention for its potential to revolutionise different sectors, and financial services is widely believed to be the area with the greatest potential for distributed ledger technology (DLT) to transform and disrupt existing processes.

Should its use be regulated and, if so, what shape would that take? How to respond to these questions is a challenge for product developers, financial markets participants and regulators alike. And, when should the regulator step in? Patrick Armstrong, a Senior Risk Analysis Officer at the European Securities and Markets Authority has recently described1 the answer to this question as the “regulatory “tipping point” – the point between “too small to care” and “too large to ignore””. I suspect that most observers would agree that the scale is somewhat tipping towards the latter.

The regulators’ stance, at least in the UK and the EU, seems to be to support development, keep an open mind, monitor and “wait and see”. It would be wrong to perceive this as regulators taking a passive approach. Rather, it might be interpreted as a stance taken to learn, without hindering the development of a socially and economically beneficial process or product.

Of the firms currently using the sandbox to test their models, nine involve the use of DLT. These projects serve a broad range of financial services: from cross border money transfers to a payments platform allowing the Department of Work and Pensions to credit value to a mobile device; to streamlining the Initial Public Offering distribution process; and providing a system for automated customer authentication.

The UK regulator’s “regulatory sandbox”, a part of Project Innovate, provides a good example of the pro-active approach. The regulatory sandbox was established to create a space in which start-up developers and incumbents can test innovative products, services, business models and delivery mechanisms in a live environment while ensuring that consumers are appropriately protected.

This latter use of DLT is one which is being observed with some cautious enthusiasm by regulators and industry bodies and the FCA sees it having the potential to offer innovative solutions to financial crime issues and as presenting real opportunities for the regulated sector to meet Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering requirements more effectively. In turn, the technology does give rise to its own connected issues. One of the questions identified by

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regulators, for example, is how do individuals gain access to a distributed network and who controls this process.

A different use was recently tested by the Bank of England who undertook a Proof of Concept (POC) to explore DLT’s application to the transfer of ownership of a fictional asset among several participants, including a central authority which could establish the supply of the asset and permission to access and use the ledger.

•

Security. The search for certainty that the privacy of the data in the distributed ledgers would not be vulnerable to cyberattack both now and in the future.

•

Privacy. For DLT to be used in any central bank application, a high standard of privacy and resilience would be required.

•

Interoperability. Develop an understanding of how existing data processes and infrastructure might interact with distributed ledgers.

•

Sustainability. The Bank asserts that DLT systems typically use more energy and require more data storage than traditional ledgers. Consideration of how these can be minimised as systems increase in scale, will be important.

Several areas emerged as meriting further exploration by the Bank. These included: •

Scalability. The need for assurance that a system could operate with total data integrity and reliability at high speeds and high volumes.

Any design of the technology and processes of regulation will have to take into account these factors.

The likely impact of regulation will be focused on systems, processes and controls rather than adding new regulated activities to the existing broad range of products and services which fall within the regulated ambit (leaving aside the question of cryptocurrencies). The focus will be on how regulated firms, using the technology, address the sorts of issues highlighted by the Bank of England above and how the regulators supervise those firms.

Of course financial institutions are already governed and supervised by legal and regulatory codes and prudential requirements.

Strict rules2 require regulated firms to establish, implement and maintain robust policies and procedures sufficient to counter the risk

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that the firm might be used to further financial crime. Where it is proportionate, taking account of the complexity of its business model, a firm must set out and maintain an audit plan to examine and evaluate the adequacy and effectiveness of its systems, internal control mechanisms and arrangements. For firms using DLT, extra focus will be directed at how these systems and controls are applied to the technology.

Prudential rules ensure that a firm’s capital resources are assessed in relation to all the activities of the firm and, amongst other things, the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems.

We think the regulator’s expectations will be high.

Further interesting discussion arises from the distinction between, on the one hand, legal and regulatory codes which consist of legal obligations and, on the other, technical code governing software and protocols upon which distributed ledgers rely. This

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distinction was highlighted recently in a report by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser3.

The fundamental difference between regulatory code and technical code is that regulatory code comes from outside the DLT physical environment and is “extrinsic” and, by contrast, technical code is “intrinsic”.

Regulatory rules can be broken but regulatory consequences and penalties may follow.

If the rules of a technical code are broken, an error is returned and no activity occurs. The technical code means that the software is self-regulating, through the operation of the code itself, through rigid compliance with the rules even where that compliance might lead to undesirable outcomes.

Overcoming this form of technical rigidity, which from some perspectives is perhaps at the heart of the benefits of DLT, may give rise to the biggest of the regulators’ challenges: recognising the strength and weaknesses of both technical code and regulatory code and how the two interact. DLT providers will need to design accordingly.

Penny Sanders Head of Financial Services Regulation Gowling WLG

Source: 1 Speech for ESMA 22 November 2016. Esma/2016/1613 2 FCA Handbook at SYSC. 3 Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain.

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ENDURING PARTNERSHIPS ANCHORED ON TRUST, INTEGRITY AND TRANSPARENCY At China Banking Corporation in the Philippines, we are constantly evolving and improving. We celebrate our 96th anniversary with a renewed commitment to excellent customer service driven by our mission to help our clients succeed, and informed by a deep understanding of their needs, dreams and goals -- as individuals, families, entrepreneurs, businesses, and institutions.

Even as we grow, innovate and expand, we continue to be guided by the timeless values of our founding fathers -- that banking is a relationship anchored on trust, integrity, fairness and transparency. These core values underpin the strength of our partnerships that span across four generations, and propel our continued efforts to excel in corporate governance and embed global best practices in our corporate culture.

This is who we are, what we are about, defining what we do. Making a difference for our stakeholders is its own reward; accolades a welcome treat.

At the 2016 Bell Awards, the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) recognized China Banking Corporation as a top 5 publicly listed company for excellence in corporate governance — the only listed company to be so recognized for five consecutive years, and the only bank awardee in each of the five years.

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