This posting in Finextra is a recap of major themes from the 2019 Sibos conference, the annual SWIFT event, which was held in London. The conference rotates into one of several continents each year, with the 2020 version in Boston during early October. We’ll be there, as are typically 10,000+ others from the corporate banking and payments industry, with a large international presence, given the nature of the event.
‘While a banking conference should focus only on banking, but Sibos is much more. Sibos is an experience. Organized by Swift, the global event connects thousands of business leaders, decision makers and thought leaders from financial institutions, market infrastructures, and technology partners. The agenda covers a wide variety of topics ranging from the global economy to monitory policy, payments to trade, APIs to Open banking, data to innovation, and so much more.’
We have done detailed summaries of trade group events in the past for our members, and will likely do similar things in the future. This piece discusses a number of focus areas, none of which should be a surprise, especially to our readers, since we have covered all in some detail during the normal research year and various postings on the PaymentsJournal site.
- Global Economy and Macro Headwinds
- All roads lead to Data
- Payments and all thing Real time
- Trade Finance- Interoperability and Standards
- APIs and Open Banking
- Compliance and Fraud
- Swift GPI and Standards
Looking forward, the expectations are in line with the way we are seeing things unfold during 2020 and 2021, reflected in the 18 month rolling agenda across the advisory services.
‘The final message from Sibos was loud and clear. The next phase of winners and losers in the banking space would be decided by who is ready to address the fundamental issues around trust, liability and risk while keeping a razor sharp focus on data and everything digital. Banks must be effective in their selection and management of people, processes and technology so they can create a safe and resilient connected ecosystem.’
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group