Bank of America Merrill Lynch offers FI clients guaranteed FX rates for up to 180 Days
by Ben Poole
To help companies add certainty in the often volatile world of foreign exchange rates, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA Merrill) has announced that it now offers its financial institution (FI) clients a fully integrated foreign exchange (FX) risk management programme, which includes guaranteed FX rates for up to 180 days for their qualified customers.
Similar to the existing BofA Merrill offering for its corporate clients, the guaranteed rates programme is designed to benefit both FIs and their customers by reducing risk, increasing efficiency and smoothing out volatility.
“Our financial institution clients are seeing increased competition from both bank and non-bank providers in providing payments services to businesses,” said David Kretz, head of Global Strategy and Payments for Global Transaction Services (GTS) at BofA Merrill. “We are pleased to add a guaranteed FX rate programme for them to pass along to their business customers to use for cross-currency payments.”
The bank says that FIs that use the guaranteed FX rate programme will benefit from:
- The ability to launch new products and services to meet growing client demands.
- Improved operational efficiencies by leveraging BofA Merrill’s global network.
- Allowing their clients to transact in additional currencies without assuming additional FX risk or increased operational expenses.
- The flexibility to offer guarantee rates across multiple product lines, customer segments or combinations of the two for anytime between one hour and 180 days.
Through the guaranteed rate programme, BofA Merrill offers more than 140 currencies, with 25 of the most common currencies available for guaranteed rates of greater than one day up to 180 days.
“For our FI clients, this programme removes much of the risk management challenge is arranging cross-currency payments for their customers,” said Stephanie Wolf, head of Global Financial Institutions, Governments and Business Banking for GTS. “Plus, the burden on their customers of worrying about FX rate volatility impacting their payments is eliminated.”
BofA Merrill products and services are subject to applicable terms and conditions.
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