Ebury launches hedging tool to ease trade with Chinese suppliers

Ebury has launched Parallel Forwards, a solution that allows businesses to hedge CNY risk while settling in USD equivalent. The solution aims to help businesses establish long-term supply chain relationships in China and continues Ebury’s goal of supporting global business flows.

The firm says that while paying in CNY has a lot of obvious benefits and has become more common in Western-China supply chains, the challenge still remains that some Chinese suppliers insist on USD payments for their own operational reasons. In these instances, Ebury’s Parallel Forward tool ensures that European buyers who transact with their Chinese suppliers in USD can achieve long-term, stable cost management that otherwise would be threatened by USD/CNY currency fluctuations.

By using this solution, the firm says that Western buyers eliminate this one-sided CNY currency risk by fixing CNY price and deliver in USD, with the supplier ensuring they receive the desired amount of CNY in USD.

"Parallel Forwards will fundamentally improve supply chain relationships between western countries and their Chinese suppliers by ensuring a fairer and more efficient payment system," said Tom Davies, UK and Ireland country manager at Ebury. "No longer will western buyers be forced to pay over the odds due to currency rate fluctuations that are out of their control threatening the global supply chains that are so crucial for businesses in Europe and the Americas. By eliminating this currency risk, we hope that Chinese suppliers will benefit from increased demand fostering new, long-term relationships in a win-win for trade as we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic."

 

Italian project putting sureties on the blockchain completes testing phase

The pilot phase of "Fideiussioni digitali" (digital sureties), the project promoted by CeTIF, the Research Centre on Technology, Innovation and Finance at Cattolica University, payments firm SIA and digital media company Reply - which also saw the involvement of the Bank of Italy, the Institute for the Supervision of Insurance (IVASS) and the Italian Finance Police - to digitalise the surety management process on blockchain, has been successfully concluded.

Over 50 players - including guarantors, guaranteed parties and contractors - from the banking, insurance, financial, public administration and corporate sectors participated in the trial carried out within a sandbox under the supervision of a Scientific Committee made up of representatives from the relevant Authorities and public and private bodies. 

During the pilot phase, which lasted approximately 4 months, more than 350 sureties were digitally managed with guaranteed sums ranging from €10,000 to €1.4m, and an average amount of €275,000. According to data provided by participants, use of blockchain and DLT technology can lead to a reduction in fraud of around 30% and in operating costs from 10% to over 50%, depending on the number of transactions processed. 

Based on the effectiveness of the trial and the positive feedback of participants - who represent the main players in the management of sureties in Italy - further technological, functional and regulatory improvement activities have been started up with the aim of making the platform fully operational and available on the market in the second half of 2021. 

 

Kyriba scores SAP certification for NetWeaver and S/4HANA

Kyriba has announced its Kyriba Payment Network 20.10 for SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) 6 and Kyriba Payment Network 20.10 for SAP S/4HANA® have achieved SAP-certified integration with the SAP NetWeaver technology platform and SAP S/4HANA respectively. 

Kyriba’s payments solutions have been proven to integrate with SAP solutions, helping CFOs, treasurers and their IT counterparts who use Kyriba to accelerate their connectivity to SAP technologies, gain access to more than 45,000 payments formats out-of-the-box, reduce risk with AI-based payments fraud protection and optimise costs.

"We are delighted to announce the successful SAP certification of Kyriba’s payments solutions for integration with SAP NetWeaver and SAP S/4HANA," said Boris Lipiainen, CTO at Kyriba. "The ability of CFOs and IT leaders to leverage the business potential of Kyriba and SAP solutions unlocks value across the enterprise and helps to deliver highly secure and scalable finance operations anywhere in the world."

The SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) has certified that Kyriba Payments Network 20.10 for SAP ECC 6 and Kyriba Payments Network 20.10 for SAP S/4HANA respectively integrate with SAP NetWeaver and SAP S/4HANA using standard integration technologies. SAP S/4HANA is a future-ready ERP system, with built-in intelligent technologies, that transforms business processes with intelligent automation and runs on SAP HANA – a market-leading in-memory database that offers real-time processing speeds and a dramatically simplified data model. Technology or infrastructure products that have SAP-certified integration with SAP NetWeaver have proven to interoperate with the technology platform.

Kyriba’s payments solutions have been certified for deployment on SAP S/4HANA 1909 via the integration scenario ABAP add-on deployment for SAP S/4HANA. Additionally, these solutions have been certified for deployment on SAP ERP 6.0 EhP8 via the integration scenario ABAP add-on deployment for SAP Enterprise Resource Planning.

 

EBA consults on its proposals for a central AML/CFT database

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has launched a public consultation on draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) on a central database on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) in the EU. This database will be a key tool for the EBA’s recently enhanced mandate to lead, coordinate and monitor AML/CFT efforts in the European Union. The consultation runs until 17 June 2021. 

The revised EBA Regulation that came into effect in January 2020 requires the EBA to establish and keep up to date a central database with information on AML/CFT weaknesses that competent authorities (CAs) across the EU have identified in respect of individual financial institutions. The database will also contain information on the measures competent authorities have taken to rectify those material AML/CFT weaknesses. Information from this database will be used by individual competent authorities and the EBA to make the fight against ML/TF in the EU more targeted and effective in the future.

The draft RTS proposed in this Consultation Paper specify the definition and the materiality of weaknesses identified by competent authorities, the type of information collected, and how such information will be communicated to the EBA. It also sets out how the EBA will analyse and disseminate the information contained in the AML/CFT central database.

Moreover, the draft RTS set out the rules to ensure the effectiveness of the database, the confidentiality of the data contained in the database, as well as how the database will interact with other notifications that competent authorities are required to provide to the EBA and the provisions to ensure the protection of personal data.

The AML/CFT central database will be a key tool in coordinating efforts to prevent and counter ML/TF in the Union. It will serve as an early warning tool to enable the competent authorities to act before the ML/TF risks crystalise and help them plan their on-site inspections and perform off-site monitoring.