Surecomp selected by Puente for automated front-office trade and treasury management

Surecomp, a provider of global trade finance and treasury solutions for banks and corporates, has announced that brokerage firm Puente has chosen to deploy its front-office treasury solution Trade10 across three countries in Latin America.

Founded over a century ago in Buenos Aires - and now with entities in the US, UK, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay - Puente is one of South America’s largest broker dealers of stocks, bonds, futures and options, trading 150,000 transactions per year and serving 35,000 customers globally. Having experienced rapid growth over recent years, the firm took the decision to deploy Surecomp’s Trade10 to improve internal workflow efficiency, optimise control and visibility of cash, and better manage the risk of its increasing trade volumes, ultimately to enhance customer experience and satisfaction. It will deploy the solution - which will be seamlessly integrated with the firm’s back-office treasury solution - first in Argentina, then Paraguay, followed by Uruguay.

“Customer experience is of utmost importance and we see this project as an integral part of our journey to continue delivering the best possible service to our customers,” explained Agustina Colloca, partner and regional CFO at Puente. “We also uphold the highest of standards in security and transparency, so working with Surecomp will enable us to leverage the latest technical innovation in trade and treasury management to maintain these standards.”

 

RMB holds position in global payments currency charts

The latest results from SWIFT's RMB Tracker show that, in December 2020, the RMB has retained its position as the fifth most active currency for global payments by value, with a share of 1.88%. Overall, RMB payments value increased by 5.72% compared to November 2020, whilst in general all payments currencies increased by 12.30%. In terms of international payments excluding payments within the Eurozone, the RMB ranked 8th with a share of 1.16% in December 2020.

As a global currency in trade finance market, based on the value of live and delivered MT 400 and MT 700 messages exchanged on SWIFT, the RMB was the third most active currency in December 2020, with a 2.05% share. It only trailed the euro (6.86%) and the US dollar (86.48%), and remained ahead of the Japanese yen (1.58%). 

The top economies for FX spot transactions in RMB in December 2020 were:

• UK: 37.49%
• US: 16.51%
• China: 11.91%
• Hong Kong: 8.30%
• France: 7.93%

This is based on the value of FX confirmations, including central banks, inter-group only, looking at MT 300 messages exchanged on SWIFT.

 

Trovata.io secures US$20m funding led by Wells Fargo Strategic Capital

Trovata.io, which automates cash management with open banking, has announced the closing of its Series A funding round, raising US$20m. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital led the investment round with participation from new investors, Capital One Ventures and Pivot Investment Partners, as well as existing early investors, J.P. Morgan and FINTOP Capital. In connection with the round, Basil Darwish, managing director of Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, has joined Trovata's board of directors.

"We are keen on how technology is reinventing the treasury function into a modern, insight-driven operation that helps our clients deliver on their business strategy," said Basil Darwish, managing director of Wells Fargo Strategic Capital. "Trovata provides distinctive technology and a client-centric approach to automating treasury services, and we're excited to support their ongoing growth with this investment."

The investment will be used to deliver new services, accelerate multi-bank APIs globally, and add more bank distribution partners. As a big-data platform, Trovata says it will continue to focus on its strengths to drive digital transformation in corporate treasury as it expands upmarket.

Trovata acts as a data lake to store and manage bank data in a scalable multi-bank environment. As a cloud-based application, it aims to augment the bank's existing online portal to help the bank deliver advanced tech-driven services to meet next-generation bank-as-a-service (BaaS) initiatives.

 

GRI updates guidance enabling companies to report on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals

It is now even easier for organisations to communicate their efforts to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), by using the GRI Standards. An updated version of ‘Linking the SDGs and the GRI Standards’ has been published. This free resource gives a breakdown of the targets under each of the 17 SDGs and maps how they correlate against the disclosures in the GRI Standards, including the latest published versions.

The linkage document complements GRI’s wider support to help companies communicate their impacts on sustainable development. These include a suite of tools on integrating the SDGs in reporting, and SDG reporting examples from around the world.

“The GRI Standards enable companies to integrate SDGs reporting within their sustainability report and this revised guidance helps them make these connections in a clear and consistent way," said Thijs Reuten, head of Policy at GRI. "The SDGs address our world’s most pressing sustainability challenges, therefore it is crucial that the contribution of the private sector is both recognised and understood. That is why GRI continues to work with partners and reporting organisations to drive forward the transparency required to support the fulfilment of the SDGs.”

GRI also thanked the Government of Sweden for supporting this project through the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).