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BNY Mellon Survey Finds Banks are Cautiously Optimistic Emerging Technologies will Significantly Impact Today's Correspondent Banking Model

Staff Report

Wednesday, October 18th, 2017

BNY Mellon, a global leader in investment management and investment services, released a new research paper at the Sibos conference in Toronto that reveals bank are cautiously optimistic emerging technologies can help transform the global payments experience, with real-time payment systems viewed as having the greatest promise to "substantially change" the correspondent banking model.

Other key findings from the white paper, titled "Rethinking the Client Payment Experience," include:

  • Little more than one-quarter of respondents agree that blockchain technology will substantially change the global payments experience

  • Nearly 60% percent of respondents said that it was "too early to tell" if peer-to-peer system interaction, through the use of API's, would bring a fundamental shift in the interbank correspondent model

  • One-quarter of respondents feel compliance screening was the largest impediment to straight-through processing success. Twenty-percent viewed payment formatting errors as the second greatest impediment

  • Enhanced analytics and business intelligence were viewed by respondents as the number one factor in their ability to improve their end clients' payments experience

"Increased regulation and competition is helping to drive innovation and change in the bank payment space that we have not seen for decades," said Mike Bellacosa, Head of Global Payments Product Management, BNY Mellon Treasury Services. "But with the coming of age of millennials and their higher levels of both technology understanding and technology expectations, we are now hearing a real rallying cry for change."

The white paper spotlights growing client demand for flexible, cost-efficient and integrated solutions that will require banks to bring together internal legacy infrastructure with components from external third-party providers. In the face of increasing regulatory and compliance demands, clients seek a seamless, end-to-end experience that helps them to better identify business opportunities, understand end-client behaviors, and create efficiency through straight through processing in an offering that is flexible enough to meet their individual needs. 

"It is truly an exciting time to be a part of the banking payments industry, and BNY Mellon's research illustrates key trends that are helping to transform the client payment experience," said Wim Raymaekers, Head of Banking Markets and SWIFT gpi at SWIFT. "BNY Mellon is one of the key banks on SWIFT gpi and has been driving its thought leadership from the beginning. The fact that such a leading financial institution is live with gpi - providing their clients with faster, more transparent and traceable cross-border payments - is a real testimony of that."