HSBC's Guide to Cash, Supply Chain and Treasury Management in ...

Connectivity: Make or Break in a Global Market
and multiple sets of their security credentials have to be revoked and new ones requested for their
replacement.
This has driven greater corporate interest in SWIFT as a means of avoiding the overhead of proprietary
banking standards and technology. It provides a single neutral gateway to potentially any bank connected
to SWIFT, which improves efficiency and convenience – especially when coupled with a common
standard such as ISO20022. This single point of access also
makes contingency planning seamless, in that it becomes
SWIFT’s neutral technology
also offers advantages when
it comes to the management
of security credentials.
relatively straightforward to route transactions via a secondary
provider if the primary bank is temporarily unable to process
transactions.
SWIFT’s neutral technology also offers advantages when it
comes to the management of security credentials. Its 3SKey
concept opens the door to multi-bank, multi-application, multinetwork
and multi-country secure identification using just a single device. A corporate using 3SKey
can obtain an inactive token from any participating bank and then authorise this token on SWIFT’s
3SKey portal. The same token can then be associated (registered) with multiple banks and used to sign
messages relating to transactions with those banks. Each bank then individually verifies the resulting
electronic signature and its revocation status. Apart from streamlining day-to-day transactions, this model
also means that should an individual leave the corporation, all their security credentials across multiple
banks can be revoked in a single step by cancelling their token, which can also be done if a 3SKey is
stolen or otherwise compromised.
eBAM and Electronic Trade
This sort of technology is an important component in the progress towards electronic bank account
management (eBAM) via SWIFT. As supply chains become more complex and geographically diverse,
so can bank relationships – hence the need for the most efficient and practicable way of managing them.
Some global banks already support eBAM using SWIFT so, for instance, much of the preliminary
information gathering and requests for additional data that are part of the process of opening new bank
accounts can be conducted electronically. In comparison with multiple iterations/versions of paper
documents circulating by post, this represents an appreciable efficiency and speed gain. One caveat is
that eBAM also depends upon technology vendors as
well as banks in order to function properly and while
some major ERP/treasury providers already support
it, not all do – so some manual amendments and
patching may still be required.
As supply chains become more
complex and geographically diverse,
so can bank relationships – hence
the need for the most efficient and
practicable way of managing them.
A similar situation applies to electronic trade. SWIFT
MT798 messages already provide the necessary
electronic envelope for documentation and guarantees.
A number of major banks also already support SWIFT
for trade transactions and there is strong pent-up demand for the concept in regions such as Asia.
However, as with eBAM, comprehensive support from vendors of multi-bank trade platforms is also
required in order to complete the picture.
HSBC’s Guide to Cash, Supply Chain and Treasury Management in Asia Pacific 2012 39
The New Economic
Landscape