Almanach PZF 2016

118 | Simon peterman
Pawel Kacprzak from Raiffeisen Polbank who is responsible for oversight
of the CE region and Poland as the most developed country in the CEE
factoring industry. Russia and the CIS region is represented by Corneliu
Robu of VTB, Romania by Alecsandra Valasuteanu of UniCredit Romani
and Turkey by Erkan Coplugil of Garanti, Turkey. This structure helps
bring in clear information form the important countries and regions to
develop and support the needs.
As especially important we see the transfer of best practices from more
developed countries to the smaller and less developed ones especially by
sub regions and among sub regions where Poland, Russia, Romania and
Turkey play an important role.
One of the pillars of the CEE Chapter in achieving our goal in bringing
the CEE community together is our yearly conference being held each
year in a different city in CEE. The aim of these conferences is not only to
bring together the factoring community but it is also to try and present its
potential for growing its factoring business. We have in the past organized
conferences in countries where the factoring industry only got started and
the need for supporting and promoting the industry was needed, like in the
case of Serbia. On the other hand, we also have many attendees from the
EU members interested in the region. We also try to balance the topics of
the hosting county or region with its specifics by bringing up actual topics
like regulation or product developments.
This year, for the first joint FCI + IFG meeting, we had the great pleasure
of organizing the event in Bucharest, Romania, which proved to be
a perfect spot with more than 60 participants from 16 countries. In the two
days of presentations and round tables we focused on the many burning
issues for the factoring industry like compliance and fintech as the potential
market disrupter. Both topics attracted a lot of interest as compliance
and factoring regulations have very diverse approaches in many different
countries. On the other hand, fintech solutions have strongly impacted the
banking industry and are slowly making momentum also in the factoring
industry.
Supply Chain Finance was another topic that has made its mark in the
factoring industry with many banks starting to notice the importance of
the product for its clients. FCI is also leading the evolution of factoring by
developing its own solutions that will enable its members to further grow
its business into this growing field of the industry. And we had the pleasure