BoA Merrill adds renminbi settlement in 12 markets
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has added renminbi trade settlement capabilities in 12 Asian markets, joining many of its peers who launched similar services last year. In a statement, the bank said that by joining Hong Kong's renminbi CHATS real-time gross settlement system it can offer customers the service in Asean countries, Hong Kong and Macau.
"Pricing goods in [renminbi] creates transparency and reduces foreign exchange risk not only for Chinese enterprises, but also for offshore companies that are both buying and selling with China," said Ivo Distelbrink, Asia head of global treasury services at BoA Merrill.
The People's Bank of China launched renminbi trade settlement in July 2009 with the first transaction between the country and Hong Kong conducted by the Bank of China (Hong Kong) that month. Since then, other institutions, including DBS, Kasikorn Bank, Maybank, OCBC, United Overseas Bank and Standard Chartered Bank, have been approved to offer the service.
FRSGlobal partners with Korea's STI CS
FRSGlobal announced a partnership with Korean financial technology solution provider STI CS to promote its unified risk and profitability analysis solution, RiskPro, and its regulatory reporting solution, RegPro, to local banks in the country with overseas business units. The Korean vendor will also market RiskPro to local institutions that have siloed risk management systems. STI CS will work with local system integrators to implement the solution in areas including project extract, transform and load, project management, report building, localisation and documentation.
"Since the Asian currency crisis in 1997, Korean banks have implemented risk management systems very successfully and are now focusing on improving the quality of their risk management practices," said Donnie Choi, president of STI CS, in a statement. "We are also seeing an increase in the amount of regulatory reporting that is demanded of Korean firms -- particularly those that have overseas operations. FRSGlobal is in a prime position to serve both of these business issues and we are very happy to use our strong presence in Korea to help grow their footprint in the region."
Earlier this month, FRSGlobal senior domain expert Selwyn Blair-Ford said treasurers need to be aware of proposed financial regulatory changes because they could impact their access to liquidity.
HSBC releases renminbi trade settlement standard rate
HSBC set its renminbi trade finance standard lending rate, the first for the Chinese currency outside of China, at 3.88% per annum. The bank launched cross-border renminbi trade settlement with Hong Kong last summer after the People's Bank of China began allowing select financial institutions to offer the service in July.
"We believe that publishing the RMB trade finance standard rate will facilitate RMB business development in Hong Kong and enable our customers to tap into greater opportunities in the mainland," commented Christopher Lewis, head of trade and supply chain Greater China at HSBC, in a statement.
MoneyGram International expands further into Indonesia
Following the expansion of its money transfer service in Vietnam earlier this month, MoneyGram International has added 57 new locations in Indonesia through a new partnership with Mutiara Bank.
"We're pleased to have Mutiara Bank on board as our newest agent serving Indonesia," said John Hempsey, executive vice-president of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific at MoneyGram. "Today, MoneyGram has more than 2,500 agent locations across Indonesia including Sumatra, Borneo and Java Islands."
Most of the new locations are on the Indonesian island of Java.
Thomson Reuters integrates Oracle Suite 12
Thomson Reuters integrated the latest version of its Sabrix Application Suite with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 for its tax and accounting customers. According to the company, the solution provides the broadest support for global transaction tax management covering sales, use and value-add tax, across order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes for multinational corporations.
Most companies with multi-country operations already use comprehensive transaction tax software. Thomson Reuters' Sabrix application suite is a trusted solution proven to provide detailed and accurate tax information and compliance confidence.
