BAFT Congratulates Graduates of the 2021 Future Leaders Program

June 7, 2021 by Jessica Moore

The Class of 2021, comprised of 36 individuals from 26 countries, were recognized today during BAFT’s 2021 Virtual Global Annual Meeting.

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, today announced the graduates of its Future Leaders Program class of 2021. The program – now completing its sixth year – recognizes upcoming leaders in the global transaction banking industry. The Future Leader graduates were honored during a virtual ceremony as a part of BAFT’s 2021 Annual Global Meeting.

Nominated by their respective institutions, the class of 2021 included 36 individuals from 21 countries across six continents representing a variety of disciplines within transaction banking. This year’s group was divided into five project teams to address current industry issues including transaction banking post COVID-19, commodity trade finance, sustainable finance, faster payments, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We are incredibly proud of this year’s graduates, which represent the largest and most geographically diverse Future Leaders class since the inception of the program,” said Tod Burwell, president and CEO, BAFT. “Despite the challenging circumstances, program participants were engaged and collaborative, and ultimately delivered projects that will enrich the transaction banking industry.”

The Future Leaders research papers are available for all BAFT members online here.

BAFT congratulates the following graduates from the Class of 2021.

Hanan Hassan Moalim Ali, International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation
Yaseen Alsharif, Arab Bank
Hanna G. Atallah, Housing Bank for Trade and Finance
Linda Bader, Wintrust Financial Corporation
Boris Bajic, Danske Bank
Thomas Banks, Lloyds Banking Group
Ahmed Bayoumi, Export Development Bank of Egypt (EBE)
Clement Berthou, Societe Generale
Caroline Brown, Wells Fargo Bank
Bruno Campos, Bank of America
Antonio Crespo, Nordea
Alexia Dackberg, Swedbank
Madlena Demirchian, Commerce Bank
Natalie Harold, NatWest
Christophe Hatt, BNP Paribas
Aaron Jennings, BNY Mellon
Elmira Jubanyshkaliyeva, Barclays
Mukuka Bwalya-Katowa, FNB Zambia
Zakir Khanmammadov, Kapital Bank
Rufus Kin Yan Lam, HSBC
Ryan Lastra, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Thao Hanh Le, ING Bank
Yvonne Lim, UBS
Aline Perico Lime, StoneX
Sepideh Malekpour, Surecomp
Jocelyn Tong-Palmer, ANZ Banking Group
Pauline Pang, MUFG Bank
Rachel Parks, Derivative Path, Inc.
Abir Paul, BMO Capital Markets
Sara Pianigiani, Standard Chartered
Grzegorz Pojnar, Santander Bank
Joshua Randolph, PNC Bank
Theresa Donnelly-Staerk, Deloitte
Xi-Ping Tan, Deutsche Bank
Ruben Valentino, Banorte
Mouli Vasan, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank

About BAFT
BAFT is the leading international financial services association whose membership includes large global and regional banks, service providers, and fintech companies headquartered around the world. BAFT provides advocacy, thought leadership, education, and a global forum for its members in transaction banking, including international trade finance and payments. For nearly a century, BAFT has expanded markets, shaped policy, developed business solutions, and preserved the safety and soundness of the global financial system. Learn more at www.baft.org.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
Director, Public Relations
[email protected]
+ 1 (202) 663-5468

June 3, 2021 by Jessica Moore

On June 3 BAFT’s Outgoing Board Chair, Mark Garfield, published his last monthly communication to the wider BAFT membership.

During BAFT’s 2021 Virtual Global Annual Meeting next week, we will celebrate the association’s 100th anniversary. I imagine the first meeting in 1921 was not global; just a few men in a small conference room in Cleveland, Ohio smoking cigarettes and discussing foreign trade. Next week’s meeting will have 1,500+ attendees representing financial partners from around the world in a virtual event discussing topics such as artificial intelligence, open banking, and digitization. Yet, many of the conversations between us are likely the same: how to integrate globally to support the worldwide flow of goods and services, and how to recover following a global pandemic.

My maternal grandmother was a young adult in 1918, and she recorded her memories of the challenges, deaths, and scarcities during the Spanish Flu. She wrote, “It was a very sad and dark time. It was hard to be cheerful. I hope and pray it never comes again.” I’ve reflected on my grandma Verna’s experience many times this past year. What is different? What is similar? It’s interesting to reflect that the first BAFT meeting also came on the heels of a global pandemic. This time, though, we are fortunate to have modern technology that allows us to stay connected, share best practices, and collaborate to solve problems. Over the past 100 years, our industry’s support of the global supply chain has grown more important and sophisticated, and I expect another 100 years of progress.

It has been an honor to serve as the Chair of BAFT for the past two years. I’ve enjoyed working with the BAFT staff, its Board of Directors, Regional Councils, planning and product committees, and individual members. I’ve observed the tremendous effort made to transform BAFT into a virtual global association and expand its reach and role, and I am pleased that our four regional councils of North America, Europe, MENA, and Asia became five with the addition of the African Council.

As Chair, I represented Zions Bancorporation, a regional U.S. bank headquartered in the Rocky Mountains. Our new Chair, Maram Al-Jazireh, represents Arab Bank, headquartered in Amman Jordan, which is the first time the Chair has been held outside Europe or North America. It’s exciting and gratifying that BAFT truly has become a global organization.

My grandmother survived the Spanish Flu, and I knew her only as cheerful. She made it through those difficult days and would frequently marvel at all the many innovations that were developed after 1918. I look forward to a future of innovation, collaboration, connection, and friendship with you all.

Cheers!

Mark Garfield
Outgoing BAFT Chair
Head of Global Financial Institutions
Zions Bancorporation

BAFT Media Contact:

Blair Bernstein
[email protected]
+ 1 (202) 663-5468

May 4, 2021 by Jessica Moore

Via Global Trade Review

The Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (Baft) has released a new whitepaper that provides recommendations and key considerations for the development of high-speed cross-border payments around the world.

Produced by Baft’s cross-border faster payments working group, which is made up of 24 members based in North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa and the Asia Pacific region, the paper, titled Enabling Faster Payments Across Borders, is the first step of Baft’s larger strategy to facilitate global faster payments by encouraging the designers of national and regional payments systems to include the capability at the outset.

“Baseline standards and processes must be established to address the open issues that make real progress on cross-border faster payments difficult to attain,” says Samantha Pelosi, senior vice-president for payments and innovation at Baft and co-chair of the working group. “These issues fall into three broad categories of interoperability, business processes and compliance, and are similar to the frictions that the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) have identified as inherent to all cross-border payments.”

Speeding up cross-border payments has long been an area of focus for the financial services industry. While Swift’s global payments innovation (gpi) service, launched in 2017, has increased the speed, transparency and tracking of cross-border payments through the Swift network, delays still come about when the final leg of the transaction needs to be cleared on the recipient country’s domestic payments system.

“To benefit international trade and economic growth, we need to enhance global connectivity by making payment systems in different geographies interoperable,” says Vinayak Prabhu, vice-president of global transaction banking at Mashreq Bank and co-chair of the working group. “The paper provides recommendations along with potential models for building a seamless, transparent, and faster cross-border payments ecosystem.”

Speaking to GTR, Pelosi outlines Baft’s work in this area, and explains why the association is currently encouraging entities that are currently building or upgrading their domestic faster payments systems to incorporate the functionality and operating rules necessary for processing cross-border payments.

GTR: What is driving Baft’s work on cross-border faster payments, and why now?

Pelosi: Over the last couple of years, we have been interfacing on behalf of our members with the developers of national and regional faster payments systems, such as the Federal Reserve System in the US and Buna in the Middle East, in standing up new platforms. In fact, many countries have work underway to modernise their entire national payments system and the core of these efforts is often faster payments. Baft’s objective is to ensure that the basic requirements for processing cross-border transactions are incorporated in the design of national and regional faster payment systems in order to create a global faster payments ecosystem.

GTR: Is this work a precursor to a set of standards or rulebook for faster payments systems around the world?

Pelosi: We are currently looking at the functionality and rulebooks of different existing domestic and regional cross-border systems, such as the EU’s Sepa Instant, the Nordic countries’ P27, and the Arab Monetary Fund’s Buna system. We are comparing these features and considering the best in class, so that we can hold them up as an example of best practice. Our next step will be to go out to operators and infrastructure providers, and encourage them to build this functionality in at the outset instead of having to retrofit it in the backend. So, we’re not necessarily looking to put together specific standards, but rather identifying the key underlying considerations and requirements.

GTR: According to the whitepaper, over 50% of payments are already completed with 30 minutes through Swift and correspondent banking. What gains therefore are there to be made by further speeding up the cross-border payments system?

Pelosi: By analysing its gpi payments, Swift has observed that a lot of cross-border correspondent banking transactions take place within 30 minutes. When speaking of cross-border faster payments, we are not seeking instant delivery – a couple of hours to reach the beneficiary might suffice. However, there are still significant barriers to faster payments, and we are certainly a long way from having 100% straight-through processing. There is still a lot of ground that can be covered, and I think that if some of these issues identified in the paper are tackled, the industry can attain a more efficient, more cost-effective global payments system.

GTR: A large section of the whitepaper is given over to looking at the state of readiness for cross-border faster payments around the world. What’s your assessment? Do bottlenecks still remain?

Pelosi: I do think that we will collectively need to take baby steps in achieving a cross-border faster payments ecosystem. Certain institutions are more ready than others to move cross-border. The UK rolled out its domestic faster payments system almost 15 years ago. Because of Brexit, all payments traveling outside the country are now considered international and UK banks may be looking for a faster method of delivery. Meanwhile, in the US, The Clearing House’s real-time payments network has been active for five years and the Federal Reserve System’s FedNow platform will launch in 2023. Therefore, US banks are likely focused on their capability to deliver domestic, rather than cross-border, payments. Readiness really differs from country to country and from region to region.

GTR: This work has come out of Baft’s Global Payments Industry Council (GPIC), which was launched last year as part of Baft’s new payments strategy. What other issues is the GPIC working on?

Pelosi: The GPIC has three different work streams underway. Cross-border faster payments is one of them and we intend to engage in some advocacy later on. Another workstream is around ISO20022, which is about standardising the use of the standard globally, with a particular focus on payment purpose codes. Another area we are looking into is making sure there is a level playing field for our bank and non-bank members in payments with respect to anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. Our aim is to tackle all of this low-hanging fruit along the most voluminous corridors for cross-border payment flows.

April 30, 2021 by Jessica Moore

BAFT has continued to monitor the impact of COVID-19 globally, as well as solicit feedback from various members across different regions. Although some countries have started lifting restrictions, several have not, and some cities that started to ease restrictions have delayed further phased re-openings. Policies on travel vary by country and each institution.

The health and safety of our members, attendees, and other stakeholders have always been our primary concern. Given the levels of uncertainty, and with input from our regional councils, the BAFT Board of Directors has approved the recommendation to pivot all planned BAFT in-person events through July 2021 to virtual events.

For questions on event updates, please email [email protected].

April 27, 2021 by Jessica Moore

On April 27 BAFT’s Board Chair, Mark Garfield, published his monthly communication to the wider BAFT membership.

The recent grounding of a large container vessel in the Suez Canal was a sharp reminder of how disrupted trade upends our way of life. Container vessels moving through the Suez represent 13% of global maritime trade. At one point, over 360 vessels waited in line to pass through the canal. The grounded ship itself carried 20,000 containers. That’s a lot of stuck stuff!

Years ago, I visited the Panama Canal. Like the Suez Canal, its passageway transports a significant percentage of global trade. The original architect of the Panama Canal, Ferdinand De Lesseps, had also led the creation of the Suez Canal. He attempted to build the Panama Canal in the same design as the Suez Canal, as a sea-level canal. The attempt to excavate the massive amount of material and additional challenges from malaria and yellow fever ultimately resulted in the project’s failure. A new and different design was required: a canal with locks.

What I learned this past year from BAFT conferences, workshops, and webinars, is that many past practices are changing quickly and new and distinct ideas are the solutions for the future. We, as the practitioners of trade finance, need to offer our expertise as we advance and advocate for change.

The blockage of the Suez Canal also was a lesson on the collective efforts of engineers, sailors, and officials collaborating with skill and specialized equipment in working to solve the crisis. This effort was coupled with a moment of good fortune. A supermoon, a full moon that passes nearest the earth, allowed the tide to increase 19 inches above the level from when the vessel was grounded. That phenomenon, in combination with tug boats and dredging up to 60 feet, freed the ship.

I have had the very good fortune to work with skilled colleagues throughout the world that keep trade flowing. It gives me a sense of purpose and gratitude that in a small way I may have helped in the delivery of needed goods globally.

May good fortune be with you always!

Mark Garfield
BAFT Chair
Head of Global Financial Institutions
Zions Bancorporation

March 29, 2021 by Jessica Moore

BAFT announces publication of whitepaper on conditions necessary for a cross-border faster payments ecosystem.

WASHINGTON – BAFT, the leading global financial services association for international transaction banking, today announced the publication of its whitepaper, Enabling Faster Payments Across Borders.

The paper discusses the cost-benefit analysis involved in moving forward with cross-border faster payments including user expectations and industry readiness for adoption. It also provides recommendations and key considerations to enable the development of a cross-border faster payments ecosystem.

“Baseline standards and processes must be established to address the open issues that make real progress on cross-border faster payments difficult to attain,” said Samantha Pelosi, senior vice president for payments and innovation, BAFT and co-chair of the BAFT Cross-Border Faster Payments Working Group, which produced the paper. “These issues fall into three broad categories of interoperability, business processes and compliance, and are similar to the frictions that the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) have identified as inherent to all cross-border payments.”

The publication of this paper is the first step of BAFT’s larger strategy to facilitate global faster payments by encouraging the designers of national and regional faster payments systems to include the capability at the outset. The paper and ongoing research by BAFT’s Global Payments Industry Council on best practices for the implementation of a faster payments system will serve as reference points for the association’s discussions with regulators, central banks, market infrastructures and system operators.

“To benefit international trade and economic growth, we need to enhance global connectivity by making payment systems in different geographies interoperable,” said Vinayak Prabhu, vice president, global transaction banking, Mashreq Bank and co-chair of the Working Group. “The paper provides recommendations along with potential models for building a seamless, transparent, and faster cross-border payments ecosystem.”

BAFT encourages entities that are currently building or upgrading their faster payments systems to incorporate the functionality and operating rules necessary for processing cross-border payments when the market is ready.

The development of the whitepaper began in the fall of 2019, when BAFT assembled a working group of 24 members based in North America, Europe, MENA, and APAC. A drafting sub-group of BNY Mellon, HSBC, iSoftware4Banks, Mashreq Bank and TD Bank wove the information into an important, future-looking resource.

To read Enabling Faster Payments Across Borders, visit BAFT’s Library of Documents under the BAFT Guidance on Industry Practices section or click here.

BAFT Media Contact:
Blair Bernstein
[email protected]
+ 1 (202) 663-5468

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