Continuing the debates approached within the Romanian Financial Symposium (3 – 4 November 2009) where BIS held a seminar in collaboration with SWIFT representatives, we organized a workshop at our premises focused on the corporate-bank relations. Our intention was to gather in the same place representatives of the Corporate Clients Departments from banks and CFOs or Treasury Managers from different companies, in order to discover pain points and business needs, to identify means of improving and simplify the current business landscape and to find common cooperation grounds, having in view BIS experience and current portfolio of products and services dedicated to the financial industry.
BIS has recently made steps forward concerning its partnership with SWIFT, concluding a new type of Partnership Agreement, based on BIS certified competency of offering and sustaining on the Romanian market the most up-to-date SWIFT solutions: corporate access to SWIFT network, Bulk Payments, Exceptions and Investigations, Cash Reporting, Workers Remittances. The presentations delivered by BIS certified business analysts were “spiced up” with interventions from SWIFT representatives who joined our workshop and contributed with relevant information concerning the analysis and implementation steps, as well as success stories of corporates connected to SWIFT network.
Since the beauty of every solution always comes with questions about the costs, Mr. Urs Kern, Corporate and Trade Finance, Senior Manager – SWIFT, shared with us information about the price packages and how to evaluate a business case. He also emphasized that there is an upward trend for small and medium-sized companies to connect to SWIFT network.
The less formal atmosphere of the workshop gave every participant the opportunity to discuss openly real problems they face, to clarify their doubts and to see the benefits of improving the corporate-bank relations.
Being an interactive session, naturally the conversations led to other hot subjects that the industry faces at the moment, such as SEPA and PSD, a main concern for the banks in particular, but also raising the interest of the companies, which will be the direct beneficiaries of these regulations.
In the end, we initiated a brainstorming among the participants to conclude and prioritize which are the solutions that best fit their needs and how can BIS assist in their implementation.
Being already at its 4th workshop focused on financial industry related hot topics, BIS intends to continue this initiative of organizing face-to-face meetings and open discussions between companies and banks. Please feel free to contribute with comments on the corporate-to-bank subject, as well as with suggestions for the next focus of our workshop.
If you are interested in finding out more about the solutions presented during this workshop and in participating in such an event focused on the corporate-bank relations, please contact our Marketing Manager via the contact form.