More than 24 hours past and we can still feel the excitement from the BOOST session, yesterday. It was fantastic to see people in FinTech so interested in the concept of banking on open source technologies.
But there was no time for daydreaming, as Open Theatre was our stage today. Alina Enache, Allevo Sales Manager and Mihai Guiman, Vice-president FINkers United, took their roles very seriously to explain another concept/project idea aimed to improve the operations of state treasuries – Financial Infrastructures for Public Administrations. They showed how using specialized open source software applications leads to streamline the operations of the public institutions, to mitigate their operational risk and to offer a platform to scale-up the delivered service.
Last year at Sibos in Dubai, we hosted an open debate on the topic of auction systems of state treasuries – All About T-Bonds. With open source in Public Administration being a trending subject, with many headlines nowadays announcing that public authorities support the adoption of open source in favour of enterprise software and government institutions, healthcare and education systems starting to look into the possibility of adopting open source software, not only at infrastructure level to reduce costs but also at the application layer, our little “play” was very suited for FinTech’s biggest event of the year.
The session presented ways to help Public Administration in the UE region improve their business by using FinTP building blocks. And how by using FinTP they could enhance the management of Structural Funds – public institutions are organized in “closed user group type architecture”, using existing local infrastructures, for financial information and funds transfer. And they could streamline payment services (paying wages, pensions, subsidies and other expenses, as well as tax collection).
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Over the past 10 years, Allevo has been working closely with the Romanian State Treasury, deploying several projects around financial transactions processing that aimed to improve the efficiency, contain the risk, integrate external communication channels and add tools that provide real time views and forecasts on liquidity. This experience helped us develop a good understanding and expertise in the way financial transactions and related flows are implemented in public administrations.
Unlike corporate or banks’ treasuries, the State Treasury is a zero risk operation, so any solution should ensure human errors containment. Furthermore, functional, technological and highly scaling (according to the evolving needs) data repositories should be warranted, while transparently interoperating with the business community’s members (i.e. with FIs).
As I mentioned, the solution that we have submitted to the OT debate is built around FinTP, architected as a service hosted by a Public Administration private cloud, as depicted in the picture.
The main advantages of this architecture implementation that were mentioned are:
- Straight Through Processing (STP)
- Operational risk containment
- Reduced settlement time
- Reduced operational costs (cash is expensive)
- Automatic accounting reconciliation
- Cash flow forecast,
- Improved user experience
- Security and confidentiality of information (by safely exchanging sensitive information over private secured networks instead of moving papers or exchanging emails)
- Eliminating delays in paying salaries, when the public institution accounts at the commercial bank are subject to seizure due to other legal disputes
- The solution can be extended in the future to offer a wider range of functionalities (i.e. extension for distribution/collection channels on electronic channels like M-PESA Vodafone, mobile wallets, Apple Pay etc.), with a direct result of increased tax collection and offering a more consistent service for the citizens both as beneficiary and as payer.
Our experience led us to believer that an approach designed to encourage collaboration could be very beneficial for the Public Administration. The shift in mentality seems even easier in this sector, as more and more institutions are willing to operate differently, based on open source technologies and benefitting from all the advantages open source software comes with. The discussion with the audience in Open Theatre One encouraged us and convinced us we are on the right track with our FinTP initiative. What seemed incredibly bold and adventurous at first, as time goes by seem quite feasible and the right idea.
Daily reminder: Don’t forget to take part in the FinTP Idea Contest and share your ideas on how to extend or enrich its utility. Come up with a fabulous idea who gets voted by everyone and you’ll be the winner.
Tomorrow is the last day. Check out how your idea is doing and get more people to vote it. Can’t wait to see who the winner is and celebrate with him at our stand F79, at 16:00.