Latin Finance - September/October 2011 - 34

Banking Operations Guide

in Latin America, Caribbean and Canada at Fiserv in Brookfield, Wisconsin. “Financial institutions in Latin America are responding to consumer demand to do business where they are, whenever they need it, and however they want it,” he adds. Both Fiserv and Citi are responding to the region’s bank customers who increasingly transact over cellphones. “Among sophisticated solutions are mobile banking,” he says. “Personto-person (P2P) payments are rising. Popmoney allows bank customers to Pay Other People (POP) anywhere—and these are offered directly from within the bank’s current online or mobile banking.” Citigroup is taking the trend a step further by buying and selling technology. “We’re in negotiations with a very large mobile operator in the region to offer electronic wallets–transactions over cellphones–mobile banking,” says Francisco Aristeguieta, Citigroup’s Latin America and Mexico region head for global transaction services. Integrated regional platforms are also being employed for trading purposes. For instance, Prosper Corretora, a Brazilian brokerage firm, hopes to accelerate its growth strategy: employing a multiasset trading solution for equities and derivatives. This includes the ability to access various exchanges on the same screen to help streamline trading, while expanding its business and offering its solution to its institutional clients. The platform encompasses complete trade lifecycle, management from pretrade risk to execution, and offers clients direct market access. SunGard’s Valdi platform performs order management, communications and monitoring, as well as calculates P&L in real-time. Orders are connected to the stock market in real-time, providing its partners, independent agents, distributors and affiliates a more streamlined workflow. By using this technology, institutions like Prosper Corretora and Banco de Chile are aiming to provide customers with immediate responsiveness. This aspect of the business has become increasingly important as client bases expand on the back of acquisitions and

a swelling middle class. Against this backdrop, CRM’s ability to integrate transaction information into a single platform for the bank’s more than 200 branches helps give Banco de Chile a competitive edge. Banco de Chile needed to redesign processes for more consistency in client data for its call centers and to integrate

Offering electronic wallets: Aristeguieta the information with transaction data. “This leverages sales, marketing and contact center capabilities,” says Tagle. “We are experiencing improvement in cross-selling and an increase in our customer retention.” CRM’s promise is to direct the right actions across businesses to maximize customer satisfaction and profitability. Such installations are possible because stock markets and GDP growth rates have been booming in Latin America, helping to swell bank coffers and pave the way for major overhauls of systems. Similar moves are underway at international banks that have a panregional presence. For instance, Montrealbased CGI Group’s Trade360 will replace multiple legacy trade and supply chain applications at Scotiabank with a single, integrated platform to enhance service to clients, reduce costs, and provide greater visibility and transparency to its North America, Latin America, Caribbean

Swollen Coffers

and Asia operations. It’s a global rollout of cloud-based customizable software-as-aservice solution, according to Alberta G. Cefis, executive vice president and head of global transaction banking at Scotiabank. Scotiabank is looking to keep pace with the rapid changes in technology. “It allows us to easily adapt as the market and our clients’ needs continue to evolve,” said Paul LeBlanc, senior vice president of trade services and financial institutions. These banks and brokerages demonstrate how the region is synchronizing changes to business with multiple data repositories, including the CRM application itself, adding interfaces between applications, and allowing the bank staff to focus on new line of business requirements. A major thrust has been to overcome the technical challenge of replacing legacy solutions predominant in top-tier banks and thereby continuing to move forward. Banks are spread throughout the different cultures in Latin America, so it’s important to have systems that are not only easy to implement and flexible, but also easily customizable to comply with different local regulations. “Compliance is different country by country in the region, so we need to be able to provide a solution that’s adaptable to comply with every single banking requirement,” says Fiserv’s Salazar. “People don’t appreciate how mission critical systems are to banks,” says a bank analyst at a Latin American bank who wished to remain anonymous. “Once in a while as an analyst, I stumble into a bank IT project in the region that will upgrade the entire institution’s profile. This is happening with Banco Bradesco of Brazil, which is revamping all of its IT, developing CRM for its sales force. It’s an expensive undertaking, but so important,” he notes. He terms Bradesco’s plan for a CRM, the core branch engine. It’s expected to eliminate back-office workers, and so, it will mean efficiency and productivity gains, cost savings and greatly shorten time to market for new banking products and services, he says. He forecasts that over the next three to four years, there will be impressive changes among many financial institutions in the region. LF

34 LatinFinance

September/October 2011

Latin Finance - September/October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Latin Finance - September/October 2011