Q+A
Table Of Contents
Global Finance: What recent developments in the corporate digital banking space have caught your attention?
Hubert Jolly: There are three main trends: Corporate clients are looking to get a more intuitive online banking experience, so we try to make it easy for them to use digital platforms similar to consumer applications. Secondly, we want to find ways to enable corporate users to do quicker tasks directly on their mobiles or tablets. Finally, we are working towards an omni-channel experience, where clients can send treasury transactions online but can also see them on their mobile or tablet device, and vice-versa.
GF: Is mobile as appealing in the corporate space as it is in retail banking?
Jolly: Our penetration in mobile, as a percentage of online, is not as deep as it is in the consumer space. In corporate treasury, users who work on day-to-day cash management—from pulling statements to reviewing their receivables and payables—cannot perform these functions on a mobile. But as you move up the chain, there is increasing room for mobile use by executives who want to get quick information such as account balances and other intraday functionalities. Mobile is also helpful to people who need to approve transactions. They are the ones typically traveling, or who may be in the office but in a meeting, and yet someone needs to have their approval, and now they can do it on a mobile. The feedback of clients who use mobile is quite positive; they like the convenience of it and the experience.
GF: How is the Cloud changing the picture?
Jolly: We don’t put our client data in the Cloud. Our services are all managed through our own data centers. But the Cloud is changing enterprise resource planning platforms and treasury workstations. Historically, our clients would have deployed enterprise resource planning and treasury workstations within their own technology infrastructure; now companies like SAP, the German multinational software firm, are moving them onto the Cloud. So we are working on better ways to connect more directly to these new systems to capture their treasury flows, to save them and us time and resources.
GF: How do corporates think about cybersecurity?
Jolly: First of all, they need to ask themselves how secure the data their treasury operations use is, both their own ERP data and what goes through their bank’s online and mobile connectivity. For our part, we make sure that we have the highest level of security procedures and certifications. Secondly, clients need to think about how they manage user entitlement, who is authorized to do certain functions and who is in charge of authorizations. We always make sure that they have control over this maker/checker functionality, and we advise them to keep reviewing their settings and user entitlements.
