Banking

For Afghanistan, August 2021 was a pivotal month, with the extremist Taliban seizing government control. This regime change has shaken the country to its core, including its banking system, which, according to some, is on the verge of collapse. What are the prospects for the country’s banks to gain secure footing on the road to recovery?

Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi claims the title of the world’s oldest bank, but not for much longer. In recent years, hammered by bad debts, MPS has survived only with sizable aid from the government and will soon be absorbed by UniCredit, assuming the latter bank’s conditions are met. This union will create Italy’s new banking behemoth.

The pandemic had previously put a break on impending SWIFT Releases that were originally pencilled in for 2020. When those were pushed back to November 2021, that was a welcome deferment to allow financial institutions to ready themselves for the upcoming changes to Trade Finance Category 7 for Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit.

The term bad bank seems like an oxymoron, but in practice, the concept has been actualized in a few countries to address the problem of bad debt. The National Asset Reconstruction Company, supported by the India Debt Resolution Company, is India’s attempt to absorb and rehabilitate the nonperforming assets plaguing its banking system.

As environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues receive more mainstream attention, banks are continuing to find themselves in the crosshairs. From NGOs and investors to regulators and customers – banks are continuously being pressured to do a better job on ESG.

To best serve its customers, a bank needs to know who they are and what their needs and wants are. Cognitive intelligence, which uses technologies such as artificial intelligence to form predictive models based on customer data, equips banks to provide tailored solutions that raise the bar to new heights for product and service delivery.

Switzerland has been a leader in banking innovation for years. As the adoption of digital assets in financial services kicks into high gear, Switzerland continues to pave the way for their full, secure application and regulation. What specific tactics are Swiss banks and regulators employing to navigate the digital-assets environment?

Corporate-banking customers have been slower than consumer-banking clients to jump on the digital bandwagon but are on it now, searching for single-source solutions to meet all their product and service needs under one digital umbrella. Both traditional and challenger banks are in the race to fulfill this quest, but which will prevail?

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all the economies, big or small, across the globe. Central banks everywhere have been proactively dealing with the situation and have successfully pushed a large amount of liquidity to the banks through various means. However, due to widespread uncertainty caused by the pandemic, banks are reluctant to lend, and consumers are hesitant to avail credit. This article highlights the adverse impact that surplus liquidity may have on the banks and economies if adequate demand is not created.

Has digitization put the bank branch and cash on the extinction list? Not while consumers still demand them. To prosper today and in the future, banks will need to snatch the opportunities digital transformation offers them. Digitization is not a threat but a promise for better customer service that meets consumers where they are.