Theodora Lau的动态

Transcript

So we are here at Money 2020 USA in Las Vegas. Joining us today is Ryan from City and Nasaka from IBM Consulting. Before we start, can we spend a brief 30 seconds to each introduce yourself? First off, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Ryan Rugg, Head of Digital Assets for Cities TTS business, recently launched City Token services for cash and liquidity where we can now move money 24/7 kind of around our two branches right now. Hi, I'm Sakit Sinner, I lead IBM Consulting for financial Services. I have a global role helping clients do banking transformation in variety of topics and subjects. All right, So this is going to be our favorite topic today talking about digital assets. Digital assets has such massive potential to help us with cross-border payments and do things more faster and efficiently. But there are challenges, shall we say regulatory challenges, operational challenges or attach challenges. So let's kick. Off with how do you believe are some of the key hurdles that as an industry will need to overcome to make cross-border digital asset transactions actually seamless and something that you know we can leverage? So I'd say I've been in this space for 10 years now and we have made a lot of advances. There are still challenges you mentioned out there, but I would say in the last year if you look at kind of where we are even from my perspective where you have like large enterprises. Like Citibank that are entering into this space and you know, the thesis statement that we started with was our clients want 24/7 always on liquidity payments across the globe. So how do we solve that? And they want multibank, multi border, right? They don't just want a city token or a X bank token, they want multi token. So you know, we started working with multiple networks with like the Fed on the regulated liability Agora now with BIS. We've also been part of SWIFT and several other industry initiatives. Out there to really think about what is this future of borderless networks look like but currently where we are but how can we connect to a network if we can't move a token around safely and soundly or four walls you know we have 95 branches we serve 19,000 clients we move 5 trillion a day so really focusing on that value for our clients so if it's you know 5:00 PM in New York and 5:00 AM in Singapore normally you couldn't send money right you have the cut offs from banks you have bank holidays well, now they can do that and as like you know we progress we're adding more and more branches as well as additional. Functionality. No, I think what she's saying is, is 100%. I mean, I agree with that. One of the challenges we see is. The capital market is a very interconnected system with so many entities and within entity there are so many applications and divisions that have to all come together. So technology is a big obstacle and a challenge itself. And of course people are trying to solve technology, but so many systems have to connect together to make it work seamlessly. And for them to certify to the regulators and others that, you know, these things are being done in a proper way and and regulatory compliant way and auditable way that that that's a challenge. That's one of the biggest obstacles. So today itself where the technology is there. To solve many of these problems, but we see that many clients you know, sometimes hesitate to put themselves through the rigor of connecting and interconnecting systems altogether because it is an expensive, costly and time consuming affair for for these systems to come together. Absolutely. Let's talk about global treasury operations. How does tokenization transform that for your institutional clients and talk about 24/7 because you just mentioned right, you can do it real time anytime, not more constricted to bankers hours shall we say. Right. So 24/7 liquidity transfer, how will that help to reshape the traditional model that we've been using? So the client base that we're focusing on is really our large multinationals, right, focusing on innovating for the future for them and they keep, they have to forecast and keep buffers of cash across the globe that is really inefficient use of cash and from operational from risk, they have to do this imagine you can move money instantaneously so you don't have to keep these buffers at cash. So really thinking about it from a liquidity standpoint. Payment standpoint, it really China changes the landscape and you know, earlier this year we launched what we were calling an early adopter program just for a really elite select group of our clients right now to utilize this technology to see really how they're applying it. And you know, we thought liquidity and payment were the two kind of leaders out there, but we've seen clients use it for T + 1 settlement. So you know Singapore that market hours are closed, but they want to settle us, you know, treasuries or equities in the US so instead of having to kind of prefund. The US account, they're able to move it instantaneously. We've seen it for overdraft production, you know, so it's been really interesting to see how our clients are using this technology within treasury management. I think it's evolving, but it's clear that like the need for instantaneous like movement of money that kind of matches the speed of the Internet, clients want that, right? It's missing in the market. This is the Holy Grail has been has been the, uh, you know, a quest for solution for a long, long time, right. And this technology definitely provides that capability to move money instantly in real time and things. And it allows so much of saving and working capital that banks have to maintain nostril vostro account and other kinds of, you know, bifurcation they have to do from regulatory requirements and things like that. So so this technology does promise a lot, but I think from from from A banks perspective, a lot of change has to happen on the way they work on their side. Of operational processes that have to be reengineered, new training, new technology as well as new reporting that needs to happen, right? And it is not only that they can do within their bank themselves, that their client itself. In your institutional client also you always have a counterparty, right? So all of them have to be into the same way of working. And it is a governance thing that has to come together like an industry evolution. I would say that has come together so that the process is the dashboard reporting, the compliance, the check for money balances, everything happens In Sync across, across the chain. So I think that's something very important. So I hear real time instant. That's like being the keyword for the entire day today and. I think you're right, my mind, because the next thing I was going to ask is with the new technology, we still need to have that integrated with the traditional system. So let's talk through some of the practical challenges, right, when it comes to integrating that with our traditional infrastructure. And I think more interestingly, how do you help clients transition because this is something fairly new, right, for some of them. So let's talk through what are some of the practical things that you would advise them and how do we help to ensure a smoother transfer. Yeah, I think it that's kind of A2 front question. Like the first thing we did a survey where I think 80% of our clients are focused on real time payments, real time liquidity and not just in digital assets and our Trade 5 business also. So we're updating our trade file like 24/7. We're updating like more innovating for the future with city token services. But in order to do that from a safety, soundness and scalability like all the KYC AML sanctions, everything that we do traditionally we have to do with digital assets like we have an extremely, extremely. You know, I would say focus on making sure that like this is safe and sound. And we're on a permission version of Etherium right now that we're doing this. It's not on a public chain for multiple tutor reasons, but as we start to scale, but like getting clients used to this as instantaneous because quite frankly, not all their ERP systems are ready for this, are ready for real time. But watching these early clients that are using it saying like, oh, wait, I'm not waiting for a message to come in. Oh wait, it's actually delivery. It's not actually, you know, just a message. It's, it's been. The incredible like, ohh, we don't need a whole operation team that's waiting for reconciling all these messages because it's instantaneous. So like, you know, I always say like one of my favorite Steve Jobs quote is like, you know, we can't connect the dots looking forward only backwards. But like how do we start getting clients comfortable with this with this instantaneous always on infrastructure that really kind of matches the speed of commerce. It's it requires a different operating model as we are seeing in some of the blanks banks that I work in Europe, for example, in the same same kind of league of experimentation they are doing they're realizing the. The the operating model for 24 by 7 operation is very different and and it's not, it cannot be done human wise. Even if you do two shift of Labor, two shift of work, still it's not it's not possible. So they are exploring very heavily the use of technology as sort of digital labor that they can create to handle this 24 by 7 operation. And it's a whole change from front to the back in terms of a linear integrated data that comes that would handle digital labor to handle because there you can't send an e-mail and expect an answer saying that whether this is allowed or not, right this too. You have to make decision and you have to feed in those decision in a way that they can make it in a safe and sound way to your to your point and that's what is a it's an interesting work that we are doing with the client where they're developing digital to. To clear many sanctions or or you know, a certain amount of payment tranche that comes and based on certain approved limits and certain kind of fed feedback that has been provided, they would be able to clear that from a digital labor perspective without human involvement kind of a thing. It's pretty mind blowing, but that's why AI and artificial intelligence is promising things to to do that and we can create those digital laborers to do that. It's never a dull moment, right? That's what we always say yes, exactly So talking about never a dull moment, let me ask you the most. One question for the day, we'll wrap up with that. How? Can we navigate through this very complex regulatory environment and we talked through that a little bit. When we look at different jurisdictions, there are different regulatory frameworks at play, right. So how, how do we best navigate through that and what role do you think of financial institution should play in helping to shape that out? Yeah, We've taken a very collaborative and open kind of, you know, approach on this. If you think about the regulated liability network with the Fed in the US, if you think about what we're doing now with Agora, where you have like 7 of the largest central banks, like coming together because like, I think what's missing in this space is really like global standards. And that's not something easy to solve. And that's why you kind of mentioned the regulatory differences that you're seeing because there isn't that one standard, but bringing these groups together to kind of think through these difficult issues and how we're going to do it and. I like to equate it to like the early days of the Internet intranets. You're seeing all these individual intranets come. How do you connect that like TCP IP, right? How do we bring that together? And it really has to be a public, private, you know, partnership with that where you have, so you think of like the 41 different participants in like the Agora initiative and how they're talking about some of these tough issues and everything from the regulatory to like where their data is housed. There's like a lot of things that have to be solved to have like a true global network. Like what you said, probably private, that's the only way to go in my mind. As well as we are seeing, I mean, we are working with a couple of countries in helping shape the policies required for handling this complex technological innovations that is happening. And number one, in some countries along with institutional banks and big banks, we are working directly with the regulators to help them understand how these new technology is creating new opportunities for them to appreciate that, right. For example, just in the world of generative AI, we are working with regulators to show them what data is going into the model. Because they have decided and they have said that we can't use the Internet available large language models because we don't know what data it has been trained, biased transparency and things like that. But we are taking a specific models to show all the enterprise data that the institution can put in. So that data is completely transparent to the regulators and the prompts that are being given to train that data so that the regulators can vouch for this prompt itself. So it's worked directly in conjunction with the regulator and they are part of the development or the part of the process of evolution as well. So it's a slow. Process, but it has to be there. If it's for any regulated entity, I think you have to have a mechanism of embracing them to your to your development work, your evolution, your innovation. And that's the only way to go. And in many markets they are looking at that reality and participating in some that are still in the way mode of saying that you know what, show me what you have done. I will determine whether it's right or wrong. Their roles it's to develop innovative solutions for our clients, but to make sure that their regulatory compliance to make sure you know, safety, soundness, scalability, all those things that are there and are really like strong fashion. So I think that's kind of like our role that we play. Fun fact, Zack and I work together when I was at IBM, I'm not sure you know that. We met with several different, you know, enterprises as well as regulators and White House back in the day. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, Small place, and it's a very small place. Well, thank you so much for both of you for joining me. Thank you. Thank you.