A global bank had identified opportunities to make their trade and supply chain finance (TF & SCF) solutions more sophisticated and relevant to customers across the APAC region
The new offering would include digital capabilities such as API connectivity, fully digitised transaction processing, and partnering with bank agnostic 3rd party platforms
To ensure their investment in growth was effective, the bank was seeking expert advice to:
align their platform build to the needs of their customers (current and target)
prioritise their country rollout strategy and define their go-to-market approach to clients.
Accelerated’s approach to the research:
The project was led by a Collaboration Partner (CP) with consulting experience and almost 20 years as a senior banking executive
Over four weeks our CP conducted 9 in-depth interviews with CFOs or similar and oversaw a B2B survey of more than 50 participants across Singapore, India, Thailand and Australia.
Synopsis:
Most participants forecast increases in their TF & SCF volumes, particularly across Singapore and India
There was consistent evidence of multiple bank relationships in this space. Except for Australia, the majority of respondents use three or more banks to service their SCF & TF needs
Respondents expressed a willingness to consider alternative providers for SCF & TF given they already use a combination of global and local banks. When considering diversifying banking relationships in this space geographic reach and innovation/technology were the two key decision criteria that emerged
Digitisation was becoming increasingly prevalent and important across supply chains, with respondents generally only having made modest progress to-date
There was a strong recognition of a need to accelerate digitisation in this area with COVID accelerating trends. This included a desire to incorporate advanced data analytics and visualisation, with tools such as excel or components of their ERP system being most commonly used for any of this type of analysis
There has been limited adoption of existing 3rd party SCF & TF platforms, with most organisations using existing bank-provided solutions. This lack of adoption and any dominant player creates challenges but also opportunities to drive the 3rd party provider market across the region.
