LUM YIN FONG
DBS BANK
MANAGING DIRECTOR, WHOLESALE BANKING, GTS – CASH AND TRADE A 25-year veteran of the transaction banking business, Lum has been a fixture in Asia’s cash management business since its inception. With a successful career including periods in Citi and ABN Amro, Lum joined DBS global transaction services (GTS) in 2001. Since then she has driven the bank’s product, sales, and technology infrastructure, which has helped lay the foundation for the bank’s successful expansion across Asia today.
During the financial crisis, DBS targetted cash management as a way to grow. And Lum has been a key part of delivering on that promise. She has helped add more than S$1 billion ($795,000) to the top line. Under her leadership, DBS’s cash management business has launched a number of innovations, including the xDDA service, which reduces turnaround time for certain applications from the industry norm of three weeks to as little as a day.
Today, the cash management business at DBS boasts the highest society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunications (Swift) payment volumes across all financial institutions in Singapore, and has a market leading $48 billion worth of client deposits.
LINNA REN
BANK OF CHINA
HEAD OF CASH MANAGEMENT In 2010 when Ren took the helm of cash management at one of China’s oldest banks, she became responsible for reenergising Bank of China’s (BOC)services. She was a decision-maker who helped create the development of its Global Cash Management System, which aims to meet the changing client requirements that are arising as mainland companies become more global players.
The system offers a variety of services, ranging from account, payment and collection offerings, to details on liquidity, investment and financing, as well as risk and cross-border cash management products. All in, it provides clients with a global service. Before taking charge of the business, Ren spearheaded the development of BOC’s basic, dedicated, quick payment, account for custody and settlement finance, as well as renminbi services during her five-year tenure as head of product information in corporate banking. This followed 20 years of experience in the accounts, finance and settlement divisions of the bank’s corporate banking unit.
SRIDHAR KANTHADAI
CITI
REGIONAL HEAD ASIA-PACIFIC, TREASURY AND TRADE SOLUTIONS, GTS As regional head of treasury and trade solutions for one of Asia’s truly big cash management beasts, Kanthadai has helped drive Citi’s business to new heights across all 18 countries in the region. Under Kanthadai’s guidance, Citi’s cash management franchise has processed more than $1.9 billion of transactions annually and moved more than $3 trillion daily. During the last year alone, Citi’s Swift volumes rose by 17.5% year-on-year, recorded a clearing house interbank payments system (CHIPS) market share of 14.9% and posted more than $300 million in cash management sales.
Kanthadai’s team has rolled out more than 30 new product features and innovations to help clients improve their all-important working capital cycle, achieve operational efficiency, and manage risk more effectively.
Examples of key innovations include use of mobile phones as a global payments device with Cash2Mobile and International Mobile Top-Up, direct debit pioneering solutions in China, Korean won time deposits and specified money trusts — plus the bank’s growing capabilities in the commercial and prepaid cards business.
BACH THUY HA
TECHCOMBANK
HEAD OF TRANSACTION BANKING DIVISION Since joining Vietnam’s Techcombank more than two years ago, Bach has been instrumental in first establishing and then developing the bank’s transaction banking division into one of the leading local providers of cash management and trade finance services in Vietnam. Drawing on her experience with Citi and Deutsche Bank, Bach has helped position Techcombank as the first and as yet only Vietnamese bank to build a specialised cash management team.
Under her watch, Techcombank has also introduced several innovative cash management products including F@stEBank, F@stCollection and liquidity management products. It has also invested in technology previously only available to foreign banks thereby enabling it to cater to large customers. As a result, Techcombank has won numerous cash management mandates from large state-owned enterprises, private companies and multinational corporations. During the past two years, Bach has helped double the bank’s clients to more than 50,000 small and medium-sized enterprises and large corporations, and net revenue from cash management has increased by more than 40% every year.
GEORGE NAST
STANDARD CHARTERED BANK
GLOBAL HEAD PRODUCTS, TRANSACTION BANKING Since he joined Standard Chartered in January 2010, Nast has restructured Standard Chartered’s cash management business, which has been identified as a key driver of strategy and revenues. Under his leadership, the bank has reorganised its product management organisation globally into client segment-focused teams, while he has also been instrumental in driving his team to apply best practices in liquidity management for the bank’s clients.
This has involved implementing a number of innovative products in the process, including a new liquidity management offering for multi-national clients enabling interest optimisation and allowing currencies such as offshore renminbi to be part of the solution. Nast and his team have also launched a global billing system that enables all clients to pay charges and receive standardised billing reports at a consolidated level according to their preferred billing cycle.
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