Head of corporate sales for JPMorgan's treasury services business in Asia, Simon Jones, has been a primary driver in the bank's plan to offer cash management and trade finance services to clients as one product set. He was recently appointed senior vice president of the firm and now covers all Asian markets including Australia and Japan.
Tell us why your recent promotion is so significant.
Jones: This is the first time that we have had a senior vice president managing corporate sales for treasury services in Asia, which gives some indication of the recognition that the region receives from our headquarters in the US. I was the only SVP appointed in the treasury services business outside of the US this year.
What changes have you made to your team in recent months?
We have around 35 executives working on corporate accounts if you include associates and consultants. When I took over Japan last year I hired someone from Citibank to run that market. I have also been boosting the Australian team with the appointment of a person from REL, the working capital consulting company in that country. While our executives use Singapore and Hong Kong as hubs, they focus evenly on countries around the region including the Philippines, Japan and increasingly China and India.
What have you done of note in China?
We are winning some significant deals with multinationals in China. For example, we were mandated to handle cash and treasury services for the joint venture between Huawei and 3Com. We provide services to their holding company in Hong Kong as well as their operations in China and their subsidiary in Japan. This joint venture is capitalized to the tune of $300 million, so it is a significant operation.
What's your strategy for picking up more clients in China?
There are a lot of RFPs in the market for mandates in China and we are actively bidding for them. We are bound by what the current regulations allow foreign banks to offer by way of renminbi services across China, but we are working with our Chinese banking counterparts to ensure that services from a network of branches is also part of our offering. We have fully integrated our systems with these local banks and they often recommend us to their clients as a suitable foreign banking partner. This is helped by the fact that we don't compete with them for local business like some other foreign banks.
What's your strategy for India?
We have an investment in HDFC Bank through JPMorgan Capital Partners which gives us a strong franchise in India. Many of our clients hold accounts with us in Mumbai and then we link in to the HDFC network for over-the-counter payments and collections. Cisco is using this system now and it works well. But having said this, we don't have to work with HDFC on every deal and can be flexible in terms of our correspondent banking partnerships. Our other strategy for India is to work with Indian corporates, with a guy we recently hired in Singapore to focus on Indian companies abroad. There has been a lot of merger and acquisition activity in the country recently and local companies are looking for a bank to provide them with liquidity investment structures and to manage their overseas operations.
Why do you think it makes sense for a company to integrate their cash and trade operations?
Because the two functions go hand-in-hand, and when they are managed together collection times can be reduced, cash flow can be improved and documentation errors can be avoided. We have already been very successful in cross-selling cash and trade products to clients in Hong Kong and Singapore, and the plan is to expand these offerings to companies in other countries. We have had a lot of success in linking e-commerce payment products with trade products, for example. Suppliers place their invoices on the web using a standard industry format and then we can feed that data into a company's ERP for processing. By automating the link between supplier and buyer we can speed up the cash management process.
Are clients aware of these options or do you have to educate them to the benefits?
Clients are certainly looking for added value from their banks. These days it is difficult to win an RFP on the back of plain vanilla cash services. Automating the processes between cash and trade is how we are differentiating our product offering. These are sizable projects and are complex in nature, but clients seem to be ready for the challenge.
How will the Bank One acquisition help in this integration process?
The merger, which is due to be completed by the middle of the year, will partner us with Bank One's trade finance business in countries like Japan, Korea, China and Australia. Bank One has a good track record in these markets and we believe our strategies will be complementary.
