The Hindu Business Line : StanChart sees jump in electronic transactions

MR SAMEER SAWHNEY (right), Managing Director, Transaction Banking, India and South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank, with Mr Hemant Mishr, Managing Director, Global Corporate Sales, at a press conference in Mumbai on Tuesday. — Paul Noronha

Mumbai May 8 Standard Chartered Bank is seeing a jump in the transactions taking place through the electronic mode.

Mr Sameer Sawhney, Managing Director, Transaction Banking, India and South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank, said that in 2004, around 45 per cent of the transactions took place through the electronic mode while around 56 per cent were done manually.

In 2006, the number has jumped with 67 per cent of the transactions taking place electronically and just 33 per cent being put through the manual route.

"While the volume of transactions has doubled, the staff or headcount required for them has halved," said Mr Sawhney.

Standard Chartered Bank on Tuesday launched a one-stop proprietary electronic banking channel for corporate and institutional clients called "Straight2Bank". Mr Sawhney said that corporates would be able to reduce 20-25 per cent of their overall processing cost by using this electronic platform.

The fully integrated end-to-end platform provides cash, trade, foreign exchange and securities services through a single sign-on access and can also be used in other global centres that Standard Chartered Bank has a presence in. It also provides spot, forward and swap foreign exchange transactions in around 100 currencies as well as precious metals.

Mr Hemant Mishr, Managing Director, Global Corporate Sales, Standard Chartered Bank, said that clients were increasingly focusing on greater integration between transaction banking and foreign exchange risk management under the umbrella of liquidity management.

He said that around 700 of its corporate clients would migrate to using "Straight2Bank".

Standard Chartered handles about $1.5 billion volume of forex flows daily. The forex market sees about $5 billion of forex flows every day.

Mr Mishr said the bank's exporter clients have 50-70 per cent of their forex exposures hedged against exchange rate risks.