The pace of regulatory change is intense in Asia, especially with the fragmented regulatory landscape across countries. Regional treasurers are constantly preoccupied with just keeping up-to-date with these regulatory changes and their impact on their respective organizations. And who are they turning to for help? Their relationship banks.
These days, Asia businesses have to keep up with some loosening of rules – like the People’s Bank of China in October announcing initiatives to boost the RMB’s prospects (i.e., the plan to launch its own payment system for cross-border yuan transactions). But at the same time, there are new rules to crack down on fraud as well as new rules to eliminate tax loopholes of which many MNCs were taking advantage.
At a recent NeuGroup Asia Treasurers’ Peer Group (ATPG), member discussed some of the hurdles and some solutions to compliance with these ups and downs. And one helpful resource for Asia treasurers has been their banks. In the group’s pre-meeting survey, results showed that more than 90 percent of members said that their bank partners are the most reliable source for regulatory guidance.
Still, even though they are a valuable resource, they could use help in communicating their reg updates to their clients. Some of the suggestions to banks were to provide:
- Emails with short “teaser” paragraphs, instead of long, detailed reports are preferred and easier to plow through.
- Updates that are written with the corporate reader in mind, e.g., with analysis of implications, rather than just paraphrasing government-written policy documents.
- More webinars are for interactive dialogue and Q&As. However, these are generally not favored because they are a significant investment of time during a regular work day and usually scheduled at inconvenient times.
- Relationship managers that know clients well enough to sift through overloaded regulation information to discuss relevant issues with clients as part of the deep and trusted advisory role.
Since China has implemented its own version of the US’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and has undertaken an intense crackdown on corruption within its own government ranks, Asia treasurers have been keen to not run afoul of any new rules. They also know that companies can be cited for simply having weak controls in place even if no corruption has been identified.
With this in mind, ATPG members discussed what they are facing when it comes to the new rules. One takeaway was that regulators are getting more stringent with banks regarding customer reviews and Know Your Customer (KYC) matters. Banks are governed by multiple national regulators that have different requirements for KYC, thus banks have to step up to the highest required standards among these multiple regulators. In addition, regulators also want to impose best practices across their local banking community, so there are many forces raising the bar regarding KYC.
In Europe, eBAM (electronic bank account management) is gaining traction to tackle KYC requirements. It is hoped that success of eBAM in Europe will influence adoption in Asia. However, the question is all about who will take the lead to drive this forward. SWIFT as the financial messaging network has its own channel for eBAM, and wants corporates and banks to use it. However, SWIFT is unlikely to be interested in the compliance aspects of including KYC in its service offering. Banks should be motivated in implementing eBAM to ease the burden of KYC compliance. However, banks are only interested in this for their own purposes, not for the overall banking community. Banks would have a strong disincentive to support an initiative that makes it easy for their customers to open bank accounts with other banks.
This all means that trusted bank partners have an increasingly important role in assisting corporate treasurers with navigating through this ever-changing regulatory environment in Asia. This context presents challenges and opportunities for banks and corporates, and deeply entrenched banking relationships should ensue.