28 July 2008 Features

 

All the fun of the fair

David Bannister

The choice of venue for Swift’s annual Sibos conference and exhibition has a marked influence on the event itself, giving it a distinctive character that similar scale events sticking to a single venue don’t have.

It is one of a number of factors about Sibos that give it more of a sense of an event than most other trade shows, and the increasing number of senior bankers attending the show heighten it even further – last year, in Boston, JPMorgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon turned up at the booth. That’s a man named by Fortune magazine as the 15th most powerful businessman in the world. (Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’ chief executive is at number 3, but we’re not expecting him at Vienna.)

So what can we expect in Vienna? Lots of people singing Ultravox songs, older people quoting Billy Joel and plenty of Third Man-themed tours of the sewers, obviously.

Beyond trivia, Vienna is a seriously cultural city, with a long history of intellectual debate. It’s also a rather formal, precise sort of a place, but geographically it has been one the of the greatest crossroads in history.

Against that background, there have been some changes at Swift, with a greater focus on open access – for corporates and fund managers, for instance – and a big push towards inclusiveness, much touted by chief executive Lázaro Campos at his first Sibos speech last year.

A very clear manifestation of this has been the creation of the swiftcommunity.net, which allows parties from around the globe to take part in conversations and share experiences. Inevitably, some parts of it are more active than others, and there are parts where some voices are louder than others, but the concept is very interesting and has picked up several thousand members.

There has also been an increasing focus on Swift events other than Sibos, particularly addressing corporates and investment funds. In June, both audiences were addressed, with the fifth event for funds held in London and a similar event for corporates in New York both hailed as successes.

Despite this movement towards increased use of social networking interaction and fragmentation of interest groups Sibos remains the central focus of the calendar, and a glance at this year’s programme gives an idea of the scale of the debates that will be taking place.

In previous years there has been an overarching theme to the event – usually in the form of a faintly totalitarian slogan along the lines of Building Momentum or Raising Ambitions, but that has been abandoned this year in favour of a much more heterogeneous structure that features Big Issue Debates, largely focussing on the turmoil in financial markets, with streams under the headings of cross-market issues, payments, Treasury, FX and Trade, and Securities.

As in previous years, there are also a number of parallel streams covering dedicated topics for special interest groups.

The two-day Swift for Corporates is aimed at treasury and cash management professionals from corporations and banks, and will include practical case studies from the likes of Alten, Daimler, Dow, GE, Nokia, T-Mobile, and Villeroy & Boch.

Also running for two days, The Fund and Investment Management Forum features dedicated conference sessions and networking aimed at investment managers and their counterparties, and this year has expanded into the exhibition area with the addition of a new “Funds Village”.

A marginally more venerable – now in its fifth year – Sibos offshoot is the Standards Forum which is extending its range to provide a comprehensive programme of activities taking place on a dedicated stand on the Sibos exhibition floor. Open throughout the week to provide continuous support and a neutral environment for networking, the Standards Forum will host the following activities:

▪ Customer segment sessions: These sessions comprise an overview of standards for a specific market contributed by the relevant standardisation bodies, plus the chance for users to ‘meet the experts’ in that field one-on-one in an informal setting.

▪ About the standardisation bodies: The most prominent standardisation bodies in the financial industry will present their work in global harmonisation to promote understanding of who does what and how, and where they can help you.

▪ ‘In conversation with’ short head-to-head interview sessions between two “key players” in the business and standardisation world will focus on topical business-related issues to give you an insight into the real challenges facing the industry. (Warning: “key players” includes me, but I can assure you that the rest of the participants have interesting things to say.)

▪ Ambassador appointments: Key decision-makers at CIO and COO level have the opportunity to book private meetings with senior standardisation ‘ambassadors’ during the Sibos week for tailored and personal introductions to the standardisation issues that impact them.

Events on the stand will also include sharing feedback from the ‘in-depth’ Standards Forum meeting held in London in May, at which core standardisers explored how to solve the challenges of implementing ISO 20022.

As in previous years, there are a number of other “Sibos Fringe” sessions taking place throughout the week. These are generally sponsored by interested parties, and some are invitation-only, but there are a few that are worth seeking out.

Of these, the European Central Bank’s sessions on Target2 Securities should be interesting, and a VocaLink session on Collaboration, Partnership & Outsourcing in Payment Processing will be covering the implications for the industry of the business model behind its recent deal with BGC, the Swedish ACH.

For payments people, an open session on the new NACHA Global Payment Forum initiative, the International Payments Framework, looks like a must-attend (Wednesday at 1600). IPF is a global industry effort among banks, payment systems operators and Swift and the session will discuss how to leverage and maximise existing investment in SwiftNet using ISO 20022 messages across multiple low value payments systems like SEPA.

Alongside all of that, there is the exhibition, which continues to grow year-on-year to match the increasing seniority of the conference attendees. Colin Day, vice president for Market Insights in SunGard’s Banks and Corporations business, reckons the exhibition floor is one reason that the event will continue to be a central part of the calendar despite the growing use of social networking technology to continue the debate throughout the year. “Sibos will exist in some shape or form for a long time,” he says. “For exhibitors it is the premier trade show for the banking industry and the resurgence in the level of the delegates since 2001 when the Singapore event was cancelled has been enormous.”

That said, he points to the Big Issue Debate themes around financial systemic risk and says there will be some obvious changes between Vienna and the 2009 event in Hong Kong. “It’s a very fluid marketplace and will be for at least the next 12 months. Some institutions that are there this year won’t be there next year, for a number of reasons.”

Oh dear, that sounds a touch miserable. Let’s party.