Swift, the international banking communications network, attracted an unusually broad array of technology to the Sibos '94 conference that it sponsored in Boston.
The range of exhibits at the Oct. 25-27 event was unusual, at least, for the United States, which had not seen a Sibos conference since 1982.
With more than 150 companies selling their wares, the exhibit was comparable in size to that of the American Bankers Association convention or Bank Administration Institute retail delivery conference, but with a preponderance of global and wholesale banking systems,
There were some familiar American names in the exhibition -- including Digital Equipment, Fiserv, and IBM -- and a slew of international wholesale banking competitors -- including Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Chemical, and State Street from the U.S., plus Barclays Bank from England, Societe Generale from France, and Royal Bank of Scotland.
Despite the Swift event's wholesale bias, one of the most talked-about product exhibits was Mondex, National Westminster Bank of London's smart card system for replacing cash.
Tim Jones, the Mondex chief executive, said that as long as he was creating a traveling exhibit for the U.S., Sibos looked like a good place to build the brand's identity among an internationally influential audience.
Mr. Jones, fresh from signing his first Mondex licensee outside Britain -- Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. -- was also one of the more entertaining speakers at Sibos. His ease before a large crowd may be traceable to his brief stab at a rock music career in the 1970s.
For a presentation on bank reengineering, Mr. Jones commandeered Chaser, a robot that Chase Manhattan Bank had been using as a marketing prop at its product stand.
Mr. Jones carried on a dialog with Chaser before launching into his talk about how a visitor from Mars might take a fresh look at today's aging banking structures.
Poking fun at his own bank, Mr. Jones referred to headquarters as "where people spend time arguing with each other instead of about what's best for the customers."
"That is also where management consultants live," Mr. Jones said. "Their mission is to make you decentralized for the first five years, and then recentralize for the next five years."
Despite the entertaining, retail-oriented aside, and except for a couple of evening diversions and a foreign-exchange-trading contest sponsored by Barclays Bank, Sibos was strictly business -- and mostly wholesale technology business -- for 3,000 attendees from around the world.
Typical of a slew of product announcements was Unisys Corp.'s unveiling of a Unix-based version of FBA Urbis, its international banking software introduced last year.
The open-system nature of the Unix operating system, with an easily comprehended Windows-based graphical user interface, typifies Unisys' renewed emphasis on meeting customers' needs independent of their choice of hardware.
Earlier generations of global wholesale banking systems came only with Unisys computers, and the company built a sizable international clientele.
But with the growing emphasis on solutions and system integration, "there is no interest in our community on the hardware side," said Tim Escudier, vice president for international banking with Unisys, who is based at Uxbridge, England.
The Urbis product also relies on an Oracle relational data base, and a version based on the RS 6000 type of operating system is on the way, Mr. Escudier said. "This demonstrates Unisys is not being proprietary any more," he added.
Unisys sold FBA Urbis to Industrial Bank of Japan Trust Co. in New York in September, and Mr. Escudier said several other international prospects, also new to Unisys and drawn to its customer-centered strategy, are likely to sign by yearend.
Intranet Inc. of Newton, Mass., announced an interface for its Money Transfer System, which is used by more than 50 banks, to connect with the Inter Bank On-line System, or Ibos.
Ibos is a London-based, multinational banking consortium organized by Electronic Data Systems Corp., which includes of Banco Santander of Spain, Credit Commercial de France, Royal Bank of Scotland, and First Fidelity Bancorp. of New Jersey.
They have assembled a real-time network for cross-border banking services.
Officials with Intranet said it is the first major funds transfer system to connect in this way to Ibos.
"Ibos is an alternative to the traditional networks and offers our banking clients a new and innovative service for their cash management customers," said Tony Smith, president of Intranet.
Intranet also displayed its new Money Transfer Workstation, which allows corporate customers to create payments off-line. Once approved, customers can then initiate wire transfers to the bank.
Logica North America Inc. announced a new strategic plan for an open-systems-based funds transfer software to replace its current funds transfer system, known as Bess.
Logica, based in Waltham, Mass., has 45 banks using Bess, including Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan, and NationsBank.
The next generation of its funds transfer system, called Exchange, will use client-server principles, and its three components will be able to be implemented in any order and at the customer's pace.
The first module is Data Exchange, which will serve on the front end for entering, verifying, and releasing messages.
The second, Message Exchange, will provide external connections to Swift and the U.S.-based Chips and Fed Wire funds transfer networks.
The third component, Funds Exchange, automates interbank transfers and corporate payments and provides accounting, payment risk management, and straight-through processing. It also makes sure that banks adhere to the margins and debit caps of the Federal Reserve Bank and New York Clearing House.
"The idea was that these three modules essentially will be phased in over the next three years to permit the current client base to migrate more smoothly and select those modules which most fit their environment," said Warren Pyles, vice president with Logica.
Mr. Pyles said Logica was close to signing with a London-based bank as the first participant.
Also from Logica was Hotscan, a system designed to screen out transactions from accounts that are blocked by the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control.
OFAC maintains a list of countries, corporations, and individuals that are in disfavor with the U.S. Government. The list has thousands of names and is constantly changing.
A bank can unknowingly find itself in hot water with OFAC and with corporate or retail customers if it does business with entities on the hot list.
Civil and criminal fines can range from $10,000 to $500,000 and transactions can be blocked for weeks, said an OFAC spokeswoman.
Swift, the bank-network cooperative based in La Hulpe, Belgium, introduced Asset Reconciliation, a system that will automate reconciliations of securities holdings and transactions.
The product was designed to run on IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers. Swift chose the Sparc/Solaris system of Sun Microsystems Computer Co., Mountain View, Calif., as the "platform of choice" for Asset Reconciliation.
"Securities firms will benefit from the adaptability of the Sun client-server environment to their needs, the friendliness of presentation, ease of customization, and the ability to reconcile information from multiple sources," said Tony Kirby, Swift's securities market director.
The system flags trades when there are inconsistencies in the data provided by the trading partners. The product also warns when a trade may not settle.
Swift has experienced major growth in securities transactions in the last several years. Securities represent 8% of the network's traffic and almost doubled last year.
Cedel, the Luxembourg-based clearing house for global securities transactions, displayed its new Cedcomm 2000 Workstation for Windows.
The PC-based telecommunications interface can be used to send instructions to Cedel as an alternative to Swift or telex.
"It's version two of the workstation," said Ingrid Warn, product specialist with Cedel. "It's LAN [local area network-] capable in a standard windows environment and allows you to cut and paste transactions from Cedcomm 2000 into Other Windows applications such as data bases and spreadsheets."
Cedel is owned a consortium of 99 commercial and investment banks, including Chase and Citicorp in the U.S.
The organization serves 3,000 institutions in over 70 countries and has nearly $800 billion on deposit. It handles more than 60,000 types of securities in 27 currencies for settlement.
Liberty, a unit of Cedel, demonstrated an on-line, real-time order routing service called Intertrade Direct, which automates the trading cycle from order entry to settlement. It links investors anywhere in the world with North American capital markets.
Intertrade Direct allows users to enter orders for equities and equity options through an alliance with Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., Chicago.
"Intertrade Direct eases cross-border trading," said David McCreadie, business manager with Luxembourg-based Liberty. "A deal takes 20 seconds to take place from Europe to the New York Stock Exchange. It enables traders to take advantage and reduces paper and errors."
Stratus Computer Inc. of Marlboro, Mass., announced an agreement with Manof Communications Systems (International) Ltd., of Israel to distribute the Manof Mint software worldwide.
More than 20 banks already use an integrated Stratus-Manof system for international payments and related functions. The distribution agreement formalizes the relationship.
"Payment systems are critical and need fault-tolerance, so this is a marriage made in heaven," said Ian Alexander of Stratus, referring to his company's focus on highly reliable on-line transaction processing systems. "We have the distribution coverage, and they have the expertise in this application."
Stratus -- like Unisys, Sun Microsystems, and numerous other big-name computer vendors at the Sibos show -- is making a "total commitment" to the growing international bank software and systems market, Mr. Alexander said.
Stratus announced sales of the Mint system to Baring Asset Management in Britain and Komercni Banka of the Czech Republic.
"This has the potential to be very big in the U.S.," said Mr. Alexander, who is Stratus' international banking sector business manager in London. "Mint is not just a Swift payment system -- it is a message routing and management system, which really provides total control over a bank's messaging."
Frustum Group Inc., New York, said it has licensed its Opics system for foreign exchange and deposit and loan processing to Grupo Financiero Inverlat of Mexico.
The institution will install Opics at both the head office in Mexico City and the New York branch, and it has an option to put it in London and to purchase Frustum's new Fixed Income module.
Frustum has about 20 clients worldwide and has grown to 55 people since it was established in 1991, said Gary Sommers, principal of the firm.
One of the entrepreneurial success stories in global banking software, Frustum signed its first customer, Barclays Bank in Miami, in 1993, and is adding about one client every three weeks.
