What Is IBOS?
The IBOS Association is an international banking alliance, whose members are major banks in their own right, but who concentrate on providing service in a certain set of countries.
These banks wish to service their corporate customers in all the countries in which the customers do business, and IBOS is the framework within which different banks come together to complement one another’s geographical coverage, services and expertise.
There is no such thing as a truly Global Bank – a bank that has a service set full enough to meet all customer demands in all countries. More likely a “Global Bank” has a full service set in a few countries, and a more superficial capability in several others.
IBOS banks have a full service set in the country they cover for IBOS, and these capabilities are then meshed together by the IBOS cross-border services – for Information, Payments, and Liquidity Management.
Thus each IBOS bank is a building block in a regional or global Cash Management solution.
The solution is brought to the corporate customer by what is known within IBOS as the Host Bank, an IBOS member in the customer’s country, and no doubt an existing relationship bank. A small number of IBOS banks only perform the role of Host Bank; they are then known as Limited Members. Normally this is because there is a timing difference between their ability to refer clients, and their implementation of the ability to take referrals.
The Host Bank structures the solution for the customer using the other IBOS banks as “Account-Holding Banks”, and agreeing what services and processes need to be used to realise the solution:
- New accounts at Account-Holding Banks
- Local services at Account-Holding Banks (paying and receiving, in-country liquidity management, local statements, local electronic banking if the customer has financial management in that country)
- Scope of the regional scheme, including new accounts at the Host Bank
- Electronic banking services from the Host Bank to enable the customer to manage the regional scheme and any parts of the local activity to be managed centrally
- IBOS cross-border services such as payments between Host Bank and Account-Holding Bank, electronic statements and automatic sweep services
- Credit, FX and investment facilities.
IBOS Association Limited is the central support office in London. It is a company incorporated in England and has permanent employees.
Its role is to:
- Design and maintain consistent processes for business referrals from one member to another, and have these agreed and implemented by the members through the Business Development Workstream
- Design and maintain consistent processes for implementation of accounts and services, and have these agreed and implemented by the members through the Business Development Workstream
- Maintain a database of all documentation needed to make a service go-live for a customer at each bank, and all the prices for each service
- To record the volume of accounts and services referred and implemented
- To maintain profiles of all the banks and their local capabilities
- To design and maintain the specifications for each IBOS cross-border service, and have these agreed and implemented by the members through the Service Level Workstream
- To record and resolve faults in production through the Service Level Workstream
- To provide regular reporting to the Board and to raise points of policy and have them decided by the Board
- To maintain a Status Matrix of the current services available at each bank
- To produce an Annual Business Plan showing the desired additions to the Status Matrix over the following year, for approval by the members