What Is IBOS?
The IBOS Association is an international banking alliance, whose members are major commercial banks in their own right.
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.
The service is brought to the corporate customer the IBOS "Host Bank", who cooridnates the services to be supported by the IBOS "Account Holding Banks" in order to structure a complete solution.
That solution could involve the following services:
- New accounts at Account-Holding Banks and at the Host Bank
- 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)
- 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 and implementation
- Maintain a database of all documentation needed to make a service go-live for a customer at each bank, and all the prices and operational details for each service
- To maintain profiles of all the banks and their local capabilities
- To design and maintain the specifications for each IBOS cross-border service
- To record and resolve faults in production
- To publicise the Association and attract new users
- To run the governance model and ensure cohesion and communication