A client tells their bank they’re opening in a new market next quarter. The account is the part everyone can picture. The entity that has to exist first, the local director, the registered office and the payroll take more imagining, and no single bank builds all of that itself.
That’s the appeal of a banking ecosystem: partners and providers around the banks, covering what the banks don’t. On 13 October, IBOS and TMF Group signed a Strategic Partner Framework Agreement in Milan, and we think it shows how one can grow with the banks still at the centre.
What a banking ecosystem usually promises
The phrase gets used loosely. A good banking ecosystem lets a bank offer a client more than its own products, through partners it can trust. A weak one is a directory of logos with no clear answer on who decides what.
For a bank thinking about joining a network, the useful test is what the ecosystem lets it offer clients, and whether its own standards and client relationships stay intact while it does. Adding services is great. Keeping the client relationship where it belongs matters just as much.
Clients don’t see an ecosystem as separate pieces anyway. If an entity can’t be registered or an account stays unopened, they feel one delay and ring the bank they know. That puts the bank’s name behind partners it may not have picked.
What a corporate service provider adds
A corporate service provider looks after the administrative side of operating in a new country. TMF’s services cover entity set-up, local directors and registered offices, payroll, accounting, tax and ongoing compliance.
The payoff for a bank is timing. Entity formation and account opening can run in parallel rather than one after the other, and the client relationship stays with the bank throughout. It also helps in markets where no IBOS member bank is present: TMF’s local footprint covers the gap while the member bank stays the client’s point of contact.
TMF lists typical triggers for a referral. A client who needs an entity set up before a local account can be opened is one, and a client who wants a single provider coordinating several jurisdictions is another. Expansion driven by a new contract, manufacturing site or distribution hub overseas also counts.
It works in reverse too. TMF clients who need banking, treasury, payments, trade finance or lending can be introduced to member banks through the Portal.
Insight member banks can use with clients
TMF also produces country reports that set out entity set-up, tax, payroll and compliance requirements market by market. It publishes an annual Global Business Complexity Index ranking the jurisdictions where doing business is most and least complex, and it issues periodic regulatory updates across the markets it covers. Member banks can use all of it when advising a client on where and how to expand.
How the Strategic Partner model works
What TMF gets is practical. It has a profile in the IBOS Portal and read-only access to member bank profiles, so it can spot a sensible introduction, and it can send and receive referrals. It can attend IBOS events and join working groups where invited, and the two sides meet quarterly to review referral activity and priority markets.
IBOS is a governed alliance of independent banks, and that doesn’t change. TMF joins alongside the membership rather than as a member, with no vote or Board seat, and admission, governance and the constitution stay with IBOS.
What member banks keep
Once a referral is accepted, each bank stays responsible for its own client onboarding, KYC, AML and sanctions screening, and neither side has to relax its rules. Referrals are non-exclusive, and no bank has to accept one. Each referral gets its own secure workspace, open only to the two organisations involved, with IBOS administrators stepping in only where administration, compliance or audit requires it. Referral status is tracked in the Portal, so both sides can see where an introduction stands. Member banks get more services on offer and keep their own standards and their client relationships.
What this means for prospective members
For a bank considering membership, the Strategic Partner model shows how the banking ecosystem around IBOS is run: services added around the banks, IBOS alone deciding who is appointed, and each bank keeping its own onboarding standards and its own client relationship.
None of that changes what IBOS is: a governed alliance of independent banks, with TMF added around it to cover what the banks don’t.
Where this leaves member banks
Clients will keep needing more than banking when they cross borders, so the services around the banks will keep growing. If you’re considering membership, which of those services do you think your clients would ask for first?