4 benefits of Standard Chartered's new Universal Adaptor online tool

Around 500 clients are already enjoying this online tool.

Standard Chartered Bank (China) recently launched “Universal Adaptor”, an online tool that allows self-defined or pre-defined file templates for sending transaction messages.

It allows the Bank’s corporate clients to define their own file templates or use pre-defined ones, and send transaction messages to the Bank through Straight2Bank Access (host-to-host ) and Straight2Bank Web channels.

Asian Banking and Finance interviewed Gautam Jain, Managing Director and Global head of Client Access at Standard Chartered Bank, to learn more about this new tool.

What spurred the launch of the Universal Adaptor?
We put clients at the centre of everything that we do. Universal Adaptor makes client’s life easier as it relieves their pain point. Corporates seeking to maximise payable operational efficiency often end up having to invest a significant amount of time and resources in processing data to conform to their banks’ file formats.

To eliminate this pain, we have introduced Straight2Bank Universal Adaptor, a tool allowing clients to send instructions in their own formats through Host-to-Host and Web channels.

It adopts a “plug and play” concept to implement a quick and easy integration for clients. It also reduces operational risk errors through straight-through processing without manual intervention.

What's new about it for Standard Chartered and your customers?
Universal Adaptor eases the integration between corporate clients and the bank for a more efficient financial process management. The self-serviced online tool shifts the burden of the technical changes required at the client’s end to the bank’s side. Universal Adaptor brings many benefits:

• Flexibility of defining and changing their file formats as their business needs change, free from any constraints from the bank.
• Cost-effective implementation made possible by limiting the customization required on clients’ systems.
• Quick and easy overnight on-boarding with a rich library of readily available formats to choose from.
• Ability to do character conversion – e.g from Traditional Chinese to Simplified Chinese

What do you hope to achieve with this initiative?
With Universal Adaptor, we help our clients improve efficiency in their financial management by taking away the pain of large scale IT integration with their banks so that they can focus more on pursuing their growth agenda. It will ultimately deepen our long-standing relationships with clients.

Anything else you’ve like to add?
Universal Adaptor is very much welcomed by our clients. Now around 500 clients in more than 20 countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East are enjoying benefits of Universal Adaptor that significantly reduces the time required for data integration from weeks to just one day.