Awards for Excellence 2020
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Keeping supply chains functioning is essential for the success of CEE’s open, globally connected economies, and the banks best-placed to do so are those that combine deep local knowledge with international expertise.
Once again, the standout performer in this respect during the current awards period was UniCredit, CEE’s best bank for transaction services. The Italian group’s coverage is based on a network of 11 UniCredit international centres (UICs) across the region, staffed with experienced relationship managers who specialize in cross-border business and speak multiple languages. The head of global transaction banking CEE is Riccardo Madinelli.
These UICs provide a single entry point for corporates in each country, offering services ranging from cross-border current account opening to complex structured financial solutions.
A key part of UniCredit’s offering is the provision of working capital; over the last two years the group has further developed its capabilities to provide a comprehensive set of solutions on both the payables and receivables sides.
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Riccardo Madinelli |
To help corporates optimize their liquidity, UniCredit’s working capital advisory facility has been introduced across all the group’s CEE countries. This initiative involves a proactive consultation with each client on how to best structure their working capital strategy – offering a thorough financial and benchmarking analysis against peers and industry trends.
The service is the first of its kind in CEE and has seen substantial take-up among UniCredit’s corporate client base, leading to a double-digit increase in working capital products’ usage across the region. It has also generated many cross-selling opportunities in both transaction banking and other products.
A recent example of UniCredit’s use of innovative solutions in this area comes from the Czech healthcare sector, where a local hospital requested help in shortening its receivables collection from insurance companies so that it could use the additional liquidity to pay suppliers early.
Within three weeks, UniCredit CEE made all processes available internally, as well as obtaining approval from local government ministries.
The solution has already been replicated across many other local hospitals, extending support to one of the most important sectors of the Czech economy.
UniCredit also helped clients in Serbia mitigate the impact of new legislation that restructured the debt of health institutions, under governance of local municipalities, to suppliers of pharmaceutical products.
This caused liquidity gaps for companies in the pharma sector, which threatened to cause disruptions in supply. UniCredit Bank in Serbia worked closely with pharmaceutical suppliers and regulators to find solutions to bridge these gaps.
Digitalization is also a priority in UniCredit’s transactional sales and the group has continued to invest in sophisticated IT solutions, both in the areas of working capital – including factoring, reverse factoring and supply-chain finance – and traditional trade-finance products.
