Once upon a time, correspondent banking was as basic as the financial industry got. Its premise was – in many ways still is – extremely simple.
Correspondent banks are financial middlemen that act as go-betweens in cross-border transactions. Often on the large side and with a regional or global branch network, they act as conduits between usually smaller and more localized respondent banks that want to do business with each other but lack formal ties.
This business can involve pretty much anything finance related, from wire transfers and payment processing to settling trades by crediting or debiting accounts.
It makes the process, at least in theory, “fairly straightforward, given you don’t have as many counterparty banks as you have customers to deal with,” says Astyanax Kanakakis, chief executive and co-founder of Norbloc, a Swedish know-your-customer (KYC) specialist.
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