Mouhammed Choukeir, chief executive officer of Kleinwort Hambros, explains how the bank will play a leading role in the evolution of responsible banking.

Eric Flour, deputy CEO of Societe Generale Factoring in charge of CSR resources and sponsors, explains how factoring, an essential lever of short-term financing for companies, has a strong impact in corporate social responsibility.

Banking has changed in the face of the pandemic and is the more secure for it, according to Katy Leclaire, Chief Risk Officer, Cedric Bauer, Business Continuity Manager and Eric Bendavid, Chief Information Security Officer on Societe Generale's Transaction Banking team.

Digitization and data have been the mantra of trade finance experts and consultants for several years now. In this article, we address the central issues currently facing the data universe and how the trend can best be accelerated.

Digitalization should allow banks to focus on what really matters – their relationships with their customers

A huge amount of progress has been achieved in recent times in the field of rapid, even almost instant, payments. Few would argue with that assertion. Intraday transfers between domestic retail and corporate accounts have become entrenched to the point where even technophobic customers have embraced them.

As technology continues to drive huge change in financial markets, do banks need to think differently about thinking differently?

Technology is allowing banks to respond to customer requests with increasing precision, despite rising expectations and pressures on time ‒ but excellent service demands something more.

Trust matters more in banking now than ever before.

Cross-border payments are getting faster but some elements of friction still remain, slowing down the process. Will the industry ever achieve 100% straight-through-processing (STP) rates?

Trade creates a vast and fragmented ecosystem, involving a wide range of different players across various industries: manufacturers, retailers, customs, transport and logistics, insurers, banks and others. All have a part to play in their interlocking local, regional and global networks.

Cash management remains a crucial part of banking as well as a catalyst for technological innovation. Whether it is the completion of a multitude of transactions or working across myriad currencies, Societe Generale continues to stand at the vanguard of development in this plain but crucial operation.

Paul Kearney, head of private banking at Kleinwort Hambros, says that there are two overriding prerequisites for success in the competitive private banking market: relevance and efficiency.

As the global trend towards real-time payments systems continues to accelerate, many industry stakeholders fear increased fraud – and rightly so.

Anne-Claire Gorge, head of product management & innovation for trade services at Societe Generale and member of the we.trade board of directors, explains how distributed register technology is driving change in the international trade sector.

Open banking via application programming interface (API) is an integral component of the future of banking. Some in the industry will welcome that fact. Others will not. But in order to prepare, we must accept that it is a fact.

Societe Generale has had a presence in Luxembourg since 1893, making it the oldest foreign bank in the Grand Duchy. As well as being one of the market leaders, Societe Generale is now the fifth largest employer in Luxembourg’s thriving and business-oriented financial services industry.

"Our primary mission is to protect our clients’ wealth. How they can as well invest in a positive and sustainable way is more and more at the centre of our dialogue with them.”

Over the last five decades, Societe Generale has been synonymous with innovation, says Jean-François Mazaud, Head of the group’s private banking unit (SGPB).

In the six years since Jean-François Mazaud’s appointment as its chief executive, Societe Generale Private Banking (SGPB) has undergone a fundamental transformation. As recently as 2012, Mazaud explains, SGPB remained a relatively small player in its home market, France, and maintained an extensive and costly international network with a presence throughout Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, as well as in several locations in Europe.

Want to sign off corporate payments from your phone while on the beach? Looking for a cheaper offering? Need a bank with a footprint in emerging markets? There are many reasons to change cash management providers, and clients need help coping with these transitions. Société Générale discusses why customers change and what it entails.

While banks are still unsure of how the blockchain will affect their businesses, there is a widely held feeling that it has transformational potential. But it is still early days for the technology, and a lot more work must be done developing the blockchain before it will be clear how it can improve the banking industry.

Basel III, expected to come into effect by 2019, will have massive implications on the notional cash-pooling business, making it much harder for banks to offer this service profitably. This is likely to force some banks to reconsider the business, either by repricing their offering or by exiting relationships altogether, warns Société Générale.

Thanks to the strong CLN and credit tranches franchise it has developed with retail and private investors, Societe Generale is able to offer to insurers a competitive range of credit derivative-based products and to design innovative solutions specifically for this client segment, whether for investment or hedging purposes.

Everything corporate treasurers need to know about hedging FX risk as the dollar soars.

New regulations are radically shifting the prime brokerage landscape, and market participants are changing their business models to adapt. James Shekerdemian, Global Head of Prime Brokerage Sales, Societe Generale Prime Services, looks at how services are evolving in response to new rules.

In the third and final article on innovation in cash management, Benoit Desserre (Global Head of Payments and Cash Management), Eric Bayle (Head of Payments and Cash Management in the UK) and Bart De Boer (Head of Payments and Cash Management in Germany) discuss recent and future developments in cash management in Europe.

In the second of a series of articles on innovation in cash management, Michelle Wang (head of payments and cash management in China), Louis-David Rouyer (head of payments and cash management in Hong Kong & Singapore) and Benoit Desserre (global head of payments and cash management) at Société Générale discuss recent and future developments in cash management in Asia.

In the first of a series of articles on innovation in cash management, Philippe Marcotte de Quivières, deputy head of payments and cash management division, and Emmanuelle Fischer, head of marketing and products cash management at Société Générale outline some of the initiatives the bank has introduced to support treasury clients.