Amid all the debate on regulation, innovation, partnerships and big data at the Sibos conference in September, transaction services bankers also engaged in something their investment banking colleagues once monopolized: optimism. On asking any one of more than 6,000 transaction bankers that attended Swift’s 35th annual jamboree in Dubai how they felt about their business and the environment for banking more broadly, almost all said: busy and bullish.
Some didn’t even have to say anything – a spring in their step as they scurried between one client meeting and the next in the vast, labyrinthine exhibition halls of the Dubai World Trade Centre said as much.
There are, from what they say, good reasons for this, and it’s not because so many investment bankers have – whether of their own volition or not – switched to transaction banking and taken their boundless optimism with them.