BofA Securities wins this year’s award for Latin America’s best bank for transaction services. The bank has been steadily building up its corporate relationships in Latin America, while its digital innovation in this business has cemented its ability to provide local services at the level of the local banks.
This ‘digital native’ capability, combined with global reach far beyond Latin America and complemented by its broader corporate and investment banking services, make the US bank’s proposition compelling. The business is led by Fernando Iraola, co-head of global corporate sales, global transaction services (GTS), and head of Latin America GTS.
BofA invested $3.5 billion to address client pain points during the pandemic, which not only alleviated the challenge of digital operations for existing clients but also led to new mandates and new large clients in the region. It now has more patents related to transaction banking products than any other firm.
The bank, which recognizes the importance of transaction services in embedding corporate clients into a global bank’s ecosystem and driving a stable revenue stream, set up a team of more than 40 ‘digital champions’ throughout the region, which led to some 81% of clients in the transaction services area being digital customers in 2021.
Around 90% of contracts are now signed digitally, while active users have increased by 45% in the last 12 months.
BofA’s CashPro cash-management product is its leading differentiator in transaction services. The bank added a chat function in December 2021, as well as a third-party module to CashPro Trade that allows supply-chain finance service providers to submit invoices for financing and to receive status updates – a first-to-market capability that is available via application programming interface or file transmission.