JPMorgan Treasury Services has announced that it has been selected by Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited (OCBC Bank) as its trade processing partner.

Under this new mandate, JPMorgan will process, on a white-labelled basis, the Singapore-based bank's import and export transactions, including letters of credit (L/Cs) and collections on behalf of its overseas branches in eight locations.

Benefits

JPMorgan claims its back office trade finance services allow financial institutions to significantly reduce overheads by providing all aspects of the outsourcing institution's trade finance needs and a worldwide network of branches providing trade services.

"Our objective is to deliver OCBC the in-depth expertise, broad geographic coverage and superior technology capabilities of our trade finance franchise," says Lori Hricik, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Treasury Services.

OCBC Bank

Established in 1912, OCBC Bank is one of the biggest banking institutions in the Singapore-Malaysia market in terms of its assets, and is also one of Asia's leading financial services groups.

The bank, which recently reported core net profit up by 65 per cent for the second quarter of 2007, is currently penetrating China's banking sector. On 1 August 2007, its new wholly owned subsidiary, OCBC Bank (China) Ltd, was officially opened.

Outsourcing trends

Several major banks have begun providing back office L/C services to other financial institutions over recent years.

Last year ABN AMRO announced that it would provide outsourced and white-labelled trade services to Groupe Caisse d'Epargne, one of France's largest financial services institutions (DC World News, 24 August 2005).

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or any of the other partners in DC-PRO.