Eurogiro Annual Conference and Community Meeting 2017 – this year’s theme: ’Stability during change’
The 2017 Eurogiro community meeting was held 30 May – 2 June in Belgrade, Serbia. This year the conference aimed to shed light on how to create stability during times of ever increasing change.
Eurogiro’s goals were threefold: to contribute to an overview of key market trends, consider with members on how Eurogiro could best support their endeavors to succeed and to offer a platform for networking and bilateral discussions.
To achieve this, the conference touched on aspects as diverse as:
- Introducing new members and partners that each had their unique contribution to make to Eurogiro members to support their quest for stability during change:
- Wari that offered reach into Sub-Saharan Africa and spans more than 35 countries in Africa today and enabled access via a wide range of digital and physical products
- Omnipay connecting Eurogiro members to the leading card network in the Philippines and Asia Pacific and a direct member of China Union Pay
- Rewire offering digital banking services and products
- TransferTo offering connection to their B2B mobile payment platform offering real-time money in more than 100 countries
- Investigating how the payments market in Europe is changing and forcing financial institutions to enable access to customers’ accounts to 3rd party licensed institutions if they were to remain relevant to clients
- Getting inside information from a Fintech expert on how blockchain, or Distributed Ledger Technology, appeared to become a promising enabler of cost-cuttings in distribution of transactions, settlement and many other areas
- How Payment Service Providers and the posts might mutually benefit from collaboration. Posts might draw on the most advanced services of Fintechs and thereby reduce their dependence on banks and increasing the profitability of their unique customer relations. Participants were introduced to a variety of Fintechs companies and their solutions.
There were also updates on Eurogiro Euro settlement service, ESSP, which touched upon included prospects of faster settlement for the future. The chairman of the Eurogiro Compliance Audit Group, Mr André Blum, Swiss PostFinance, gave guidance and advice on best practice on partner Due Diligence.
As has been the tradition in Eurogiro for many years and an appreciated token of gratitude, Eurogiro’s CEO Michel Stuijt (in the back) handed over the Eurogiro flag to the co-host of the conference, Jasminka Bosnjak (in front), Manager of International & Domestic Payments Department at the Postal Savings Bank of Serbia. Michel Stuijt added his thanks to the Postal Bank of Serbia for their support in the planning of the conference and for the generous event on the first night of the conference.
Uwe Holmsgaard, Director of IT at Eurogiro, took the audience through the recent upgrades of the Eurogiro system and a few operational adjustments and presented the very satisfactory results of the assessment of member performance of the Eurogiro Security Group.
The 2017 Eurogiro member conference was also the last meeting featuring Uwe Holmsgaard in his capacity as Eurogiro’s IT Director through more than 22 years. Uwe Holmsgaard built the Eurogiro system as an external consultant to Eurogiro and joined Eurogiro in 1995 to manage the development of the IT services. Under his management, the Eurogiro system was a frontrunner in several new developments, for instance in bulking of transactions, exchanging payments via the internet, handling single point of settlement. Uwe Holmsgaard made it his trademark to find simple, cost-efficient and flexible solutions to any system related issue.
Eurogiro members from more than 30 countries attended the conference.