Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA Merrill) is to offer its financial institution (FI) clients a fully integrated FX risk management program, which includes guaranteed foreign exchange rates for up to 180 days for their qualified customers.
The guaranteed rate program will help companies add certainty in the often volatile world of FX rates since cross-currency transactions are an increasingly common and valuable part of business for small and medium-sized enterprises. With this program, banks will be able to offer their customers more rate certainty on cross-currency payments.
David Kretz, head of Global Strategy and Payments for Global Transaction Services (GTS) at BofA Merrill commented: “Our financial institution clients are seeing increased competition from both bank and non-bank providers in providing payments services to businesses. We are pleased to add a guaranteed FX rate program for them to pass along to their business customers to use for cross-currency payments.”
Removes FX risk management challenges
Banks who take advantage of the guaranteed FX rate program benefit from:
- The ability to launch new products and services to meet growing client demands.
- Improved operational efficiencies by leveraging BofA Merrill’s global network.
- Allowing their clients to transact in additional currencies without assuming additional FX risk or increased operational expenses.
- The flexibility to offer guarantee rates across multiple product lines, customer segments or combinations of the two for anytime between one hour and 180 days.
Through the guaranteed rate program, BofA Merrill offers more than 140 currencies, with 25 of the most common currencies available for guaranteed rates of greater than one day up to 180 days.
Stephanie Wolf, head of Global Financial Institutions, Governments and Business Banking for GTS added: “For our FI clients, this program removes much of the risk management challenge is arranging cross-currency payments for their customers. Plus, the burden on their customers of worrying about FX rate volatility impacting their payments is eliminated.”
Back in May 2019, BofA Merill announced that it is integrating its corporate treasury platform, CashPro, with Apple Watch, to tokenize the wearable technology.