why biz.Clarency?
The problem with high-technology business solutions is that it's often difficult to work out what they actuall do or, more importantly, what the customer gets out of it. And the more comprehensive the solution, the more difficult it becomes to answer those questions.
So when it came to choosing a name for our core platform, we wanted to focus on the outcome rather than the tech. And what is that outcome? Well, it's the biz; your business, enabled, simplified and able to trade without regional limitations.
Stick with us for a few minutes and we'll explain how.
It should be this simple...
...but it isn't. The real picture contains too many stages - and each stage presents a delay, a cost and a potential obstacle. When money has to flow between hard and soft currencies, it's rarely a one-stop process. Banking relationships tend to be fairly currency-specific, and if your - or your counterparty's - bank doesn't have access to the right specie, then an intermediary bank (and sometimes several banks) needs to step into the chain. These correspondent banks have no real knowledge of the vendor or the buyer, so they have to assess the transaction on the data contained in 140 characters of the SWIFT message. There's not much useful information in half a Tweet, so there's every chance they'll ask for more detail - or just decline the transaction. And if they do accept, of course, they expect to be paid.
biz.Pillars
Okay, so we've looked at what's wrong with cross-border trade, now let's spend our time a little more positively. We'll use the four pillars that support biz.Clarency to tell a better story.
payments
If money can't flow then trade can't happen. Clarency holds a Major Payments licence, allowing it to facilitate business to and from pretty much any region. We operate a sixteen-hour settlement day from physical locations in the UK, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius and Singapore, so funds can flow almost round the clock. We're linked to the SWIFT messaging system and offer a range of integration methods to interface with customers' and partners' own systems.
liquidity
International payments can stall when one of the correspondents in the chain doesn't have availability of the right specie. We maintain dependable reservoirs of our operating currencies, partly through our own reserves and partly through skilful recycling of hard and soft currencies across reciprocal transaction flows. We also work closeley with selected banks to ensure ready availability while providing our partners with a high level of ROI. What this means to you is that your transactions flow rapidly and predictably.
foreign exchange
Currency exchange can be a significant overhead in global trade finance. It's also a potential bottleneck when adequate funds aren't immediately available in the required FIAT. We maintain ready liquidity in 24 currencies, with over 100 others available by agreement. Strong relationships with forex leaders like Sucden and Bloomberg, along with the liquidity provided by our internal flow balancing, allow us to offer excellent exchange rates and immediate settlement.
compliance
Arguably the biggest obstacle to free world trade is the need to comply with AML, ATF and KYC regulations. Every year, banks suffer billions of dollars of penalties for compliance failures. The need to improve on existing KYC models was the original raison d'etre of Clarency's systems. We operate a transaction-based approach that scrutinises and analyses every counterparty, action and decision - right down to shipping containers, invoices and bills of lading. And every new transaction triggers a re-appraisal of all factors. Innovative workflows and a strategic balance of automation and human expertise deliver all of this with exceptional speed and startlingly low cost.
