StanChart and Ant International Partner on AI-driven FX Forecasting and Treasury Management

Ant International has partnered with Standard Chartered to introduce an AI-powered treasury and FX management solution, integrating the bank’s liquidity engine with the payment technology provider’s big data platform to better forecast and manage FX for Ant’s clients, including Alipay and WorldFirst.

The collaboration aims to lower currency trading costs and enhance risk management for Ant International’s clients and sees the firm connect its Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) Model with Standard Chartered’s Aggregated Liquidity Engine (Scale), in a bid to allow the Singapore-based bank to can forecast Ant’s FX exposures with more than 90% accuracy and enable more effective FX risk management as well as lowering FX hedging costs for clients in real-time, 24/7. 

The integration of the two platforms allows for data exchange which feeds into the AI-powered forecasting. Both companies are active Pathfinder institutions in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) financial sector PathFin.ai programme.

The integrated solution is part of Standard Chartered’s FX Automation Programme, which is designed to support the multi-currency booking and international vendor settlement needs in real time, helping businesses mitigate costs and FX volatility when transacting across borders. 

“We continue to invest in our platforms and adopt cutting edge technology to support our clients in effectively managing their risks and exposures, especially during these volatile times”, says Madhu Menon, global head of SC PrismFX sales at Standard Chartered. “Our latest collaboration with Ant International sets the path for an innovative approach to managing and hedging FX risk and costs for Ant International and their clients globally.”

Falcon TST Model is a big data model with close to two billion parameters, according to the firm. The model predicts future data points by learning complex patterns from large historical data sets using AI technology and it can help to  improve the efficiency and accuracy of cashflow and FX exposure forecasts for businesses, allowing them to reduce hedging and overall FX costs.

Falcon now forecasts Ant International’s cashflow and FX exposure on an hourly, daily and weekly basis, with more than 90% accuracy, the firm says. It is currently used to process more than 60% of Ant International’s transactions that involve FX conversion, effectively reducing the company and its customers’ FX costs by up to 60%, and liquidity management costs by up to 50%.

“The expansion of our partnership with Standard Chartered marks an important step in our ongoing journey to leverage technology, including AI, for next-generation cross-border payment solutions. By integrating Standard Chartered’s robust banking capabilities with Ant International’s solutions, we are able to enhance the way businesses manage their global liquidity and FX strategy, so they can experience more efficient cross-border transactions,” says Kelvin Li, general manager of platform tech at Ant International.