There is nothing more important to the global economy than the facilitation of payments and cashflow – and, as world trade becomes more interconnected and immediate, the methods, means and players involved increase in number, complexity and diversity.
But keeping the world spinning on its financial axis does not happen by chance. It requires the commitment of thousands of companies, regulators and multinational organisations to keep innovating and pushing forward.
The best way to achieve this goal of constant progress is through collaboration and engagement.
There is no better example of this than the annual Sibos conference, run by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift).
Swift, established in 1973 in Belgium, is the main messaging network through which international payments are made.
It is a cooperative owned by more than 11,000 banks and other financial institutions, which elect a board to govern Swift and oversee its management.
For the past 44 years, Sibos has gathered professionals from an ever[1]expanding universe, rotating through locations in Europe, the Americas, APAC on a three-year cycle, to keep pushing towards this shared goal.
In October 2024, the event will be hosted in Beijing, its first outing to mainland China having previously taken place in Hong Kong.
While eyebrows were raised when the location was first announced, it makes sense to hold the event in the world’s second largest economy and one that has been expanding trade with international partners for well over a decade.
The location chimes with the very ethos of the event, according to Jaime Lee, global head of Sibos and Swift events.
“Swift began as a cooperative for the industry; we had a mantra to bring the international community together,” Lee tells Financial Promoter.
The name Sibos stands for Swift International Banking Operations Seminar.
“In the beginning, it was just an annual meeting of like-minded professionals to discuss how to do international business operations more efficiently and effectively,” Lee adds.
Today, Sibos has evolved into an event with multi-channel content, sector-specific themes and sustainability objectives. Between 130 and 140 companies take stands in its cavernous exhibition halls, with hundreds more in attendance bringing delegates and speakers.
If you’re heading to Beijing, don’t expect a standard trade show.
“Usually, exhibition areas are based around a promotional objective where people are open for a chat. At Sibos, it’s a rigorous, business-meeting-led trade show for a lot of our members,” says Lee.
Companies conduct board meetings around Sibos, while also hosting a raft of senior customer engagements and networking events while in town.
“Some banks will conduct 500 meetings on their stand within those four days,” says Lee. “They generate pipeline for the year.”
Lee sees the Sibos exhibition hall as a meeting village rather than a marketplace, which means the choice of location is vital to allow companies to reach out to local customers, suppliers and partners.
“We need to choose a location that is beneficial for the global financial system and somewhere all our members have adequate business ties,” says Lee, adding that companies extend their stay before and after the main event.
As it’s such a huge inbound community, Lee’s team needs to liaise with the local tourism bureaus and local government before selection can be confirmed.
“Crucially, the infrastructure needs to work,” she says.
“The network of hotels, transportation, everything. All the fixtures need to be coherent as well; it needs to have the right hardware and local support to host a good Sibos.”
This year, Lee and her team are working closely with the Beijing government, Chinese banks and the global financial community in the Chinese capital.
They also brought the Sibos community on board early.
“We held a briefing session on the last day of Sibos in Toronto (2023), with more than 250 people in the room,” says Lee.
“We told them we were running a survey with the exhibitor community for them to tell us whether they intend to come, and whether at the same size or smaller.
Within two weeks, we had all responses in – 80% were planning to come, but most were not yet sure of the size.”
Fast forward to this year, all 132 exhibitors said they would come at the same size as Toronto, yet delegates should expect to see new faces, too.
“Depending on where we go, we have new exhibitors. In China, we have lots of new exhibitors. New Chinese banks, and, because of trading relationships with China, many Middle Eastern, African and Central Asian banks as well, which is very exciting,” she says.
In Beijing, there will be more financial institutions than any other year, according to Lee.
“That’s also reflective of what we see on our network, with China being our fifth largest traffic market.”
The growing volume and importance of global trade in and out of China is undeniable – but so are the geopolitical tensions that encircle the country.
“All these factors combine and show there is a lot of interest to come to China to do business, but it’s not without challenges,” she says.
But, in her role, Lee is used to challenges. Joining Swift in 2008 as head of Sibos, Lee’s first event was scheduled for September 16 – the day after Lehman Brothers crashed.
In host city Vienna, speakers, delegates, journalists and organisers found themselves in an unprecedented and confusing situation, but the show somehow went on.
Lee, while lamenting the broader impact of the great financial crisis, says it also served as a reset for the industry.
“Following the 2008 crash, the industry was reminded to go back to basics; they were reminded that banking is there for the public good,” she says.
“They also went back to the bread and butter of banking, which was good for us. Correspondent and wholesale banking was refocused. It’s about moving value, facilitating trade.”
This reset also enabled the team to explore new markets, such as Osaka in 2012 and Dubai in 2013. It has broadened the spectrum of attendees and surrounding ecosystem, too.
You’re welcome
Previously, Sibos was open only to Swift members. But over the last 15 years, as the organisation has broadened its horizons, Sibos now welcomes any relevant participant of the ecosystem.
“Sibos used to be a place for financial institutions, but now we have a lot of market infrastructure too. In the past, we didn’t have tech members, but now many fintechs are members of Swift,” she says.
“We have central banks, payments operators, security market infrastructure, who also have a seat at the table, because this is where all their participants are. We have brought data scientists into the conversations, along with futurists.”
With this evolving audience and delegation, Lee’s team needs to ensure the conversation is not inward-looking or focussed only on industry bugbears, but rather explores the broader horizons of what’s coming for the industry.
“We hold a lot of consultations before we come up with a theme and the sessions – starting with our own Swift Steering Committee for Sibos,” she says.
The executive committee, which draws from its extensive interactions with customers, shareholders and regulators, is next, then it’s into the communities for consultation through national member groups, which send their specific feedback.
“It’s a two-way street to ensure we talk about what’s important to the members, but we bring in other voices as well, because we don’t want to be myopic,” says Lee.
“We need to see what other trends are coming that will move the needle on how the industry does business. It’s all about connecting the dots.”
Further dot-connecting keeps members and other attendees engaged to ensure no last-minute panic before the event in October or late September.
“Along the way, my team and I make sure our clients are on track because they cannot not be on track,” says Lee.
“We can’t have a major bank’s truck held up in customs, meaning they have to do Sibos with a table and a vase of flowers instead of a stand.”
Not only would this be a disaster for the company’s own marketing team, but it would also impact the experience for everybody else, she says.
Community communication, involving monthly calls and emails, also features an exhibitor day onsite in March, during which Lee’s team shows them around the venue, introduces suppliers and helps them to be thinking about the event.
“Delegates are at the event for four days, but the build-up for our exhibiting customers, is 10,” says Lee.
“From nothing, we need to build an entire Sibos village with our exhibiting community.”
This approach to engagement seems to be working, with around 85% of all exhibitors being repeat bookers, according to Lee.
And as sustainability has risen up the agenda for these exhibitors, Lee hopes Sibos can provide the answers they need.
“Being powered by Swift, Sibos is a not-for-profit event. Every dollar we generate in profit goes back into it,” says Lee.
“We’re very privileged to be in a position where we make conscious decisions to protect our environment, care for our community, and promote diversity, equity and inclusion when we design the show. Little steps lead to a big sustainable Sibos.”
Some 40% of all the materials used in Toronto were rented or repurposed; more than 90% of all show waste was recycled. While feeding several thousand people a day, Sibos Toronto’s food waste was less than 10%.
“We are very prudent in planning for our food on a just-in-time basis,” says Lee.
“In Toronto, we used 80% local and seasonal produce, and 45% was vegetarian or plant based.” Lee’s team has set an even higher bar for Beijing.
“Our goal this year is to ensure that 85% of conference materials used are sourced from local suppliers,” she says.
“This doesn’t just reduce waste; it also prevents unnecessary transportation and supports the economy in our host region.”
Where possible, any materials will be rented, reuseable or recyclable. The carpet will be recyclable, badges and lanyards will be collected and recycled and all exhibitors will be encouraged to donate locally any leftover giveaways to further reduce waste
How was it for you?
The KPIs for Lee’s team have a keen focus on customer satisfaction to keep them coming back, so what does success look like – and how do they measure it?
“Numbers are important for how many people were able to get to the show, but during the week itself, I spend about an hour and a half with each of the top 20 banks, having close conversations and getting really brutal qualitative feedback us on how it was to prepare for the event to their on-site experience,” says Lee.
After the event, all delegates and exhibitors receive net promoter score (NPS) surveys, which are tracked but with the understanding that those with extreme feelings are the most likely to respond. So, the feedback process is evolving too.
“We’re trying to shift away from this and embed sentiment data collection,” says Lee. “We’re piloting with new tools to collect insights.”
At Sibos in Frankfurt in 2025, Lee’s team aims to start using sentiment tracking in the conference streams, to gauge whether people like the content.
Are delegates engaged? What’s the level of interaction? What kind of questions are they asking? “We’ll use it around certain parts of the event too,” says Lee.
“For example, at the Swift desk or the connections area. What’s their face showing? What are their emotions? What does this tell us about their engagement with this particular event? We’re hoping to combine the tools of on-site data collection with post-event collection.”
And the beat goes on But while that information is being collected and analysed, Lee’s team will be on to the next Sibos, in Frankfurt for 2025, and working with a cast of internal and external partners.
“There’s about 18 of us in the Sibos and Swift events team, but it’s a collaborative Swift project. The whole company comes together to deliver,” says Lee.
Third parties work on the event all year round, covering registrations, show management and the design of the flow from the registrations to the exhibitions to the conference rooms to the food hall.
“These partners live and breathe Sibos and have between 30 and 100 people working on it all year long,” says Lee.
The team and its partners are already well into planning for Sibos’ first trip to Miami – a growing favourite with the US financial community – in 2026 and making sure the content, preparation and experience will meet expectations.
“It’s interesting to see is how the landscape is converging and how we can cooperate and co-compete,” says Lee.
“It’s no longer banks versus fintechs. We have seen these sides come together. That’s what the industry’s been talking about, collaboration and co-competition to make international banking faster, better, cheaper for the end user, for all their customers.”
This year, as a nod to the convergence of banking and fintech through the membership and delegates, there will be stations for attendees to get their trainers (sneakers) cleaned rather than the traditional shoeshine kiosks found in financial centres around the world.
“It used to be that people wore leather shoes,” says Lee, “now, a lot of bankers – men and women – are wearing trainers with their suits, which I think is super cool.”
- SIBOS takes place between 21 and 24 October 2024.