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Digitalisation is at the heart of our simplification strategy. That is why our priority in 2022 was to invest in new online solutions, such as UC Hedge and UC Pay FX, to offer our corporate clients an excellent digital-first experience.
We developed UC Hedge - a UniCredit online offering for small and mid-sized corporate clients - to support them with the end-to-end management of FX risk, which includes transparent insight into their FX exposure, possibility to analyse the FX Risk against the client’s Hedging Policy and calibrate it, and trading execution according to the analysed FX risk scenarios.
UC Hedge is the first business component deployed on the new Cloud Digital Platform. It is a cloud-based application, technically composed of global, modular components, developed as micro-frontend/services-based APIs, scalable to any country and customer segments for e-Banking solutions. In 2023, we plan to open the full commercialisation of the product, improve the current functionalities and more based on customer needs and habits.
Keeping our clients at the centre of everything we do, we invested in developing UC Pay FX – a digital solution that provides tailor-made currency conversion of foreign payments based on customer-specific needs. The application was released in Germany on the UC Corporate Portal to serve clients with relevant information on converted transaction volumes, review of product details, reports and settings. Furthermore, UC Pay FX can be digitally purchased and activated by Customers directly in the Corporate Portal via the brand-new Customer Digital Onboarding.
Our bank plans to extend this digital solution to Italy for the upcoming year and supplement it with new features, such as Dealing Offline/Online, Currency Guide and Financial Institution dedicated upgrades.
A conversation with...
Joanna Pamphilis, Head of Group Corporate Business Platform
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Joanna Pamphilis
Head of Group Corporate Business Platform
To you, what did these Digital & Data offerings mean for UniCredit?
We created a set of digital product offerings for corporate clients in 2022 with the introduction of UC Hedge and UC Pay FX as two new client-facing channels. Our clients needed complete visibility to manage their FX risk positions. By offering a new digital service, they gained intelligent insights to their net exposure, as well as the ability to simulate hedging strategies and automatically execute.
UC Hedge essentially responds to the needs of our clients as a data-driven solution that offers risk-hedging options based on invoiced and payment flows, whilst also enabling clients to execute FX hedging directly. As a corporate digital offering, UC Hedge is designed and built as a modular product, Cloud native, and API-based scalable across country and customer segment.
To develop the offering, an agile way of working was at the core for delivering UC Hedge in a way that was responsive to our clients’ feedback so we might optimise product features and time to market.
UC PayFX is UniCredit’s flagship currency conversion service – a fully automated end-to-end multicurrency FX conversion system for executing cross-border payments at pre-agreed wholesale spreads. Investments in this digital product allow our corporate clients to expand their cross-border payments reach by providing seamless FX conversion for 100+ currencies. Utilising an agile way of working enables us to support customer needs for cross-border payments with the early stages of the product roadmap showing positive results.
Why was this important for UniCredit’s commitments?
We are keeping the client at the centre and remain committed to offering digital products and services that respond to their needs and enable them to digitalise their business.
For UC Hedge, our SME corporate clients were relying on MS Excel as the only tool to manage their foreign currency exposure. This way of working has risks and limitations – being difficult to manage, time consuming and expensive, particularly if there are unexpected fluctuations in currency movements. With UC Hedge, we were able to address this pain point for our clients with a solution that aggregates the data they have in a simple overview, providing the required risk transparency.
But we didn’t stop there. We then provided a data-driven solution for the client to understand how they are currently hedged and insight into what they should additionally hedge in alignment with their policy. To complete the end-to-end digital offering, we offer them a risk analysis to understand different products, how to hedge, how these products will perform in the market and the capability for our clients to automatically hedge these products with UniCredit.
UC PayFX has revolutionised the user experience with a digital offering to simulate currency conversion rates so clients can make informed decisions with confidence. Working in an agile way, the product roadmap focuses on enriching the digital experience to execute these conversion deals – pre-booking favourable FX rates for future payments.
How has this contributed to our Bank’s overall strategy?
We want to equip our clients with the tools they need to react quickly and effectively, while paving the way for new tailored solutions to support them as the economy recovers. I would cluster our transformation around three pillars: client connectivity, operational efficiency, and smart use of data.
With UC Hedge and UC PayFX, we enhanced our client connectivity, streamlining communication channels to provide a modern digital customer experience which contributes to building stronger relationships with our corporate clients.
In parallel, we are continuously looking at operational efficiency, automating key processes and reducing manual intervention to create a positive customer experience. These efforts have led to a more efficient and streamlined workflow, diverting critical resources to areas of our business providing value to clients.
The smart use of data is a core focus of our strategy where both UC Hedge and UC PayFX play an essential role. These digital products help us to collect and analyse data in real time, providing us with valuable insights into our clients and operations. This, in turn, allows us to make informed decisions and continuously improve our services.
Both digital offerings play an important role in helping us achieve our overall strategy and will continue to be crucial levers in our success moving forward. Embedding digital and data in everything we do will allow us to create even more tailor-made and data-centric services. And, ultimately, that is what will make a difference for our clients.