Sweden joins ECB’s instant payments settlement platform
– ECB and the Sveriges Riksbank conclude agreement on settlement of electronic payments in Swedish krona on the Eurosystem’s real-time infrastructure, TIPS
– Sweden is European frontrunner in use of instant payments
– ECB President Christine Lagarde says cooperation of central bank community in Europe works effectively – also in times of crisis
Today, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Eurosystem and Sveriges Riksbank concluded a cooperation agreement offering Sweden access to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) to support the Swedish instant payment service, called RIX-INST.
Based on this agreement, electronic payments made in Swedish krona can be settled on the settlement platform for instant payments operated by the Eurosystem.
Payments will be cleared under the agreement as of May 2022.
TIPS enables providers of payment services to transfer and settle their customers’ funds in real time, around the clock, every day of the year, and it settles the payments in central bank money. It has been in use in the euro area since November 2018 to settle instant payments in euro. It had been conceived from the outset to also be able to settle other currencies.
Sweden is one of the most advanced European countries in terms of use of instant payments, with significant daily volumes. Currently, the daily average number of instant payments in Sweden is 1.5 million per day.
The agreement is being signed by ECB President Christine Lagarde, the Governors of the Eurosystem’s 19 national central banks, and Sveriges Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves.
“In crisis times, this agreement is a good example of strong cooperation between central banks in Europe,” said ECB President Christine Lagarde. “Our real-time settlement platform is a pivotal contribution to Europe’s endeavours to satisfy citizens’ increasing demand for faster, cheaper and convenient payment services without compromising on security.”
SCOR launches an Insurance Information Platform in China
Since breaking out in China’s Wuhan region in late 2019, the coronavirus, or COVID-19, has spread ceaselessly, infecting more and more people around the world each day. On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In China, while the exceptional containment measures adopted a few weeks ago are beginning to pay off, many people in the country are still battling the virus and trying to stem its spread.
Against this backdrop, the Chinese insurance industry has decided to take actions: 70 of the country’s largest insurance groups are now offering free coverage for people on the front lines of the disease: doctors, nurses, police officers, military personnel, taxi drivers and so on. However, not everyone is aware of this free cover, as SCOR Global Life China’s Head of Marketing, Tiger Li, found recently after speaking to a doctor friend: “I realized there was an information gap and that few of China’s medical personnel were aware of what insurers were offering.” To reduce this information gap, Tiger Li and his colleague Wang Fei, Head of Innovation at SCOR Global Life China, have teamed up with Xiao Le Health founder Wang Kai, and ten actuarial science students from Nankai University, to develop a totally free insurance information platform. The idea is simple: to identify and list all the policies offered by each insurance company, and to filter the available offers according to the user’s profile. With more than 200 potential insurance scenarios on offer for each person, the platform enables users to go straight to the ones most applicable to them. The platform has received national media coverage and is proving to be a growing success, as more and more frontline staff use it to seek information on their rights to insurance cover.“Our aim is to provide a trusted solution to people who spend their time providing human support to patients”, says Tiger Li.