EBAday 2026: Correspondent banking and liquidity management in a real-time world

## /wholesale banking News and resources on transaction banking, corporate banking and supply chain finance. #### Editorial This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. # EBAday 2026: Correspondent banking and liquidity management in a real-time world As real-time schemes and digital assets reshape banking, how do the realities of correspondent banking and liquidity management change? 3 Likes018 June 2026 [Be the first to comment](https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/47952/ebaday-2026-correspondent-banking-and-liquidity-management-in-a-real-time-world#comments)  #### Editorial This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. What are the realities of correspondent banking in 2026? Moderated by Gareth Lodge of Celent, the next session focused on how correspondent banking tackles interoperability, growth, and partnerships, while simultaneously facing new market players. The panellists included Ciaran Byrne, Deutsche Bank; Frank Dehnke, Helaba; Pablo Izquierdo, Bank of America; Marc Pomes Bordedebat, HSBC Continental Europe; and Anastasiia Ragimli, Cecabank. To set the scene, Dehnke explained that they key challenges correspondent banking was facing in 2026 was the balancing the expectations of the user versus the expectations of regulators and compliance teams. Byrne added that, from his point of view, the domestic payment experience is currently driving the industry. All the advantages of real-time domestic payments were similarly the pain points in cross-border payments. “We're preparing ourselves for a future of interoperability,” Byrne commented. “I think that in correspondent banking, we've been solely reliant on Swift for such a long time. We will continue to be reliant on Swift, but the future is not going to be just Swift rails. It's going to be a mixture of real-time payment rails with one-leg-out schemes, stablecoins, tokenised deposits, Swift, and domestic payment schemes.” Yet this was not necessarily a threat to correspondent banking, the panel highlighted. Ragimli emphasised that while in today’s world, payments arrive in under an hour yet exceptions still happen, which is where the value of correspondent banking lies. She gave an example from the fraud realm: “Just recently, we've managed to recover a $1 million payment for one of our clients thanks to the fact that the payment was still in the corresponding banking chain and the expertise of the teams involved with human interactions. We were managed to fully recover that payment, and that's something that wouldn’t be possible in a fully automated and instantaneous world.” Izquierdo echoed that correspondent banking today was better understood as a business function, and while there may be fewer correspondent banks, this could be attributed to the fact that — as a better understood business function that’s more deeply embedded within organisations — correspondent banking today requires a lot more knowledge and investment. And while new market entrants could be perceived as threatening the traditional correspondent banking model, Izquierdo stated that it’s a much more interesting playing field today, and that new market entrants only pushed everyone else to do better. The panel also emphasised that a real-time reality does not equate irrelevance for their business function. Rather than real-time, the path is heading towards extended operating hours of settlement systems. When it comes to the speed of the actual payment, Izquierdo highlighted the necessity of weighing cost vs benefits. He added that at Bank of America, they don’t necessarily see a need from large corporates to be instant — rather the focus is predictability, transparency, and FX. “Treasurers are not waking up on Sunday morning at 3am to make a payment,” Pomes quipped. Lastly, when it comes to what the panellists predict to have the biggest impact on correspondent banking in the next five years, the responses were varied. Pomes highlighted the OCT Inst scheme, while Byrne commented that DLT and atomic settlement will overhaul the banking system as a whole. In short: yes, the correspondent banking system will be reimagined. But less because it has to, and more because it can. **How does real-time impact modern liquidity management?** Another panel session focused specifically on the impact of real-time payments on treasurers and their liquidity strategies. Moderated by Joost Bergen of Cash Dynamics, panellists included Joshua Cohen, Intellect Design Arena; Seeavash Hesabi, J.P. Morgan; Floor Meeuwis, Société Générale; and Varun Yadav, BNY. Hesabi began by describing that the demands of modern liquidity management are very much driven my macro drivers such as rising inflation. “The cost of liquidity, funding, and working capital has been elevated, and remains elevated. That means that the cost of idle cash and those just-in-case buffers for participating in global programmes, such as real-time payment schemes, are expensive. So we are seeing a market reaction to that.” Yadav confirmed that real-time schemes are “very hungry for money”, so banks need to ensure they have the right toolbox to forecast liquidity needs and predict peaks and troughs. In order to improve predictability of client portfolios and maintain intraday liquidity, Meeuwis added, cooperation between banks and corporates is crucial. “Specifically if you see corporates that are still operating in a very traditional way, so doing payments in the morning and getting receivables in the afternoon, you will see that there is a huge peak in the need for intraday liquidity at certain hours of time. And then, of course, if at that time instant payments are being made and they screw over the complete model, then our guys in intraday liquidity are not the happiest for the day,” Meeuwis commented. When it comes to enabling these demands, Cohen argued we have the software capable of it, but the operating system is where problems remain. He emphasised: “If you think about your core ledgers, your payment rails, access to third-party bank for multi-bank cash concentration, things like that, that's the difficulty. So, what does real-time liquidity management look like in practice? Cohen expanded that banks need to be event-based rather than batch-based. If money comes into an account, it needs to go where it’s most effective for both organisations. Cash concentration doesn’t just need to happen in real-time, it needs to be multi-directional as well, so money doesn’t only go into the header account, but can pass between other accounts and move down from the header accounts as well. For auto reconciliation, banks would need to be able to automate virtual account capabilities. “Going back to the operating environment, how are you going to enable multi-bank sweeps if you're struggling even with your own core ledger to be able to do event based actions?” Cohen asked. As with most things in banking, it comes back to data. Getting real-time data from a plethora of data sources is a massive project for banks, and as treasurers it can be hard to convince the organisation to invest in real-time data to eventually enable real-time liquidity, Meeuwis highlighted. Hesabi added that it’s useful to remember that this is only “the start of the journey. These schemes are being adopted more and more globally. I think that with regulatory mandates we're going to see a significant increase in eurozone utilisation of these schemes. We think back to the Euro system roadmap post consultation last year. The mandate that came out, the objective was very clear: improve liquidity management.” Hesabi added that he expects the first stage will b