Barclays is looking to streamline its treasury efficiency for foreign exchange-related costs by integrating Ant International‘s Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI FX Model.
Announcing its partnership today (7 May), Barclays will implement the first phase of the TST model by completing the first batch of Ant International’s intra-group FX transactions.
The TST model predicts patterns over time via a new pre-training and supervised fine-tuning framework, which trains the model to improve its forecasts over time. The model is an architecture-based big data model with up to two billion parameters encrypted.
Through this integration, Barclays will be able to forecast cashflow and FX exposure at an increased rate. The TST model enables the UK bank to analyse data at an hourly, daily and weekly basis, with Ant International asserting it performs at 90% accuracy.
Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, commented: “The collaboration with Barclays on our Time Series Transformer Model is an important milestone in our ongoing journey to help treasuries optimise their FX strategies.
“The results that we have achieved by combining Barclays’ advanced banking capabilities with Ant International’s innovative solutions demonstrate how technology can enhance the way businesses manage their global liquidity, by enabling more efficient FX transactions.
“It also shows how enhancing our treasury management can benefit our customers, when businesses translate the cost efficiencies into competitive FX rates.”
Forecasting across borders
Barclays’ integration of the Ant International processing model will complement its FX hedging platform, BARX NetFX, which serves its e-commerce and payment industry clients and partners.
The TST model will also work alongside the Guaranteed FX Solution, which serves to provide deeper accuracy of FX exposure and markets, along with greater clarity over FX hedging to lower its costs and increase operational efficiency.
In turn, Ant International will leverage the cost efficiency in its FX quotes to offer competitive rates and maintain pricing for businesses trading in currencies such as the Euro and US Dollar.
This partnership also indicates a deeper commitment from the UK banking sector to adopting AI-based solutions to streamline operations. Backed by AI, the TST model aims to mitigate FX volatility through its automated system, which reduces the burden on manual processing for Barclays.
This is part of Barclays’ FX Automation strategy, which focuses on developing tools that help clients digitise workflows and optimise FX hedging.
“Ant International has been a valued and long-standing partner of Barclays, and we were thrilled to work together on this innovative solution,” added Ben Parkinson, Head of Global Fintech & FX Automation Sales at Barclays.
“This collaboration reflects the strong relationship and mutual trust between our teams. Their state-of-the-art AI model has improved the accuracy of forecasting cash flows and helped us optimise the FX hedging process.
“By combining Ant International’s advanced AI forecasting capabilities with our market-leading FX expertise, we’ve been able to reduce uncertainty and cost, setting a new benchmark for FX risk management.”
