～60%
Hedging cost savings
>90%
Forecast accuracy
24/7
Reliability
“Ant International’s state-of-the-art AI model has improved the accuracy of forecasting cash flows and helped us optimise the FX hedging process. By combining their 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.”
Ben Parkinson,
Head of Global Fintech & FX Automation Sales, Barclays
Defining the Problem
For treasuries, today’s complex global environment leaves little room to breathe. As unpredictable external factors fuel currency volatility, treasury officers must find more accurate and responsive ways to manage their FX exposures.
Traditional forecasting methods can no longer cope with the present volatile market conditions. Manual, spreadsheet-based and historical data-driven methods lack the breadth of inputs needed to predict currency movements, thus failing to deliver the speed and accuracy that modern FX markets now demand.
This is where Bettr by Ant International’s Treasury Management Solutions stepped in. Global banks such as Barclays can access Bettr’s solutions to address two critical challenges:
- How can they deliver smarter, more responsive FX risk management solutions for their clients?
- How can they reduce cost and uncertainty in hedging strategies?
Building the Solution
Barclays arrived on Bettr’s AI-powered treasury solutions as a solution. Advanced, AI-powered forecasting capabilities could enhance the intelligence of Barclays’ FX platforms: delivering greater value to the bank’s corporate clients through improved FX prediction and more resilient liquidity management.
The solution would also be an ideal fit for Barclays’ FX Automation Strategy, which focuses on developing tools that help clients digitise workflows and optimise FX hedging.
A new partnership with Ant International gave Barclays access to Ant’s proprietary Falcon Time-Series Transformer (TST) AI Model: a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture-based big data model that leverages the latest time-series forecasting algorithms to better analyse and predict sequential data patterns using large historical data sets.
The Falcon TST AI Model allows Barclays to incorporate more than 8.5 billion parameters in their forecasting approach, including weather patterns, calendar events, financial market fluctuations, cross-border traffic data, and more.
The Falcon TST AI Model reduces costs even as it improves the efficiency and accuracy of time-series forecasting. By enabling more precise FX hedging, the Model lowers risk premiums through reduced volatility and fewer manual buffers. This results in FX and liquidity cost savings of up to 60%, alongside more stable, competitive pricing for Barclays’ corporate clients.
Delivering the Results
Barclays integrated the Falcon TST AI Model with the Guaranteed FX solution built into its FX hedging platform (BARX NetFX), which caters to e-commerce and payment industry clients. With the Model’s more precise FX pricing and execution, Barclays increased BARX NetFX’s efficiency while helping Ant International secure more stable and transparent cross-currency transactions.
In turn, Ant International can leverage this cost efficiency in its FX quotes for businesses. This empowers the company to offer competitive rates and maintain relative price stability for major trading currencies, helping its clients to save on FX costs.
Both sides of the partnership have garnered significant dividends. Barclays now enjoys lower operational costs and stronger service offerings for its clients. The bank’s position in FX automation and treasury innovation has strengthened significantly, particularly in serving high-volume, cross-border payment ecosystems.
Ant International, for its part, can now offer more robust global liquidity management and FX strategy services for businesses across its ecosystem, while lowering FX costs for its partners.
Building on proven gains in forecasting accuracy and hedging efficiency, both parties are now exploring broader AI integration across treasury systems, extending intelligent FX management beyond pricing and execution into more strategic roles.
About Bettr
Ant International’s Bettr offers inclusive financial services and technology solutions that transform how businesses around the world access, manage, and move money. Bettr aims to advance financial inclusion by harnessing technology and working with partners across the public and private sectors.
To learn more, please visit https://www.bettr.com/.
