Blockchain Smart Treasury: game-changer for treasurers?

| 19-3-2019 | Carlo de Meijer | treasuryXL

Though blockchain is not yet well understood by many treasury people, and tangible real-world applications for the corporate treasurer’s day-to-day activities are still scarce, this technology is getting increased interest in the treasury world.

In August 2016 I wrote a blog in Finextra named “The Corporate Treasurer and Blockchain”. My conclusions at that time were that blockchain had the potential to fundamentally change the treasury function at corporates. For some it would even going to be a game-changer for treasury. The change might not be here yet, but it is coming, and treasurers need to take a long view on it.

But that is changing rapidly. The focus of blockchain developers is now turning from proof of concept projects to the creation of more practical, treasury-focused blockchain solutions. Recently we have seen a number of blockchain-based treasury trials that are worthwhile looking at. Last December R3 announced the completion of testing on a new blockchain-based KYC proof-of-concept, which was facilitated in collaboration with the French Association of Corporate Treasurers and a number of French banks.

One of the solutions that triggered me most is Smart Treasury by Boston-based fintech Adjoint, that is aimed to enable real-time gross settlement and continuous reconciliation and improve the liquidity management of the corporate treasurer. Main question is, could Adjoint’s solution be a break-through for blockchain in the corporate treasury world?

It is always interesting – and I am a very curious person – to see new initiatives in the blockchain scene and what they could bring for corporates esp. the treasury department.

So let’s have a deeper dive.

Complex treasury environment

Internationally operating corporates have undergone many transformations in their finance and treasury organisations triggered by technology innovations, regulatory initiatives and changed client behaviours. As a result today’s business environment for these corporates is highly complex from a treasury point of view.

In the digital era, real-time insight into a company’s global cash positions and managing credit facilities across all bank accounts of the group and the ability to move money intraday to where and when it is needed is increasingly needed to support this changing business environment.

Key challenge is to obtain consolidated information of group-wide multi-currency positions across a fragmented banking network in a timely manner. Today’s model of international correspondent banking however does not easily facilitate the ability to manage cash in a real-time environment.

Corporate treasurers are urgently looking for new ways to provide cash management with up to date – and if possible real time – information on cash positions and cash forecasts faster and with deeper insight, allowing corporate treasurers to better react to the company’s current cash and working capital needs.

In this context, they are significantly increasing their spending on treasury technology and innovations, to speed up and streamline their company’s cash, liquidity, risk and working capital management, in order to gain greatest visibility over their business critical function and reach greater strategic control.

Adjoint’s Smart Treasury: what does it bring for corporate treasurers?

Adjoint’s Smart Treasury solution, that was launched last year, contains a number of unique specifics that makes it very interesting for corporate treasures.

Smart Treasury should be seen as a multi-bank, multi-currency virtual account platform for real-time gross settlement and continuous reconciliation. This should allow corporate treasurers to untap liquidity in their various subsidiaries’ bank account.

Adjoint has combined blockchain technology with related smart contracts and APIs (or application programming interfaces) to create a solution that aims to dramatically speed up settling intercompany transactions in a secured way while significantly reducing the costs.

Most important features of this Smart Treasury solution are the following:

Distributed ledger: Auto reconciliation

Smart Treasury uses distributed ledger technology to auto-reconcile transactions information, thereby eliminate netting processes and improve FX management to provide treasurers with streamlined efficiency and improved, real-time visibility on cash positions.

Virtual accounts

Another interesting feature is that it enables a limitless number of virtual or “sub-accounts” for reconciling customer and suppliers payments. Companies can thereby consolidate costly, physical bank accounts into a selected number of blockchain virtual accounts. Smart Treasury thereby enables “purposed drive allocation”, thereby using smart contracts to designate how much and where digitised cash can be spent from these virtual accounts.

“Money can then be debited or credited among those accounts as needed, using smart contracts and APIs to make the necessaire FX translations, apply interest on intercompany loans and similar calculations.” Somil Goyal chief operating officer at Adjoint

In-house self-service bank

Smart Treasury consists of an “always-on” in-house self-service bank with “pre-established” rules for automated intra-company transactions. Here you could think of limits on how much can be automatically borrowed by entities based on pre-established interest rates. Nowadays, intercompany transactions, often conducted via an in-house bank, have become essential for multinational corporations. They seek to leverage internal resources more effectively. However, the overnight batch systems most companies use to settle transactions, can limit the transparency into subsidiaries’ account balances.

Smart Treasury Dashboard: access

The solution allows corporate treasury departments to operate their own private distributed ledger. This may enable them to choose which internal corporate entities and third parties including customers and suppliers may have access to the network via their Smart Treasury Dashboard and settle transactions directly with them in real time, rather than overnight or even longer.

But also regulators could be added on the platform which may help notional pooling in jurisdictions with currency controls, while improving the regulatory reporting process by automatically updating records and centralising all information in the ledger.

Smart contracts

Another key feature of Smart Treasury is the use of smart contracts. The tool’s Smart Contracts System uses blockchain to help teams define and set pre-configured rules that securely enable automated, real time transactions. These may include key corporate treasury functions such as regulatory and corporate compliance requirements including KYC; account opening or transactions such as intercompany loans, FX and netting, manage liquidity in multiple currencies, transfers among any approved entities etc. so lowering the costs of booking transactions between subsidiaries.

API integration with corporate ERP and TMS systems

Smart Treasury offers a nearly real-time API-based integration with organisation’s existing systems. Instead of replacing systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and Treasury management system (TMS), Smart Treasury works with current systems as an easy-to-be-integrated overlay, preventing duplicate entries. In fact Smart Treasury complement these, improving the way they interact by speeding up intercompany transaction settlement. Through using smart contracts, all transaction information is auto-reconciled and automatically posted into treasury management systems in real-time.

“With Adjoint’s solution this takes place much faster, at a much lower cost, and it will actuality accept feed from the banks using APIs, which then feed the ERP – again using API – and it carries all of the information necessaire through smart contracts”.Daniel Blumen, Partner of Treasury Alliance

API integration with banks

Smart Treasury also offers a real-time API-based integration with banks for transactions outside the organisation. The solution allows the use of APIs for real-time intra-day bank transactions processing as opposed to end of day batch processing. They enable the transfer of critical information and data between corporate entities and their banks and data providers, as well as between corporate entities within the corporate.

Read the full article of our expert Carlo de Meijer on LinkedIn

 

 

Carlo de Meijer

Economist and researcher

 

Commercial Paper – alternative short term funding

| 03-05-2018 | treasuryXL |

Instead of just relying on banks to provide short term funding, large corporations are also able to access the European Commercial Paper market (ECP). This is an alternative market that can assist in meeting short term funding requirements. This provides a good alternative to products previously mentioned – such as lines of credit. In this article we shall look at what ECP is, how it can be issued and what the market for this paper is.

Definition

Commercial Paper is a promissory note that is unsecured with a maturity shorter than 1 year. A corporation will, initially establish a CP programme which determines the terms and conditions – such as maximum allowable issuance amount, termination date of the programme or open ended, currencies, bank dealers etc. The issue is subject to a credit rating and the paper is rated. It is also possible to issue your own paper instead of through a dealer, though this is not used as much.

Issuance

The issuer has 2 approaches: issuing paper as and when funding is needed, or being informed by the dealer that there is demand from the market for additional paper. As the paper is negotiable, clearance and settlement is provided via one of the major clearing houses – Euroclear, DTC etc. Settlement is the same as a spot transaction – taking place two working days after transacting. As ECP is in competition with other forms of short term investment, it is necessary to have an active presence in the market – lenders need to know that there is demand for their funds and issuers are in direct competition with other issuers.

Use

ECP allows issuers to fund themselves in a more flexible manner than traditional bank lending – this can be seen in both the issuance amount and the tenor of the paper. Issuers with the highest credit ratings can often achieve funding below the cost of Euribor/Libor. This allows issuers to fund a significant portion of their total funding requirements on a short term basis. As short term rates are normally lower than long term rates, this leads to a reduction in the average cost of funding. An ECP programme for as little as EUR 250 million can be established, though it is more common to see programmes for more than EUR 1 billion.

Motivation

An issuer needs to ascertain that there is a definite funding requirement and that an ECP programme can successfully be utilised. There are ongoing costs involved, so it is not just a question of setting up a programme and then leaving it there in place without using it.
An issuer needs to know if there is a true appetite in the market for their paper. No issuer wants to find that having established a programme that there is no demand for their paper.
How does the short term funding fit into the funding requirements of the issuer on the whole? Not only do they get access to cheap funds, they also gain access to potential borrowers who could be interested in supplying alternative long dated funding.

Conclusion

ECP offers a lower cost of funding, flexibility in both issuance timing and maturity, and is unsecured. As the paper is tradable, investors can always sell their paper on in the secondary market. This must be weighed up against factors such as cost of programme maintenance, reduction in lines of credit, and the fact that only top rated issuers are accepted.

For large corporations an ECP programme is attractive, but needs constant maintenance and attention. It offers an attractive bespoke alternative to traditional bank funding.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

 

SME and bank lending – a dying market?

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Repurchase Agreements – alternative short term funding

| 16-04-2018 | treasuryXL |

 

There are times when a corporate needs to borrow funds – this can be accomplished in a manner of ways. If the corporate actually held securities (Government paper, bonds etc.), it could consider entering into a repurchase agreement – better known as a Repo. This transaction entails a trade where the corporate sells securities at an agreed price and date to a counterparty and purchases them back at a future date for an agreed price. In return, the corporate receives cash – in essence, a Repo is a collateralised loan. Let us look at the working and reasons behind this money market product.

As a funding instrument, repos have been around for 100 years – originally used by the Federal Reserve to facilitate open market operations. As a repo is a collateralised loan, the interest rate is, normally, lower than for unsecured lending. The major factor is the type of collateral that is offered. This can normally be Government paper, but can also include other forms of bonds and securitised paper. The interest amount is not paid separately, but included in the final price upon redemption. The classic term for a repo is a “sell and buyback” – the paper is sold in exchange for a principal amount and bought back on the agreed future date. The counterparty that buys the paper is entering into a reverse repo.

By offering the paper as collateral, the lender is entering into a secured transaction – if the borrower defaults, the lender still holds the paper. The preference in the market is for high quality liquid securities, though markets can be found for more opaque paper. After the financial crisis, the demand for repo trading rose sharply as the interbank market was reluctant to extend unsecured funding to counterparties.

The paper falls into 2 distinct categories – specials and general collateral. A special refers to a specific security (recognised by its unique ISIN number) that is in demand. These are bonds that are normally being very heavily traded in the market and market makers need to cover their short positions by borrowing the paper. As such the rates on specials can be appreciably lower than on normal repos – and far below the rates on the interbank money market. In particular times of shortage, rates can even be negative.

General collateral is any paper that is accepted as collateral at that moment – it could be any German Government paper as this is deemed by market participants as being of equal value and standing. Most collateral is subject to a haircut – due to the additional work involved and the potential credit risk. This means that a bond with a face value of EUR 1 million can only be used as collateral to borrow EUR 950,000. Whilst these loans are collateralised, and often cover Government paper, the is always a specific credit risk.

For the buyer of a repo, they are lending funds and receiving collateral. One of the main players on the buy side are Money Market Funds. For the seller there is an opportunity to receive short date finance whilst pledging assets that they are holding in their portfolio.

Repos normally have a short tenor – from overnight to 3 months. They facilitate the short dated market and provide funding at attractive rates, and assist bond traders in covering their positions.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

 

 

Peer to peer lending – just a fad or a change in the market?

| 27-03-2018 | treasuryXL |

 

Almost 2 years ago we reported that KNAB Bank had started a crowdfunding initiative to allow, mainly companies, to access an alternative area to fund their businesses, whilst at the same time allowing investors to directly participate in these loans and lend directly – via KNAB – to the borrowers. An extra incentive was that KNAB would directly participate in all loans – their role was not only as an intermediary and facilitator. Now is a good time to look back on their progress and refresh ourselves with the concept of peer to peer lending (P2P).

What is it?

It is an online service that matches the needs of the borrowers with that of the lenders. As the service is only related to lending and does not encompass traditional banking roles, the service providers are able to provide these services cheaper and more quickly than a traditional bank loan. The P2P service provider takes a fee – a margin on the interest rate and/or an annual service charge. In recompense, they enable the matching service to take place, administer the loan and ensure that the investors receive their money back – in the form of capital repayments and interest.

What are the features of the system?

  • It is an online facility
  • Intermediation is provided by the site owner
  • Borrowers can post their proposals online
  • Lenders can choose which borrowers and loans meet their criteria
  • Repayment schedule is included
  • Loans can be secured on unsecured
  • Credit ratings are applied to the borrower
  • Loans can be tracked and monitored for compliance

What role does the intermediary play?

  • Process the loan applications
  • Authenticate the validity of the borrower
  • Perform relevant credit checks
  • Process the cash flows
  • Service the loans
  • Ensuring correct compliance and reporting are carried out

What are the advantages?

As the service is an online matching service, it is fast, simple and cost efficient, This leads to lower interest costs for the borrower and allows investors to directly access the loan market and earn a higher return on their money than traditionally obtained at the bank. Also, the administrative processing time can be a lot quicker than by a bank. The system also can appeal to the ethics of a lender – they have the opportunity to directly help a company that is looking to expand or who require finance for major investment. Furthermore, an investor knows exactly who is borrowing their money – depositing money at a bank does not detail how that money is used by the bank. There has been a political and ethical backlash to banks over the last decade in response to the perceived domination they have within the market. As a lender, it is possible to get yields of between 5% and 9% on your investment. This will be lowered by the costs that the intermediary levy – KNAB take a service charge of 0.85% per annum on the outstanding balance.

What are the disadvantages?

As a lender your money is not guaranteed. You bear all the risks and, in the worst case, could lose your investment. Despite all the due diligence that has taken place before the loan request was placed on the platform, it is still necessary to perform your own checks on the potential borrower – your criteria may be different to that used by the platform. You cannot demand early repayment from the borrower – money that you invest must be money that you can miss for the duration of the loan.

 

How is KNAB doing with their P2P?

  • They have arranged funding for 57 loans totalling EUR 9,125,000
  • The average loan is for EUR 160,087, takes 49 hours to complete and charges an interest rate of 7.83% pa
  • There are 4,533 investors with an average exposure for EUR 905 and a yield of 6.98% pa.
  • All loans are based on linear redemption, have a tenor of between 6 months and 10 years.
  • To date there have been no defaults on principal repayments and there are not payments in arrears.
  • Participation can be from EUR 100 per loan – this allows for diversification.

Conclusion

For investors looking for an alternative investment with a longer duration, P2P can appear interesting. The risks are greater than depositing money at the bank, but the potential rewards far exceed the returns offered by banks. Additionally, for investors looking to approach the market more ethically, it does give the possibility of directly participating in someone else’s ambitions – knowing that your participation is having an effect on society. There are considerable risks, but these must be weighed up against the potential reward. Any investor needs to work out how much they can afford to lose on their principal investment against the higher return being offered.

Contact us

 

Commercial Paper – alternative short term funding

| 03-01-2018 | treasuryXL |

 

There are many different products that a company can use to meet its funding requirements. These products mainly fall into (but are not exclusive to) 2 major categories – equity or debt. Within both categories that are many different bespoke products that can be used. Debt can be either for long term or short term – both in respect to the tenor and the interest rates. Furthermore, interest rates can be fixed or floating. In this series we shall be looking at popular products that are used to help fund a business.

Definition
Commercial Paper is a money market product issued by large companies to receive funding for short term needs. The tenor (maturity) is normally for a short period up to 270 days. The paper is a promissory note that is unsecured – there is no collateral/security offered against the paper. As such Commercial Paper is normally only ever issued by large well-known companies who have credit ratings.

How it works
When a company needs short term funds it can issue paper (promissory note) against receiving the funds. Issuance can take place either via a recognized dealer who can sell the paper into the money markets, or paper is directly issued to an investor who wishes to buy and hold the paper until maturity. Paper is normally issued at a discount to its face amount and redeemed at par.

The programme
Commercial Paper is subject to a company issuing a programme. This provides details as to the maximum amount that can be borrowed; the lifetime of the programme; registered dealers etc.

Why borrow?
Commercial Paper allows a company to be flexible in its short term funding. Yields are, traditionally, lower than bank borrowings and are not subject to additional bank covenants. A company can benefit quickly from changes in interest rates. It is both a quick and inexpensive way to raise short term working capital.

Why lend?
It allows lenders to get a better yield than available if they placed their funds on deposit with a bank. The paper is negotiable – this means that the paper can be sold on in a secondary market. If a lender suddenly had a funding issue, they could sell the paper to a third party, rather than approaching their bank for funding. As the issuers have credit ratings, it is possible to apply your own criteria with regards to who you will accept as a counterparty.

Lionel Pavey

 

Lionel Pavey

Cash Management and Treasury Specialist

 

 

Alternatives to banks – Is Fintech the answer?

| 14-12-2017 | treasuryXL |

With the steady rise of Fintech within the finance industry some people are already calling for the demise of banks as the historical financial partner of choice for corporates. Certainly, Fintech is showing itself to be very dynamic, offering many new products and solutions, and being a lot swifter than the banks. Banks seem to have grown too big and complacent, are being weighed down by new rules and regulations, are less prominent in the field of funding for corporates, and possibly have lost their focus on what used to be core businesses. But let us examine the relationship between bank and client.

The roles of a bank

Banks are, first and foremost, used so that clients can obtain and use financial services. Opening and maintaining accounts enable money to be received and paid – in this way the day-to-day financial operations of the client can be performed. Furthermore, banks offer additional services that compliment the needs of a client – business credit cards for key staff, sales services such as processing of credit card payments for goods, payroll services, online banking, loans and lines of credit.

What does a client want from a bank?

One of the main priorities is that there is an established history and a good working relationship – that the bank understands the client’s needs. A key indicator of a good relationship would be the ability and the willingness of the bank to provide funding to the client. If the bank wished the client to bank and deposit their money with them, then they should be prepared to extend credit where possible – if it meets the criteria of the bank. Running any business means there will be times when liquidity is scarce and a bank that refuses to extend credit runs the risk of losing the client. Other criteria can include the cost of banking services, support given, quality of delivery, credit rating and the overall efficiency of the services.

Fintech solutions

Fintech can provide genuine alternatives to existing banking services as they can compete with modern products – like giant ocean-going tankers, banks are large and very slow to turn around. Most bank services are still paper intensive and require many authorized signatures. By digitizing services, Fintech can reduce the transaction costs and the time taken to authorize a service. Fintech orientated lending services (like B2B) are entirely online and can be quickly approved. Through lending platforms, the risk can be spread out among many lenders.

Can the banks respond?

Banks have at their disposal very large existing customer bases and a wealth of proprietary data relating to the behaviour and patterns of their clients. This is a large untapped potential that does not need to be found or bought. If banks can utilize this data whilst offering a Fintech type of online service that is quicker and more efficient there is a possibility to fight back. The main option for banks would be to examine the Fintech companies and buy the ones that have the best products to compliment the requirements of the bank’s customers. As Fintech works in a different manner to traditional banking, this would require banks to develop internal incubators to discover new products and services that could be offered to customers. Alternatively, banks could look to design and implement their own solutions, but they appear to be behind the speed and knowledge of Fintech and might never be able to catch up.

One last word of advice

Realistically, Fintech offers attractive alternative solutions to banks. However, the power of the personal relationship should never be underestimated. We build relations slowly and by results – the cheapest offering does not get all the business. Having an account manager at a bank can be highly beneficial for a client – one point of contact, good understanding, a history. When things go wrong, you pick up the phone and call the account manager and he/she sorts out your problems. With Fintech, this could mean phoning numerous different companies to achieve the same result that can be obtained with just one account manager at a bank.

Choice is personal, but preference is normally determined by experience.

What’s FinTech and how does it change the financial world?

| 22-2-2017 | Arnoud Doornbos |

FinTech is a term that is becoming popular in the financial world. Only one third of the financial experts know what this means  and understands  what consequences it has for their business. How this innovation is currently changing the ecosystem of money, is still relatively unknown.

FinTech is a contraction of the words financial and technology. In other words: it covers all innovative financial products and services that simplify and accelerates the way we handle money. For traditional banks FinTech is still an uncomfortable concept. Why? Because a large portion of the revolutionary financial concepts are derived from technology driven start-ups. These start-ups change the traditional ecosystem. This is enormously important in a country like the Netherlands where the majority of firms is financed by banks and personal finances of the people are predominantly held by financial institutions  which find it often difficult to modernize.

The emergence of ICT in the financial sector may also have different consequences. Those FinTech companies that focus on a single product or service can erode the business model of banks. At the same time the same technology also offers opportunities for traditional players to improve their service and reduce costs. Also, traditional players have a competitive advantage over new entrants based on their knowledge of regulations and access to information from relationship banking (also called soft information).

FinTech companies have greatly changed the rules of the sector. Today we can pay via our mobile phone, quickly apply for online credit and invest online with one click. The list of innovative ideas is endless and an enrichment for everyone.

FinTech VC investments

The explosive growth of the financial technology industry continued in 2016.

  • 2016 has seen 839 deals globally attracting $15.2bn of investment
  • Global investment is up 27% to Q3 2016 vs the same period in  2015 and has surpassed the 2015 total of $14.9bn
  • Global deal size is slightly ahead of 2015 Q3 levels, with the average increasing from $14.3m to $18.1m, partially attributable to large Chinese investments such as Alipay

 


Source: Pitchbook Innovate/Finance

Most money was invested in start-ups. Projections show that the amount of investment will continue to rise.

The power of this technology-driven financial services lies in the fact that it is fast, efficient, transparent and mobile. You can use these services as long as you have Internet access. Of course, this strongly contrasts with the discontent which experienced customers from traditional banks.

Looking ahead — the FinTech industry could experience even greater growth moving into the coming year. The future remains positive from an investment perspective. We may expect an uptick after relative slow growth in the second half of 2016 due to political risks such as the Brexit and the US elections which fueled great uncertainty across all emerging sectors. Along with increased attention, the industry could see a large number of fresh launches and FinTech could make its way into an even stronger growth pattern in 2017 as investors have become more certain about industry prospects.

The possibilities for FinTech in Netherlands

In the Netherlands, there is also a strong rise of FinTech companies. Companies like Paypal are rapidly gaining market share. The biggest and best-known Dutch company FinTech Adyen. This company was recently valued at more than € 2.3 billion.

The FinTech Top 100 announced in 2016 that there are eight Dutch FinTech startups are part of the leading European companies in the financial technology. The financial infrastructure and the international focus play an important role. In addition, capital and expertise is also necessary for innovation, two factors Netherlands as a European Member State meets. The Netherlands also rise in 2016 from the 5th to the 4th place in the ranking of most competitive economies in the world.

The infographic shows that, perhaps inspired by Adyen, payment providers constitute a large share of the pie. Also data startups and alternative financing (crowdfunding example) are well represented in the Netherlands.

Dutch FinTech awards 2017

FinTech startups are disrupting the financial sector. Innovative companies are eager to please millions of frustrated banking customers. Investors are fascinated by the phenomenal profits made by banks struggling with outdated technology. Today, more and more money is being invested in FinTech. The Uber of the banking sector has not yet emerged, but this is only a matter of time. On April 21 the Dutch FinTech Awards 2017 will be held in Utrecht at the Rabobank Headquarter. The panel of judges of this years event consists of seasoned investors, academics, marketeers, entrepreneurs with an extensive track record in finance and/ or technology.  (http://www.fintech.nl).  The author of this article is one of the judges

Future

What we see in practice is that components of banking products and services are being redeveloped by the FinTech Industry.
These FinTech solutions are smarter, faster and better.
As a result we now see that different FinTech companies will work together. The individual Fintech products often turn out to be complementary to each other.
FinTech companies now recognize that collaboration with other FinTech companies leads to high growth and a better product range.

The Uber of the banking sector

 

The Uber of the banking sector has not yet emerged, but this is only a matter of time.

 

 

Arnoud Doornbos

Associate Partner