Eurofinance remains THE event for corporate treasurers | By Pieter de Kiewit

12-10-2022  treasuryXL | Pieter de Kiewit | Treasurer Search  LinkedIn

 

Throughout covid times the organizers of Eurofinance remained active and were able to create interesting web-based events. Still, general opinion in last weeks’ event in Vienna was that there is nothing like the live thing. The programme was packed with interesting content, the event floor with interesting companies and visitors.

By Pieter de Kiewit

Communication leading up to the event and the venue, the Wien Messe, radiated experience in events of this size. The numbers of representatives and visitors were impressive. Luckily, the venue is big enough to not nerve the visitors who have to get used to large crowds again.

The programme was spread out over the very large room for plenary meetings, five large rooms for parallel session with presentations & panel discussions and “open rooms” on the trade floor. Key note speakers like Guy Verhofstadt and Goran Carstedt were able to enthuse with stories beyond the scope of treasury, others covered topics about treasury technology, both practical & visionary and treasury organization, for example about my personal favourite, the treasury labour market.

For many, the trade floor was easily as interesting as the content. Visitors gained market information, for example preparing for a TMS selection and implementation. Also reuniting with old treasury friends and getting to know new ones, was relatively easy during well catered breaks. Some of the visitors created new legends during the Thursday night afterparty that is not covered by this looking-back-blog.

As treasuryXL ambassador I visited the various partners of the platform present and received positive feedback on the event. So Cobase, Kyriba, TIS, CashForce, Nomentia, Refinitiv and CashAnalytics, we hope to see you again in Barcelona again and welcome a number of new ones.

 

Hasta luego,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Pieter de Kiewit

 

 

Amid Ongoing Economic and Geopolitical Uncertainty, Treasurers Must Turn to Data and Technology

12-10-2022 | treasuryXL | GTreasury | LinkedIn |

Helen Kane, the Risk and Exposure Fellow at Hedge Trackers (a GTreasury company) recently sat down with The Global Treasurer to discuss how treasury teams can approach yet more global uncertainty.

Kane, along with the global head of corporate cash management at Deutsche Bank, lends expertise to the current state of deglobalization, the supply chain, and more—as they relate to treasury operations.

“Treasury strategies and skill sets that drove success in the 1990s were different from those in the 2020s. My advice for all treasurers is to be open to change, be open to learning, and be ready to flex, all while maintaining those historical controls and implementing new ones to safeguard your assets,” says Kane. 

Read more at the Global Treasurer

Interview Haia Aaraj, Recruitment Consultant at Treasurer Search

11-10-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

Speaking about a rockstar within recruitment for treasury you think about Haia. She started working for Treasurer Search as a Recruitment Consultant at the beginning of this year and celebrated many successes with the team since then.

Haia is a down-to-earth, spontaneous and proactive human being with a hilarious sense of humor! You will be very lucky to work with her as someone who is searching for a next treasury adventure or if your company is in need of a treasurer.

 

 

We wanted to know Haia a bit more and we asked her the following questions. Happy reading!

7 questions for Haia, let’s go!

INTERVIEW

 

1. Treasurer Search is a recruitment business for treasury based in the Netherlands. What is your role within the company? And can you tell us more about your background?

I’m a recruitment consultant at Treasurer Search, so I’m mainly responsible for assignments from our clients to hire treasury professionals (from A to Z), and here we’re talking about Juniors up to executive level assignments. About my background, I have a Bachelor in Sociology and a high Technical Diploma in Management. I started in recruitment since 2016 doing some internships, and officially started as a recruitment assistant at a medical centre, then a company in Dubai where I made my way to the upper level and I left as a Recruitment manager. I moved to the NL and started at Treasurer Search in Feb, 2022.

2. How would you describe Treasurer Search in 3 words?

Well-connected / Transparent / Professional

 

3. What is, in your perception, the biggest benefit for clients and candidates to work with Treasurer Search?

They will be working with Recruiters who are experienced in both recruitment and treasury, so we know who a good cash manager or group treasurer is. At the same time, Treasurer Search provides a transparent recruitment process, no surprises or hidden info, alongside the smoothness in communication.

4. You started at Treasurer Search with zero knowledge about Treasury 8 months ago. Now you are a Rockstar in matching the right candidate with a client. What’s your secret?

In today’s world, everyone can learn whatever they want in no time, the resources available are at a wide range. For me it was mainly reading, attending online courses, and of course, learning from the experts in this field.

 

5. How do you stay informed about the recruiting industry combined with treasury trends?

Attending as much helpful webinars as possible. Also following the stars in both industries is very helpful because you need to stay up-to-date, don’t you?

 

6. What do you think is the most rewarding aspect of being a treasury recruiter?

Being a treasury recruiter widen your aspects of how the financial management works. You forget about traditional roles in business finance and you learn treasury is way more than the basics that the public knows.

 

7. What are you most proud of in your career at Treasurer Search so far?

When I started at Treasurer Search I was new to the country, and the treasury. This is where my colleagues played the big part and helped a lot through time. Now I’ve integrated well in the society as well as learned a lot about treasury. Mainly, I’m proud of my colleagues who played an essential part in this big movement for me.

 

Want to connect with Haia? Click here

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director Community & Partners, treasuryXL

The Impact of the Supply Chain Crisis on Working Capital

10-10-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |

Working capital is always a hot topic – but never more so than now. Depending on how you count, most businesses are facing double, triple or more whammies.

Source

The Impact of the Supply Chain Crisis on Working Capital

  • Difficulty obtaining supplies, resulting in lost sales, or seasonal goods arriving too late for the season (one participant is in the apparel industry, where this is crucial).
  • Manufacturing inventories building up, as products cannot be completed or sold due to one or two missing components – but the rest have been bought and paid for.
  • Supply chain management building extra inventory buffers
  • Difficulty managing FX hedging programmes, as future cash flows become even harder to predict and forecast
  • And, of course, this is all happening against an environment of rising interest rates, which increases the cost of holding inventory
  • Margin pressures, due to increased shipping costs – especially given the increased use of emergency shipments, which come outside the agreed rates
  • Coupled with inflation and recession risks, there is an increasing concern over distributors’ being left with unsold inventory, with an accompanying credit risk

As always, we had a lively discussion – I encourage you to read the different stories our participants had to tell. They contain lessons for all of us. The main takeaways:

  • There is increased use of supply chain financing programmes, both supplier financing and factoring. Suppliers are becoming less reluctant to use them, and several participants have extended these programmes to countries and areas where they were not used before.
  • An increasing trend to use fintech platforms for this, rather than single bank programmes – often for capacity reasons, as well as ease of use.
  • In many cases, treasury is working with procurement and the suppliers to find a collaborative solution. This can involve paying suppliers early, to help them.
  • One participant spoke of a failed implementation of supply chain financing – the lesson being that you need to have the right team.
  • In each case, treasury is working with the business to try to find the right trade off between the cost of holding more inventory, and the cost of missed or late sales.
  • One participant uses internal factoring to make the best use of cash within the company, before they go to the outside market for funding. This is a cash optimisation tool we often forget.
  • One participant’s company manages very large, multi-year fixed price contracts, with many suppliers around the world. This is a particularly challenging environment.
  • Again, while treasury tends to view inventory and working capital as an evil, it can also be a competitive advantage, if you can supply when your competitors cannot.

Managing and funding working capital is one of the biggest challenges we face. In an environment such as today’s, it is an area where treasurers can truly add value to the business.

 

Contributors:

This report was produced by Monie Lindsey based on a Treasury Peer Call chaired by Damian Glendinning

To access this report:

Access to the full report is available to Premium Subscribers of ComplexCountries. Please log in on the website of ComplexCountries to access the download.
Please contact ComplexCountries to find out about their subscription packages.

Group Treasurers’ Exchange | Designed for Group Treasurers, by Group Treasurers

06-10-2022 | IQPC Exchange | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |



EUROPE’S PREMIER INVITATION-ONLY EVENT FOR GROUP TREASURERS

 

At the 10th annual Group Treasurers’ Exchange, 60 Group Treasurers, Directors and Heads of Treasury will be coming to Berlin on November 15-16 to discuss how innovating the treasury function will mitigate risk and bolster profitability.

Designed for Group Treasurers, by Group Treasurers, the GT Exchange Europe 2022 offers a unique and exclusive format specifically tailored to unpack the issues that are most relevant. This invitation-only meeting is exclusively attended by a select group of pre-qualified senior treasurers responsible for creating an efficient and innovative treasury function. Attendees will benefit from an experience packed with networking with likeminded peers navigating the same industry challenges in a relaxed, consultative, and friendly environment.

The Exchange is attended by senior strategic leaders and decision-makers from major Treasury departments across Europe. Every attendee is personally invited and registered to ensure the right level of seniority and relevance to the event’s key themes.

Group Treasurers, Directors and Heads of Treasury can capitalise on a closed-door event with no press, full of one-to-one meetings, intimate breakout sessions, think tanks, roundtable discussions & more!

This innovative two-day event will cover key challenges facing an innovative treasury function, with expert speakers attending from a variety of top companies, including:

  • Roche
  • General Mills
  • C&A
  • SVP Worldwide
  • Galeria
  • Orange
  • Axpo Group

Topics discussed at the 2022 Exchange include:

  • Payments, Liquidity Management, Taxation and Regulation
  • Future of the Treasury Department
  • Promoting Innovation and Risk
  • Prioritising ESG Initiatives
  • Relationship Management
  • Digitalisation and Financial Efficiency
  • Cash Forecasting
  • Cost Elimination and Fraud Prevention
  • Value Creation Through Liquidity Strategy
  • Cross-Department Collaboration
  • New Technologies for the Treasury Department

 

If you’re a qualifying attendee and want to attend the #GTEU Exchange, request an invitation here

 

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST

 

 

 

Don’t miss the latest episode of TIS’ Payments Hub Podcast!

06-10-2022 | treasuryXL | TIS | LinkedIn |

Don’t miss the latest episode of TIS’ Payments Hub Podcast! treasuryXL expert Patrick Kunz is featured in this edition. The topic of discussion is: Treasury in Finance; What are the newest trends and how can treasurers prepare?

In this episode, treasury and banking expert Kate Pohl speaks with industry consultant and thought-leader Patrick Kunz about the state of contemporary treasury best practices, technology utilization, and more.

Click here to listen to the complete episode

Invitation Open Evening: Fundamentals of Treasury Management | 12 October | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

03-10-2022 | treasuryXL |  VU Amsterdam | LinkedIn |

 

Are you up for the next step in your career? Would you like to further develop your knowledge, skills and professional view of this fast-changing world?

 


The postgraduate programme Treasury Management & Corporate Finance of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers a new course: Fundamentals of Treasury Management.

Join the Online Open Evening on Wednesday, 12 October, 2022 19:00 – 20:00.

This course enables you to review the key financial and organisational issues in Corporate Treasury with attention to current developments in legislation and technology.

Views/opinions of lecturers and discussion with participants may trigger new insights and ideas in your professional practice. This course is meant for treasury professionals willing to test, build and train their professional knowledge base in a more structural way.

Fundamentals of Treasury Management at a glance:

  • Duration: 6 weeks, part-time
  • Start: November 2022
  • Lectures: 1 x onboarding session and 8 x online on Wednesday afternoons & evenings
  • Fee: €  3.250 (for DACT members € 2.750)
  • PE points: 26 PE points

View all admission requirements, costs & lectures schedule

 

Sign up for the Online Open Evening


This is what graduates say about the course

 

Ahmed Fathi Ahmed – EMEA Sales Advisory Cash Management – BNP Paribas: ‘

The certification Fundamentals of Treasury Management is an excellent way to build a solid background in a Treasury Management field. Indeed, it allows me to develop a very finest and an efficient toolbox with regards to International Cash Management, Supply chain and Trade Finance. That has helped me to better serve the large corporations that I manage in my company. Furthermore, I was thrilled to meet talented treasurers and professors which expanded my corporate network.’

 

Partners in delivering this programme are KPMG, BNP Paribas and DACT, the Dutch association of corporate treasurers.

 

 

We are looking forward to welcoming you!

Best regards,

 

 

 

Herbert Rijken
Programme director

 

 

 

 

5 Steps to Automate (and Optimize) Your FX Risk Management Program

03-10-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

Companies of all sizes and industries with FX exposures are being impacted by global trade complexities. New dynamics are putting CFOs and treasurers’ FX strategies and their ability to explain results to the test. Automating an FX management program provides numerous advantages. Diminishing the need for manual involvement frees corporate risk, treasury, finance, and accounting teams from sourcing information manually from multiple systems, compiling and uploading it into spreadsheets and finally attempting to put all of this into a management report that is timely.

By Brian Blihovde
 Senior Director, Product Marketing

Source

Companies of all sizes and industries with foreign currency exposures are being impacted by a number of global trade complexities. For many, supply chain disruptions, interest rate, and price index increases are taking a toll on profitability. For many others, the impact from increased foreign currency headwinds is becoming the glaring reality unveiling weaknesses in FX risk management programs. CFOs are having a more challenging time predicting income statement impacts in both directions: favorable and adverse; neither direction is good, particularly for publicly traded enterprises. New dynamics are putting CFOs and treasurers’ FX strategies and the ability to explain results, to the test. Using leading practices supported by leading solutions helps CFOs and finance leaders overcome these challenges of reliance upon manual, spreadsheet-based workflows.

Whether your organization is starting, advancing, or reassessing your individual FX risk programs, there are levels of benefits, value and success metrics tied to how exposed and how uncertain your levels of fx risk management are. For instance, are you able to identify exposures, aggregate and categorize them? Are those balances generated from automated journal entries or is there a manual component? Across your systems, how well are market exchange rates used and applied across the ERP, GL, procurement, billing, or FP&A modules? How often? Finally, and probably one of the most overlooked attributes, how long does it take and the number of staff who participate in attempting to gain access to even a partial picture of your FX risk? How efficient is the draw of FX data? Ultimately much effort is put into converting that data into information and what do the lags in the timeliness of the information you, as CFO are using to make decisions? The answer lies in a company’s ability to invest in technology and process transformation that can stem from that investment.

Automating the FX Management Process

Diminishing the need for manual involvement or onerous workarounds, frees corporate risk, treasury, finance and accounting teams from sourcing information manually from multiple systems, compiling and uploading into spreadsheets and finally attempting to put all of this into a management report that is timely. The giving them more time to analyze information, track exposure trends and proactively seek out other opportunities to eliminate risk. Ultimately, automation transforms how treasury professionals are perceived within an organization, allowing them to be seen as a key resource in strategic planning. The implementation of an FX management program provides numerous advantages, but the three high-level areas for the entire finance organization and business divisions exist:

  1. A complete picture – Gain a clear understanding of how currency is impacting the entire organization and create reports to analyze exposures in real time
  2. Maximum control of the business – Gain confidence in data quality and exposure accuracy to be able to detect underlying details that are not obvious in manual spreadsheet environments
  3. Informed business decisions – Incorporate historical business cycles, trends and the business insights gained from having detailed data to make better hedging decisions and drive better FX management results
  4. Growth and Scalability / Integrating M&A – business expansion, in the form of acquiring new business units and attempting to run consolidations on them is hard enough. Automation through leading technology can help take advantage of acquisitions and eliminate delays in synchronization from outlier processes or legacy mismatches in risk policy

FX Risk Management Automation: Implications for your Organization

The use of technology does not merely indicate that the application of technology will result in system integration and process automation. Yes, this is one of the starting blocks of taking good processes and creating time-saving opportunities to generate better decision-making with cost-savings optimization. One focus of FX Hedge Management optimization will involve operational cost savings, but another focus should be on taking more of a role in assessing overall strategic success of your hedging through currency pair correlated VaR analyses and scenario analyses. Having more analytical power from technology automation can speed access to better information on your overall cost of hedging foreign currency risk.

Evaluating your FX Risk Program Operations

When evaluating your FX management programs, organizations should consider which of the following aspects of their FX workflow requires better efficiency and effectiveness:

  • Data collection automation can eliminate manual time spent on the collection of exposure data and enable teams make better decisions based on the most accurate information
  • Calculation and analysis of exposures automatically determines the impacts of rate changes, identify impacts that surpass materiality thresholds, and pinpoint accounting or posting issues
  • Hedging and trade preparation processes are pre-proposed from exposure information to ensure corporate decision strategy or policy application and trades are automatically prepared for submission following hedge approval
  • Compliance automation enables the standardization of compliance practices and ensures that documentation contains historical audit trails for reporting purposes
  • End-to-end workflow automation eliminates manual processes and human error for an improvement in both efficiency and security

Expanding Analytical Capabilities

Technology solutions should undergo assessment for various capabilities that are part of leading analytical aspects of the FX Risk program. For instance, portfolio VaR analyses can help companies create portfolio views or dive into targeted gross/net exposures while considering the cost of a hedge across specific currency pairs, portfolios. Automation for running simulations helps determine top hedging scenarios that your risk managers can analyze to determine what currency pairs to hedge and what the resulting net exposure and portfolio value at risk will be. Access to automated dashboards and FX business intelligence gives your treasury and finance leaders the ability to Identify strategies to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of your exposure management and hedging programs across specific parameters and filters. If you cannot choose various exposures, legal entity slices, or currency selections, you are not optimally running an automated or efficient FX program. Finally, FX trade desk workflow automation and confirmation capabilities for the back-office is often under-estimated as entering and executing FX trades is part of operational or physical workflows attributed to the program. However, the implications to generating entries, integration to trading or confirmation platforms makes this an integral part of FX Risk processes.

5 Steps to Create an FX Automation Roadmap

The goal is the create a plan and roadmap to optimize and transform the way your finance organization collects, analyzes, aggregates, and mitigates risk from foreign currency exposures. One suggested approach is to work with FX Advisors to help you understand where you are and how to get there. As always, having a plan, success measures tied back to value drivers helps programs succeed.

FX Improvement Steps Objectives, Guidance
1.
Identify Systems, Sources of Exposures
Often, there are a wide array and extensive network of foreign currency denominated transactions; and extremely unlikely to be creating offsets that could qualify as natural hedges. The inventory of systems in an extensive matrix is a very good starting point.
2.
Assess Integrity of your FX data, GL accounts, & source postings
Once the system landscape is understood, how well are the controls on your ERPs, ancillary systems and manual transactions coming from sub-ledgers? Are your financial statements subject to shifts from erroneous transactional impacts?
3.
Select and deploy technology targeting automation
Consolidating technology platforms into one risk management platform, allows finance organizations to save significant, material cost amounts and increase profitability from merely being accurate in their hedging activities. Fully automating your FX management program with technology, which entails modernizing data collection, exposure consolidation, calculation and analysis, and hedging recommendations, ensures an organization is operating in step with current FX best practices.
4.
Target a full, end to end solution
Your technology solution should provide for:
  • direct ERP data extraction and aggregation
  • exposure and risk analysis generation
  • automated risk transfer
  • VaR correlation analytics and scenario analyses
  • trade execution connectivity to banking portals and trading platforms using state-of-the-art, highly secure SaaS solutions
5.
Customizable, Flexible Business Intelligence
Reporting and dashboards create relevant and valued analytics at your fingertips with real-time speed and automation.

Kyriba’s FX Advisory Services professionals give you leading practice advice and guidance in identifying, assessing, measuring, and implementing positive FX Risk Management results across your people, processes and systems. Learn how to improve and transform your FX Risk Management profile into more predictable and effective hedging results

Learn more about Kyriba’s leading FX Risk Management solution and our FX Advisory Team today. Reach out to our team of FX Risk Management professionals at: [email protected]

Click here to view all blogs by Kyriba

LIVE SESSION | My Treasury Career Development & How the Register Treasurer education contributed

29-09-2022  treasuryXL | Treasurer Search | LinkedIn

 

Are you thinking about how you can shape your treasury career and in need for inspiration? There are plenty of education opportunities, but in what education will you invest?

 

 

You are invited to join our next Live Session. Registration is Now Open for:

𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 & 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝

There is no standard career path for treasurers but one can learn from the choices and developments of the successful ones.

In this webinar two graduated Register Treasurers will share their stories:

  • 🌟 Jurgen Wessel RT is interim Head of Treasury of SHV and has experience in a variety of international companies at HQ and treasury hub level.
  • 🌟 Frank van der Hoeven RT van der Hoeven used to be a banker, moved to the corporate side and currently is Treasury Manager at IMCD, well-known for many successful acquisition and integration processes.

They will tell you about how they moved between various stations and will pay special attention to the added value of their post academic degree: The Treasury Management and Corporate Finance programme (RT Programme) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam).

 

REGISTER HERE

 

Everyone is welcome to this webinar. This webinar is extra relevant for those who consider joining the RT programme.

🌟Moderator: Pieter de Kiewit of Treasurer Search

🌟Duration: 45 minutes

 

We can’t wait to welcome you next week!

Best regards,

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners

 

 

 

 

Download Kantox’s Budget Hedging Report

28-09-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

Are you a CFO or Treasurer drafting your upcoming budget? Find out how to set, defend and outperform your budget rate in Kantox’s exclusive new report.

Based on real industry insights, you can learn:

🔹 The best way to set a budget rate

🔹 How to delay hedge execution while reducing forecast risk

🔹 How to improve your budgeted profit margins

🔹 Top solutions to automate time-consuming processes

👉 Get your report here