Crypto Transactions & Corporate Treasury

28-02-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |

CompleXCountries has yet to meet a corporate treasurer who wants to transact in crypto currency, but we are speaking to many who are responding to commercial or regulatory initiatives and having to establish processes and procedures for doing so. This panel discussion between Damian Glendinnig, John Laurens, and Simon Jones explores the new risks and challenges that corporate treasurers face and suggests how they might respond.

WEBINAR ALERT | Connectivity – The Key to the Future and Digital Transformation

24-02-2022 | treasuryXL | TIS | LinkedIn |

Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CET

Time: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM ET

Taking a look at a dictionary, connectivity in computing is described as “the ability of systems, platforms and applications to be connected to each other”.

But what does this mean for payments in particular and how can you benefit from it?

Register today for this webinar and hear Erol Bozak, CPO, Jacques Yana Mbena, Head of PreSales Europe, and Jonathan Paquette, VP Solutions US, talk about:

  • What are the differences between integration and connectivity?
  • What types of connectivity are there and why is there such complexity?
  • How to simplify connectivity in order to achieve growth and change
  • Real-life examples of how TIS connects clients to providers and banks
  • How TIS can help your company to achieve growth and change in the Digital Age

 

We are very much looking forward to meeting you online: Register here.

Effective Finance & Treasury in Africa event run by EuroFinance | London

23-02-2022 | Eurofinance | treasuryXL |

 

If your company operates in Africa or is thinking about it, then join us at Effective Finance & Treasury in Africa on March 23rd in London. Now in its 9th year, this intimate event brings together more than 150 senior corporate treasury professionals from leading multinationals – all involved in markets across the continent.

With peer-to-peer learning and knowledge-sharing more important than ever before, join other treasury leaders to debate the key issues, share success stories and gain practical guidance on how to overcome your shared challenges.

From treasury technology to managing liquidity risks, financing strategies, FX, payments and more, the concise 1 day agenda will provide all the information you need to redesign your treasury operations for cost and efficiency, power innovation and support business growth.

Speakers include:

Jan Beukes, Group treasurer, MultiChoice Group Ltd

Omofolake Fawibe, Head of finance, IBS, Danone SA

Ricky Brink, Treasury professional, Siemens SA

Titus Owoeye, Head finance, Fan Milk West Africa

Gain all the tools you need to succeed in Africa in 2022 and beyond.

 

Registration is open – find out more and register now.

 

 

 

The Evolution of Legal Documents, The Next Step

22-02-2022 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

A fantastic end-to-end digital journey has begun to create a paperless supply chain ecosystem for the benefit of all parties concerned in the documentary (paper heavy) Supply Chain settlements of today.

EVOLUTION OF LEGAL DOCUMENTS, THE NEXT STEP

For this Enigo AB (www.Enigio.com) started at the basis of the current standard, the paper document. A clean sheet of paper!

A large share of the communication in a trade finance transaction is already digitalised. Banks structure customer communication through portals, negotiate via safe e-mail and sign using e-signatures, not to forget SWIFT which has already enabled the digitalisation of many products and process steps between banks. A major obstacle for achieving a completely digital trade finance world has been the requirements to be able to manage and present documents in their original form. Enigio’s focus has therefore been to create a digital document with the same properties as its paper equivalent. The trace:original document is designed to be able to hold all necessary data to execute a transaction and at the same time not being tied to any specific transaction infrastructure. More importantly it can also be managed by anyone with access to a computer and the internet.

 

How does the solution work? Watch below video:

 

Following the accelerating momentum (after and pushed by the Covid pandemic), we see changing environment in the banking landscape, which is becoming rapidly more adoptive for transformation, especially digitalisation of the paper heavy trade documentation evidencing import- and export transactions. Both infrastructures, paper and digital documents must co-exist. There will be countries being early digital adopters and others lagging. An infrastructure agnostic digital trade finance document of any type can serve all the aspects of the global digital ambition extremely well. Interoperability can be achieved on different levels and by using different tools. One of the most forceful ways of achieving interoperability is by standardisation of data definitions and data formats. Json Schemas and the trace:original document is a perfect connector to achieve digital interoperability not only between blockchain based trade finance platforms but for all trade finance platforms.

The banks’ lack of investment decisions for end-to-end digitised trade processes impacting their customers have created a large cost effect on corporations.

  • Banks additionally impose costs on their corporate customers as they lack strategic vision on operative and compliance issues. Still manual or dual processes that are partly broken and very costly for all parties
  • Banks also impose costs internally for front, middle and back-office and create compliance risks with manual or partly manual processes
  • Trade finance digitalisation is a strategic issue for a bank and its corporate customers and is undergoing rapid change
  • Many solutions and offerings to choose from but a lack of basic digital standards internally and when interacting with others
  • Cost and risk/AML issues for all parties
  • Bank’s role is to help to prioritise the trade finance short-term initiatives that will support corporate treasuries long-term objectives
  • Banks should be firm with their opinion about coherent direction and help corporates to reduce the uncertainty that comes with trade finance digitalisation.

 

Conclusion

 

 

Footnote: further detail to be found on the website: www.Enigio.com

  • Several whitepapers
  • Walkthrough gallery of (1min.) YouTube videos explaining product usage very clear
  • Modules for bank guarantees, Standby L/Cs, Prom Notes, Bills of Exchange and eB/Ls

 

Thank for reading and stay tuned!

 

Wim Kok

International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist

 

 

 

 

Blockchain, crypto mining and the environment: towards sustainable solutions

21-02-2022 | Carlo de Meijer | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

Blockchain has always been presented as providing speed, efficiency and low costs. But there is also a flipside. Since the crypto industry is booming, including DeFi and NFT, and blockchain technology is going more mainstream the discussion of their negative impact on the environment is heightening.

Blockchain consumes huge amounts of energy and that is growing by the day. This while the combat of the climate crisis has the highest priority all over the world. Especially the electricity usage of Bitcoin and other similar blockchain networks have pulled into a larger conversation around sustainability. To understand this we should go back to the basics of how blockchain works. But above all, are there ways to reduce that and could blockchain also contribute to a positive climate change?

Cleaning-up crypto mining

A recent hearing by the US Committee on Energy and Commercial Staff on “Cleaning up the Cryptocurrency: the Energy Impacts of Blockchain “ shows a very dark picture. Many blockchains, amongst which the two largest platforms Bitcoin and Ethereum, still use a so-called Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism to support their resp. crypto currencies that require enormous amounts of energy to operate. According to a recent analysis, the energy required for a Bitcoin transaction could power a household for more than 70 days.

How does mining work?

On the Bitcoin blockchain platform, the infrastructure is distributed and delegated to so-called ‘miners’ around the network. Each time a transaction is made, consensus must be established all across the distributed database (or at least 51% for Bitcoin, for security reasons). This is done through Proof-of-Work (PoW).

Miners are thereby responsible for processing transactions and adding them to the blockchain. These are super-users who compete for the processing work by attempting to solve highly complex algorithmic problems. Mining for PoW cryptocurrencies requires specialised computers that make trillions of guesses per second. In return for this processing, the winner is awarded new cryptocurrencies i.e.  Bitcoin or Ether. This all comes down to the most powerful computer processor exerting the greatest amount of effort. After that other computers on the network quickly verify and a new block containing additional new info is then added to the blockchain. After that the mining process starts over again. A highly energy-intensive process.

As a crypto-miner increases their likelihood of identifying the correct answer by increasing the number of guesses, this process further increases computational power and is creating more energy consumption. Today, PoW miners need a great number of so-called application-specific integrated circuits (ASICS) to have any chance of reliable earnings cryptocurrency rewards on the major cryptocurrency networks. The profitability of mining as well as the increase of the value of PoW currencies requires ever-increasing amounts of energy to power and cool machines.

Environmental impact

While there are many hundreds of different cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum are not only the largest ones but are also the most energy-intensive. In the past few years, their environmental impact has increased greatly in terms of both energy consumption and carbon or CO2 emission.

Energy consumption

The scale of mining has increased substantially triggered by the increased value of mining. This has resulted in a rapidly increasing energy consumption. According to the Bitcoin/Ethereum Energy Consumption Index that is looking at the environmental impact of a blockchain transaction, Bitcoin is the leading coin with the most energy-intensive mining process.

A single Bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as one US household would over 73.82 days (2.5 months). The annual energy usage of the Bitcoin network last year grew from 78 Tera (trillion) watt-hours (TWH) to almost 198 TWH.

Ethereum, while less energy demanding, still uses This is as much electricity for a single transaction as a US household over 8.32 days. The annual energy usage of the Ethereum network grew from almost 15 TWH to more than 92 TWH.

CO2 emission

Bitcoin is also the most polluting cryptocurrency. In total figures and based on 2021 estimations Bitcoin mining edited more than 56.8 million tons of CO2 (or more than 1.000 pounds of CO2 per transaction) to the atmosphere. This would require more than 284 million trees in order to offset the transactions and become carbon neutral. Its total annual energy footprint is similar to Thailand while Bitcoin emits as much CO2 as Kuwait.

ETH mining emitted more than 22 million tons ( or more than 90 pounds per transaction) of CO2. Over the year, that is still as much power as the Netherlands. And as it is projected to emit almost 22 million tons of CO2 by the end of 2021, it would take planting nearly 110 million trees to offset Ehtereum’s contribution to carbon emission.

But taken together, both these blockchains use major economic amounts of energy. These are just ahead of Saudi Arabia and Italy and just behind the United Kingdom. It would be the 12th most consumptive economy on the planet.

To put these figures in perspective global 2021 CO2 emission of Bitcoin and Ethereum mining is equivalent to the emission from more than 15.5 million gasoline-powered cars on the road every year.

 

Bitcoin mining ban

Triggered by the chance of having too little energy left for both consumers and the broader industry, a growing number of countries is now banning or is planning to ban crypto mining.

In China, where 70% of miners worldwide were based, authorities last year has forbidden mining. Whereas since a majority of crypto mining has been moved into lower energy price countries, the present high energy prices caused by the Russian – Ukrainian crisis forced countries like Kosovo and Kazakhstan, but also Iran and India to ban crypto mining. Early this year Russia announced such a ban to prevent winter blockheads. Even in the EU an ESMA official suggested also banning crypto mining. And it is expected that other countries will follow.

 

Ethereum: shift from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS)

There however are also positive developments within the blockchain world towards climate change. Blockchain technology is still young but is advancing and slowly, but definitely, crypto mining is increasingly driven by more renewable energy. And in the meantime, there is  a number of other ground-breaking energy-saving solutions.

Proof-of-State networks

A promising one is the change-over from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) networks, that do not require miners to compete for energy power for zero-sum awards. This could greatly limit energy consumption and carbon emission, thereby mitigating the negative impact of blockchain on the environment.

Proof-of-stake blockchains are newer generation networks. Instead of miners, PoS use a network of ‘validators’ who will stake their own cryptocurrency in exchange for the ability to validate a transaction in exchange for a reward. Effectively, the resource of energy is replaced by capital.

Ethereum 2

Ethereum is now moving forward with their transition from Ethereum 1 (Proof-of-Work), to Ethereum 2 (Proof-of-Stake). With this shift Ethereum hopes that it will make its blockchain both safer to use while greatly minimising energy consumption. Other major PoS networks now include names like Polkadot, Cardano, and Tezos among others.

According to UCL (University College London) research, while using far less energy than proof-of-work (PoW) network Bitcoin (relative to the number of transactions the network can perform at any one time), all the proof-of-stake networks use far less energy – two to three orders of magnitude less than Bitcoin. The same research says PoS-based systems can contribute to the challenges posed by climate change and could even undercut the energy needs of traditional central payment systems, raising hopes that blockchain technology can contribute positively to combatting climate change.

Blockchain and environmental projects: green smart contracts

But there is another – and even more positive – side of blockchain-related to the environment and climate change. Blockchain technology could also be linked to various environmental projects by using so-called green smart contracts.

Green smart contracts

Green smart contracts running on blockchain may unlock new ways to fight climate change and to cope with its impact. At its core, the fight against climate change is going to require a massive shift in global consumption habits. Green smart contracts are an interesting tool for incentivizing participation in global green initiatives. Especially in the areas that ask for large amounts of data collection and verification and rewarding sustainable environmental behaviours, such as regenerative agriculture, carbon offsets, crop insurance etc. Green smart contracts could deliver great promises for environmental issues as these could scale up environmentally conscious blockchain-based solutions. Blockchain could thereby play a great role in stopping or reversing climate change if adopted on a global scale.

Ethereum: DApps and Oracles

The Ethereum platform facilitates the creation of decentralised apps that run on the blockchain. Some of these applications include the management of supply chains, recycling programs, energy systems, environmental treaties, environmental charities, and carbon taxes. These all may help make it more possible to address various environmental issues including air pollution, ocean sustainability, and bio diversity conservation.

This approach relies on networks of so-called oracles, entities that can share data about the world. The development of green smart contracts got a boost as oracles have become production-ready. Today these oracles are broadcasting agricultural data sets onto blockchains, enabling smart contract developers to build applications around crop yields, soil quality, weather reports, carbon offsets etc.

As more and more data sets are fed into blockchains, developers are beginning to produce a wide range of environmentally-conscious smart contracts applications, helping fight against climate change, reduce carbon footprints, sustainable conscious consumption, improve consumption habits etc.

 

New generation consumers and crypto: towards a more climate-conscious approach

New developments like the firm rise in cryptocurrencies, the spectacular growth of DeFi and the growing market for NFTs have attracted many from the New Generations, especially Millennials and Gen Z. This group is increasingly looking for and experiment with these more attractive digital and crypto-assets. But while many of them also worry about climate change and the consequences, most are not aware of the environmental impact of the crypto world.  More delving into the world of blockchain and crypto would not be a bad idea as that could lead to a more climate-conscious approach.

 

Carlo de Meijer

Economist and researcher

 

 

 

 

Source

Instant Payments: the SEPA Instant Payments rulebook is published, what’s next?

| 20-2-2017 | Boudewijn Schenkels | Sponsored content |

At the end of last year the SEPA Instant Payments requirements from the European Payments Council have been published. Consequently the Dutch requirements 3.0 from the Dutch Payments Association were published last month.

SEPA Instants Payments (also called SCT Inst – SEPA Credit Transfer Instant) will allow sending and receiving money 24/7 in seconds. European banking communities can go live from November 2017, the Dutch community has planned to go live from May 2019 with the first Instant Payments services. The development of the SEPA Instant Payments infrastructures of the banks and processors are in train. In april 2018 the start of the inter-CSM testing is planned, the end-to-end bank tests and the pilot phase from January until April 2019.

From our Instant Payments training classes for business professionals and IT staff, we find that participants are not fully aware of the large impact Instant Payments will have on the complete value chain and the opportunities it will bring. In order for you to understand the impact and opportunities, I will explain how Instant Payments are processed.

To give an impression of all the change aspects for users, the banks and the interbank processing side:

For corporates amongst others:

  • Different and new initiation processes, including, if applicable, instant insight in the failure of the payment;
  • New cash management and/or ERP applications or upgrades;
  • Reconciliation aspects;
  • Requirements for instant insight of bank account mutations;
  • Changed processes to monitor late payments (as they can be delivered eg. in the weekend);
  • Evaluate the potential of new services based on Instant Payments;
  • 24/7 operation required?
  • Possibilities in product differentiation.

 For banks amongst others:

  • Support new payments processes;
  • Real time and 24/7 reporting;
  • Extra notifications and reach filtering (as SEPA Instant Payments is not mandatory);
  • Revised (24/7) operational processes;
  • Changes to fraud/AML/sanctions management;
  • New sales and product management activities and roles;
  • Changes liquidity management processes and monitoring;
  • New clearing channel(s).

For processors amongst others:

  • New clearing and settlement processes;
  • Revised operational processing and monitoring;
  • New sales and product management activities and roles

As the launch dates come nearer it certainly triggers managers to now thoroughly evaluate scope and time scales for (required) internal projects and ensure to be ready and steady before launch in 2019 as well as business professionals to anticipate and grasp the potential opportunities.

The key differences between the current SEPA Credit Transfer and the new SCT Inst scheme are:

  • 24/7 available (no downtime)
  • real-time (5 seconds in Netherlands round trip)
  • real-time failure notifications
  • single transaction only

Instant Payments process

In our training, we also explain the differences between the normal payment flow (SCT) and the Instant Payments flow (SCT Inst). The process flow is described below in summary and will take place in several seconds.

 

Figure 1. (Source: EPC Rulebook)

Several key actors are involved in the payments process:

  • Originator: party sending the payment (payer, customer of the bank)
  • Originator bank: the bank of the payer
  • CSM: interbank party that clears and settles the payments between banks (Clearing and Settlement Mechanism)
  • Beneficiary bank: the bank of the payee
  • Beneficiary: the party receiving the payment (payee, customer of the bank)

The new process in summary:

The Originator Bank receives an SCT Inst Instruction from the Originator (Step 1). It verifies the instruction and sends the transaction to the CSM (Step 2), which verifies the message, ensures that the Originator bank has enough funds and instantly sends the SCT Inst Transaction message to the Beneficiary Bank. The Beneficiary Bank instantly verifies the payments and if it can be booked on the account of the Beneficiary (Step 3). The Beneficiary Bank confirms to the CSM if it was successful (positive confirmation) or not (negative confirmation with an immediate Reject) (Step 4). The Beneficiary can withdraw the funds (Step 5) instantly if in the previous step the confirmation was positive (and after the Beneficiary Bank has ensured that the CSM received the positive confirmation message). The CSM instantly reports to the Originator Bank if the SCT Inst Transaction had been successful (or not) (Step 6). In case the Originator Bank receives a negative confirmation about the SCT Inst transaction which indicates that the funds had not been made available to the beneficiary, the originator bank is obliged to immediately inform the originator (Step 7) and lift the reservation of the amount made in step 1.

All in seconds and 24/7!

This all means, that beside the flow of money, there is also a flow of messages between the customer and the bank. Both Beneficiary and Originator will be informed (in a few seconds) that the transaction is done (or not).

Are you interested in what the new SEPA Instant Payment will mean for your organization?
Come to our next open training (March 15 in Utrecht) or inquire about the possibilities of an in-house training.
More information at: www.paymentsadvisorygroup.com.
If you have any questions please contact us via: [email protected] .

 

Boudewijn Schenkels

Senior Consultant Payments @ Payments Advisory Group

 

 

GTreasury Innovation Lab Launches with Goal of Accelerating the Development and Deployment of New Treasury Technologies

17-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Gtreasury | LinkedIn |

The new business unit is a streamlined proving ground for the transformative solutions that empower modern treasurers

CHICAGO, Ill. – February 17, 2022 – GTreasury, a treasury and risk management platform provider, today announced the launch of the GTreasury Innovation Lab. Expanding and formalizing the culture of technology innovation that GTreasury has always supported within the company, the Innovation Lab is structured to bring significant and differentiated impact to customers through brand new advances in treasury management.

The technology team at GTreasury continuously recognizes potential opportunities for treasury innovation. The company has traditionally held twice-annual hackathons to explore unique and creative ways to advance treasury technology and integrations. Now with the launch of the GTreasury Innovation Lab, each member of GTreasury’s technology team will have a dedicated cycle within the lab, gaining a purpose-built and regular outlet for putting ideas to the test. GTreasury developers also constantly absorb feedback from the customer support team, which gives them insight into the specific challenges that treasurers face. Those insights inform developers’ innovative approaches to increase the capabilities, usability, and overall efficiency of the solutions within the GTreasury platform, both for customers and GTreasury’s internal team that supports them.

“GTreasury has always been forward-looking with the technology and integration capabilities that can enable treasury and finance teams to do more and do it more efficiently,” said Ciarán O’Neill, Director – Innovation Lab, GTreasury.

“We keep one eye on where customers are right now and one eye on where they want to be. Our focus is on making sure that we’re always leveraging the latest technologies and offering future-proof solutions – it’s that philosophy that has led to pioneering creations like SmartPredictions™, our AI-fueled cash forecasting tool. The launch of the GTreasury Innovation Lab accelerates our pursuit of the innovations that it takes to develop and deliver powerful and compelling technological advances to our customers, and we’re excited to get going.”

Technologies born in the GTreasury Innovation Lab will progress through a systemic process designed to ensure the viability of a new solution. Developers at the lab first nurture initial ideas into working proof of concepts. Lab members then vote to select the solutions with the most potential to provide demonstrable day-to-day value for treasury teams. Solutions next enter a validation phase, where ideas are presented to internal stakeholders and customer representatives, including early adopters of a beta product. Validated solutions then move to a production development team to be fully built and integrated as stable enterprise-grade components of the GTreasury platform.

The GTreasury Innovation Lab already has a slate of high-potential solutions in ideation, including many in areas where the introduction of AI/ML capabilities offers tremendous potential. Initial areas for exploration include advances around BI reporting, risk analysis modules, and a reconcilement module offering more automated and accurate reconcilement between forecasted and actual treasury payments.

About GTreasury

GTreasury is committed to connecting treasury and digital finance operations by providing a world-class SaaS treasury and risk management system and integrated ecosystem where cash, debt, investments and exposures are seamlessly managed within the office of the CFO. GTreasury delivers intelligent insights, while connecting financial value chains and extending workflows to third-party systems, exchanges, portals and services. Headquartered in Chicago, with locations serving EMEA (London) and APAC (Sydney and Manila), GTreasury’s global community includes more than 800 customers and 30+ industries reaching 160+ countries worldwide.

7 Cash Management Trends for 2022

16-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Nomentia | LinkedIn |

While the show must go on and treasury and finance teams had a busy life at the start of the year, it’s time to take a look at the ever rapidly changing cash management trends of 2022.

While PWC has predicted that the top priorities for CFOs in 2022 will be advanced cash and liquidity management, technology and digital innovation, fraud and cybersecurity, and business partnering, we also internally discussed what trends we see emerging during the new year.

 

1. Digitalization of the processes continues

A year ago, this time, we commissioned a Forrester study, ‘Successful Businesses Excel At Cash Management’, to discover how top decision-makers see the state of cash management. We were ready for some interesting findings but what we found was even more interesting than what we expected.

Clearly, during the past years, a lot has changed as finance and treasury teams had to adjust to the new reality that the global pandemic has brought on all of us. While digitalization has been on the agenda of everybody for some time, it’s been time to speed up the transformation.

While the digital transformation has started in many enterprises already years ago, the work continues to reap the benefits of cloud-based cash and treasury management technology to improve organizational flexibility, cash management processes, and security.

Better digitalized processes do not only make the life of employees easier, but companies can also untap hidden cash, inject accurate forecasting into decision making while improving their day-to-day treasury and finance operations with automation.

While last year enabling home working and ensuring business continuity was a significant driver, for sure, we are moving towards a world where the next items on the cash management wish list will climb up the priority ladder.

 

2. Payment solution for cash flow efficiency

Payments are the core of every business process, but compliance is often the main driver for many to improve existing processes. It’s often the same when companies adopt a payment tool for their global payments to improve the efficiency of their global B2B payments. Having a single tool allows more control over how payments are processed, approved, and released to the banks.

Payment efficiency is also the first step for many other cash management priorities, such as better liquidity management and cash visibility

In the process of setting up a payment solution, the hardest part of working with ERPs, existing TMS, and multiple banks is also tackled and can be utilized for implementing new solutions along the way.

Adapting a tool for payment tool can also make centralized user rights management easier.

 

3. Security is an unavoidable topic

When we are talking about payments, we must discuss security. During last year, financial fraud cases have been making headlines globally. For compliance, organizations must have the basic security measures in place, but finance and treasury are departments that need more advanced risk mitigation capabilities to tackle financial crime and fraudulent attempts to safeguard the company’s funds and financial stability. To tackle security concerns, partnering up with the information security team and finding the right vendors can provide you with the necessary precautions.

Companies are starting to utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning for catching suspicious fraudulent activity or to spot manual errors.

As all companies could be subject to financial crime, investing in fraud prevention should be a no-brainer. It’s almost like insurance for minimizing the risk of an actual incident.

 

4. Outsourcing bank connectivity

You will rarely meet someone that would say that bank connectivity is not a challenge. Yet, it’s something that everybody must have in place. In the Forrester study, 76% of the respondents believed that bank connectivity for fetching statements and intraday material is valuable for their treasury and cash management activities.

Connecting to banks is a challenge due to the different communication protocols and file formats. When banks make changes on their end, the existing connectivity should reflect on that too.

This is only part of the challenge. On the other end, there should be a connection to ERP systems (like SAP or other) or to a TMS to fetch all the accounts payable data instantly. This requires working with another communication protocol and another data format.

Between the two different data formats, there must be a data mapping to make sure that the communication between the bank and the organization works flawlessly.

It is challenging enough to set up a bank connection with a single bank. Imagine doing this process with multiple banks

That’s why most organizations are opting for bank connectivity as a service where companies like Nomentia have already over 10 800 bank connections established and expertise to take care of the rest.

Ps.: We have also created a cool video on how easy it can be to outsource the management of your bank connections:

 

5. We are saying goodbye to spreadsheets

Let’s be honest, cash forecasting with excel is challenging:

  • It’s easy to make an error
  • It’s undocumented – if the owner of the spreadsheet leaves the company, it may take some time to understand the logic behind it
  • There is no audit trail for compliance

Two of the main reasons that are holding back companies from purchasing a solution for liquidity management is the cost and the perception that it’s easy to create cash flow forecasts with spreadsheets and that is how it’s been always done. However, the trend is shifting and more companies start to realize that an actual liquidity management tool would have more benefits.

Using a tool for liquidity makes collecting forecasts and actuals automated and the data can be collected from multiple source systems to help to understand the organization’s current, past, and future liquidity positions to optimize cash flows and FX positions to optimize internal and external funding.

Liquidity management software today is extremely user-friendly and intuitive to use so that users can create reports easily to create accurate reports.

 

6. Reconciliation for all

Comparing bank statements against your accounting to make sure the amounts match each other is not too difficult for small firms where their clients and cash flows come from fewer sources and banks. In enterprises, reconciliation may not be so straightforward. In our Forrester survey, 61% of decision-makers say it’s challenging or very challenging to reconcile payments.

Thus, we expect that automation of the reconciliation process will be the star of 2022 so that organizations can streamline the process for faster month-end closing.

 

7. Alignment between treasury, finance, and IT

According to finance executives, the lack of alignment is the top barrier to better cash management. This is something that at Nomentia we’ve been experiencing firsthand. In a recent interview with TMI, Jukka Sallinen, Nomentia’s CEO said the following:

“Lack of collaboration between different functions within the organization is one of the significant hurdles. There should be more roadmapping and alignment between treasury, finance, and IT. Many solutions provided by software vendors have grown into do-it-all monolithic systems. That, unfortunately, often leads them to be mediocre at best and none of the three departments is entirely happy to work with them. In addition, while there has been lots of talk about open banking and standardization to improve the efficiency of cash management processes, most of these promises have remained unfulfilled.

I believe treasurers want more flexible and fast solutions that can solve their specific challenges and integrate well with their core treasury management system (TMS) and other systems. While it is obviously everyone’s responsibility to look at the big picture, maintaining the growing number of systems and surveying the providers’ landscape is often left to IT. Greater collaboration would be preferable.”

Setting up new solutions, bank connections, or improving security requires cooperation between the different stakeholders and in 2022 they will need to strengthen their alliance for actualizing the strategic benefits of cash management.

 

Cash Management tools are becoming more democratic

Cash management solutions becoming more accessible for businesses of all sizes. As it’s time to digitalize treasury and finance, there are affordable options available for anybody for all the solutions mentioned above. A payment factory, liquidity management, or reconciliation can be easily implemented for a fair price tag in almost any business. The trend has been moving from one-size-fits-all solutions to a hyper-modular approach: you take the solution that you need and integrate it into your existing solution stack so that you can pick the best solutions from different vendors.

Of course, implementation of new cash management solutions will require cooperation and alignment between different departments, prioritization, as well as finding the right strategic vendor that can support the organization’s finance and treasury roadmap.

 

 

The four expectations of Currency Management Automation

14-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

With FX volatility intensifying and exposing companies to even greater currency risk, treasurers & CFOs are faced with many challenges as they look to step up their FX risk management strategy. The key to this is currency management automation, but what are the critical problems an automated solution needs to solve to become a worthwhile tool in your treasury kit?

Click on the image above for the corresponding episode of CurrencyCast

The four main expectations of currency management automation for CFOs and treasurers are:

  1. The need to improve time management
  2. To remove operational risks
  3. To improve the efficiency of treasury operation
  4. To place themselves in a position to make a strategic contribution in terms of enhancing the value of the firm

Challenge 1: Improving time management

According to the 2021 HSBC Corporate Risk Management survey, 55% of treasurers say FX risk management takes up most of their time; and 44% find that automation frees up time. Throughout the FX workflow, members of the finance team manually execute many tasks. These are repetitive, time-consuming and add little value. The French have a wonderful expression to define those tasks: they call them chronophage — literally, they eat away your time. With more time at their disposal, treasurers could focus on more value-adding activities, such as improving and fine-tuning their forecasts.

Challenge 2: Removing operational risks

Throughout the FX workflow, operational risk is omnipresent. Operational risk is the risk that inadequate or failed internal processes can pose to your business. Take spreadsheet risk. From the moment an FX rate is sourced for pricing purposes to the budgeting process, and all the way to the cash flow moment of the post-trade phase, dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of spreadsheets circulate across the enterprise, magnifying the risk of manual data input error.

A recent Citi Corporate Treasury survey showed that 80% of FX risk managers remain reliant on Microsoft Excel. In our conversations with CFOs and treasurers, we noted that often, a handful of people or even sometimes a single individual is in charge of executing most –if not all– the tasks of FX risk management across the entire enterprise. These enterprises can often comprise of subsidiaries, each with its own set of currency pairs. This is the very definition of key person risk.

Taken together, spreadsheet risk and key-person risk are part of operational risks that can cause serious damage to your FX risk management strategy.

Challenge 3: Improving the efficiency of treasury operations

According to this same Citi Corporate Treasury survey, efficiency gains in treasury is the number one expectation of technology. There is a myriad of ways in which the efficiency of treasury operations can be improved in FX risk management.

Consider most Treasury Management Systems (TMS) shortcomings, even those with FX capabilities. Looking at the FX workflow, most TMS are incapable of proactively helping risk managers execute their tasks. Why though?

(a) They lack a robust rate feeder that allows the business to price with the forward rate when forward points are in favour or ‘against’.

(b) They are adequate for balance sheet hedging, but they fail to capture the type of exposure needed in cash flow hedging (e.g. forecasted exposure for individual campaigns/budget periods in static hedging; forecasted exposures for sets of campaigns/budget periods linked together for layered hedging etc. ),

(c) They lack the level of automation –during the cash flow moment of the post-trade phase of a hedging program– needed to efficiently handle the adjustment of hedges to the underlying cash flows.

Challenge 4: The need to make a strategic contribution in terms of enhancing value

HSBC’s survey showed that only 23% of treasurers see themselves as ‘best-in-class’ when it comes to FX hedging. With FX risk firmly under control thanks to a family of automated hedging programs and combinations of hedging programs, CFOs and treasurers would be in a position to:

(a) Diminish the variability of corporate performance
(b) Secure and enhance operating profit margins
(c) Improve the competitive position of the firm
(d) Make more efficient use of invested capital by boosting the sales/capital ratio and by minimising the amount of capital that needs to be set aside for collateral and margin requirements

Improving time management and removing operational risks are the most visible, the most tangible expectations of currency management automation, but they might not be the most important ones. Much more important for your company is to be in a position to improve the efficiency of Treasury operations and to make a strategic contribution towards enhancing the value of the firm.

Digital rules (URDTT) for Trade Finance: Episode 2

10-02-2022 | Wim Kok | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

Episode 2 of our series of educational videos is now available. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Episode 1 is, of course, still available on our YouTube channel.

 

 

Trade Advisory Network Limited and treasuryXL Trade Finance experts launched their second episode of a series of free, educational videos on URDTT. There will be 6 episodes in total covering all aspects of the development, interpretation, and application of URDTT in the context of a digital trade strategy. In the upcoming months, you can expect one educational video per month.

What can you expect in the second episode?

Episode 2 of this series of videos focuses on URDTT (Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions).  Subsequent episodes will focus on the use of electronic records, payment obligations and, the role of banks/non-bank financial service providers.

Duration: 11.38 min

WATCH NOW FOR FREE

Enjoy, explore and develop!

Interested to know more about this topic and the upcoming educational videos? Contact our Expert Wim Kok.

 

Wim Kok

International Business Consultant
Trade Finance Specialist