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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:

The need to improve time management
To remove operational risks
To improve the efficiency of treasury operation
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

Corporate Treasury: 3 ways to prevent fraud risk in one-time vendor payments

09-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Aico | LinkedIn |

Manual payments are somewhat of an outlier among corporate treasury payments. These one-time vendor transactions to companies or private individuals whose details are not in your ERP system pose a significant risk of fraud. They are challenging to track and easy to manipulate in an enterprise environment. This makes them a target for auditors, who want to clearly see you have monitored all points in the payment process where data can be altered. Changing the payment details or falsifying invoices are just a couple of mishandling examples, leading to massive fraud cases like these.

There is, however, a transparent and secure way to handle these payments as quickly and efficiently as the typical accounts payable invoice automation process.

Let’s look at three preventative solutions to reduce the fraud risk.

1. Enforce approval workflows: The four-eye principle.

Much of payment fraud originates in transferring small sums to non-existing vendors, rather than large payments. It makes such transactions much harder to identify and match over a long period.

The so-called four-eye principle is one of the cornerstones of a preventative approach to fraud management and internal controls in general. Having no means to enforce payment approval workflows across the group’s companies with little to no visibility into initiated payments is a challenge many enterprises struggle with.

A software solution to enforce systemic payment approvals is essential. And so is the ability to easily customise these workflows and apply them to the whole company group in line with your internal and external compliance guidelines.

You may want to enforce one or two-step payment approvals based on value or frequently recurring IBAN details. A mandatory requirement to add an attachment of supporting evidence is another possibility. These are just some examples of how a modern software solution like Aico can help you minimise fraud risk effectively.

2. Secure PAIN file creation and bank transfers.

A holistic approach is essential for effectively implementing internal controls against payment fraud. Eliminating 90% of a leak in your boat still leaves you at high risk. So, payment approvals alone will make it harder to start a fraudulent payment, but they won’t secure you from trickery further down the process.

Once one or more people have approved the payment, it will be sent to the bank in a PAIN (payment initiation) file format. The data in the approved payment request should be identical to the one in the PAIN file. Eliminating any possibility to create or alter the PAIN file manually is the single most effective protection in this part of the process. So ideally, PAIN file creation and transfer to the bank should be fully automated.

In the case of the Aico Manual Payments software solution, the system will create the PAIN file automatically in the background using the master data of the approved payment request. Once approved, the PAIN file goes automatically to the bank for the payment without any further human interaction.

3. Automate journal postings.

Verifying the execution of the payment and accounting for it in a compliant way is the last, but not least, important part of the safe payment process. Just as we want to ensure the bank receives the approved payment document, it is equally important to match the returning bank statement with the original payment order.

And once again, an automated process is the safest solution. In fact, at this point, we can also securely manage the accounting by automatically creating and posting a journal entry into the ERP system. Automation here saves us time and ensures that subsequent journals are posted to the correct accounts with the right value matching the master data of the initially approved payment request.

Is it possible to take one more step to safeguard this process?

In addition to the smart workflows and powerful automation, the Aico Manual Payments solution will also archive the entire activity log and documents related to the specific payment. This extra mile of effort will significantly simplify the audit process and help to identify any irregularities.

About Aico

We help enterprises simplify financial close and record-to-report (R2R) accounting processes. The result is less manual work and faster period-end financial reporting with the assurance of compliance and data accuracy.

Our software platform includes solutions for the key R2R processes – Account Reconciliation, Closing Task Management, Journal Entries, Intercompany Invoicing and Manual Payments.

Unique real-time integration to multiple ERP systems brings increased automation levels and reduces IT system complexity to our customers.

With teams and a network of partners across EMEA, we deliver high-complexity projects for enterprises with a global footprint.

Visit aico.ai for more information about Aico.

Visit Aico resource library for eBooks and webinars on R2R and financial close best practices.

Join us on LinkedIn.

Launch of the Treasurer Test 2.0, the new version of the assessment tool for Corporate Treasurers

08-02-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

treasuryXL announces the launch of the Treasurer Test 2.0, the new version of the assessment tool for Corporate Treasurers.

Accepting Crypto Currency In Corporate Treasury

03-02-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |

As more treasuries will have to start accepting crypto, whether it be an emerging market like El Salvador, for digital assets, NFTs and other goods that are sold in the metaverse. This report explores the experiences of treasurers in setting up their systems to accept crypto currency.

This report is based on two treasury peer calls chaired by Simon Jones and was compiled by Monie Lindsey.

This report is based on two treasury peer calls chaired by Simon Jones and was compiled by Monie Lindsey.

The full 14-page detailed report is available to subscribers in our Report Library.

To find out about subscriptions and other value-added services, please make an enquiry.

Chair’s Overview

Following the CompleXCountries call ‘Accepting Bitcoin in Corporate Treasury – Lessons from El Salvador’, (Report Summary Here), the CXC community clearly did not see this as a one off. The necessity to accept Bitcoin & Crypto may become a reality for more Treasurers, but the path is far from being very clear. The purpose of this call was to share experiences and challenges, and learn from the various solutions Treasurers are putting in place if they have to accept crypto currency to support their businesses.

The session was extremely insightful and even if a Corporate is not accepting Crypto now, this report required reading for the Treasury community. It is a challenge that will increasingly become more common as corporations drive more digital sales channels. The regulated Crypto exchanges have seen significant growth over the last few years and the ability to exchange fiat for crypto and back to fiat has become widely available in the marketplace.

We posed the questions: Is this something that they have had to deal with or are going to have to deal with in the future? El Salvador was the first newsworthy case but on this call we gained insight to how it is becoming more mainstream in digital businesses and therefore becoming far more common for corporates around the world.

Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Definition. “A unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.” Collins Dictionary, who picked ‘NFT’ as their word of the year 2021.

To summarise the key learning points:

Consumer businesses are targeting digital native consumers who are increasingly buying NFTs as collectibles or to demonstrate their alignment with a brand or product. This client base expects to be able to buy or trade NFTs in exchange for crypto assets that they might have accumulated from investments.
The marketplace and blockchain the NFT is issued on, will determine the crypto asset that can be used to buy the NFT, e.g. Ethereum or stable coins on the Ethereum blockchain.
Coinbase was the exchange of choice for the Corporate Treasurers who took part in this call, primarily because they are publicly listed and regulated in many markets around the world.
KYC & Onboarding procedures were no different for Coinbase than for opening a bank account at a relationship bank, it still took weeks, not days.
Some Treasurers allow NFTs to be purchased via a crypto currency, but immediately convert back to fiat currency, via the exchange provider, both to avoid volatility and because of uncertainty over the accounting, legal and tax implications of holding crypto currency. Bitcoin was not widely used, as it was deemed to be more open to money laundering concerns by the exchanges.
Crypto Exchange commission continues to be quite expensive and is not as tight as fiat currency exchange.
Accepting Bitcoin seemed limited to only El Salvador, where it is legal tender in addition to USD. (Corporates are required to accept BTC in payment should their client require it.) Other countries may follow.
Anti-Money Laundering controls continue to be top of mind and it’s important to make sure the NFT auction houses, marketplaces and collecting exchanges are able to trace the origin of coins to protect their corporate clients.

Conclusion: Highly insightful session, brings home the reality that as more businesses issue and sell digital assets like NFTs online for their products & services, it will be a requirement to accept crypto coins. No longer are crypto-assets like bitcoin just for speculative investment, but they are becoming the instrument of choice for some digital native consumers to use for purchases. Understanding the digital product & services strategy at a Corporate and the implications that might have for a corporate treasurer is fast becoming a necessity to supporting the business.

Would you like the full copy of this report?

Sign up for our updates and get a free copy, plus regular bulletins and more occasional free reports.

Conference “Toekomst Betalingsverkeer” 31 March 2022 Amsterdam | Discount 20%

02-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Kendra Keydeniers |

Euroform will host the 22^nd edition of the Conference “Toekomst Betalingsverkeer” on Thursday March 31, 2022 at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam.

“Toekomst Betalingsverkeer” is a major event in the Payment Business with round table sessions, keynotes and more.

PAYMENT TRAFFIC EXPERIENCED A MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT OVER THE LAST YEAR

Payment trends accelerated during the corona pandemic. Due to the dynamic market conditions, both supply and demand changed rapidly.

Payments are becoming increasingly seamless, embedded and contextual;
More and more technological possibilities are becoming apparent. This also entails risks. Therefore, improving cybersecurity remains essential to guarantee security;
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can help detect and prevent security breaches. Customer verification can serve as an extra layer of security;
To offer customers an optimal, easy and fast payment experience, more and more integrated payments are being used;
Platforms are also becoming more popular. They see an opportunity to broaden their offer with opportunities around investing and cryptocurrency.

Many steps have already been taken to promote innovation and digitization within the payment system.

What important developments can we expect in the future of payment systems? Together with other payment professionals, you will dive into the conversation around this topic.

At the event there is plenty of room to network and learn from each other. Inspire and challenge each other, exchanging knowledge, experience and ideas are key.

What can you expect?

Discussions and Keynote sessions about the following three important topics:

Regulations, Reality
Embedded: The New Payments Behavior
Acceleration Towards New Money

Furthermore,

Expand your professional network with the attendance of 300 + strategic payment experts
Over 10 C-level speeches with topics like: Digital Transformation in Banking, FinTech, NextGen customer, New PSD2 Business Models, Blockchain Impact and Artificial Intelligence
20 round table sessions: EID, PSD2, Instant Payments, Cybersecurity, Cryptocurrencies, Data-Driven Business Models
Plenty of networking opportunities with Drinks & Bites

Program and Speakers

You can see an overview of all the speakers of 2022 here.

To take a deeper dive into the full program you can view and download the agenda here.

Join the event with a discount and register exclusive via treasuryXL

The registration fee to attend the event is € 849,00 per attendee.

We are happy to provide our readers with a 20% discount on your registration fee.

Make sure to use this exclusive link to register with a discount.

I wish you a great event!

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners
treasuryXL

Nomentia Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

01-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Nomentia | LinkedIn |

Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to Nomentia to take advantage of the scalability, reliability and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies.

HELSINKI, Finland — February 1, 2022 — Nomentia, a leading European provider of cash and treasury management solutions, today announced the availability of Nomentia Bank Connectivity as a Service in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure. Nomentia customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management.

“Adding Nomentia to Microsoft Azure Marketplace will help IT departments achieve desired connectivity between banks and internal systems, faster than ever before” Anna-Lisa Natchev, Chief Growth Officer of Nomentia

“Nomentia is addressing some of the major challenges treasury, finance and IT teams are facing during the digitalization and transformation of treasury and finance processes. We not only take care of ERP integrations, but also offer unrivaled bank connectivity-as-a-service across the market. Adding Nomentia to Microsoft Azure Marketplace will help IT departments achieve desired connectivity between banks and internal systems, faster than ever before. Using Nomentia’s bank connectivity-as-a-service can significantly reduce IT burden and ensure treasury and finance departments can start building better processes to improve operations, data output quality, security and compliance assurance,” says Anna-Lisa Natchev, Chief Growth Officer of Nomentia.

“Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure,” said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. “We’re happy to welcome Nomentia’s solution to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem.”
The Azure Marketplace is an online market for buying and selling cloud solutions certified to run on Azure. The Azure Marketplace helps connect companies seeking innovative, cloud-based solutions with partners who have developed solutions that are ready to use.

About Nomentia

Nomentia is a category leader within European treasury and cash management solutions. Nomentia’s mission is to provide unparalleled cloud treasury and cash management solutions for and with our customers. Today, Nomentia is solving the challenges of modern treasurers and cash managers across 2,000+ businesses in over 80 countries, processing more than 800 billion euros annually. Nomentia solutions specialize in global payments, bank connectivity-as-service, cash-forecasting and visibility, bank account management, financial process automation, treasury workflows, FX risk, in-house banking, and trade finance. For more information, visit www.nomentia.com.

For more information, press only:

Anna-Lisa Natchev, Nomentia, Chief Growth Officer, +358 50 413 0704, [email protected]

Barbara Babati, Nomentia, Head of Marketing, +358 40 762 3356, [email protected]

Corporate Treasury Data Insights: trends in COVID-19 Refinitiv usage data

01-02-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

Andrew Hollins, Director of Corporate Treasury Proposition at Refinitiv, brings you a round-up of the latest Corporate Treasury Data Insights, including corporate treasury activity during COVID-19 illustrated through Refinitiv’s usage data, a Refinitiv report on ESG risk and whether carbon markets matter to COP26.

Corporate treasury activity illustrated through Refinitiv data usage saw the COVID-19 pandemic split into three distinct phases.
The initial phase concentrated on credit risk data and analytics, as well as corporate financial data. Meanwhile, phase two focused on cash balances, and phase three honed in on ESG data and analytics as the world moved towards the ‘new normal’.
Other areas of corporate treasury under the microscope included risk mitigation and ESG, carbon markets and COP26, and the state of the U.S. labour market.

For more data-driven insights in your Inbox, subscribe to the Refinitiv Perspectives weekly newsletter.

Chart of the Month

Refinitiv’s usage data paints a fascinating picture of corporate treasury activity throughout the pandemic. As events unfolded, we saw interesting and distinct dynamics play out.

We’ve discerned three phases of the pandemic.

Phase 1: the survival phase

The standout feature of this initial period was the focus on credit risk data and analytics, highlighted by an unprecedented increase in usage of the Credit Default Swaps app – 155 percent in EMEA, and 120 percent in Asia and the Americas.

Demand for corporate financial data also grew strongly – notably company fundamental data (usage up 81 percent), private company data (usage up 33 percent), sectoral data, and peer analysis (usage up 113 percent).

Conversely, during this initial phase, we saw a distinct fall in demand for ESG and LIBOR-related data and analytics.

Phase 2: the cash and corporate health phase

From June to September 2020, activities aimed at boosting cash balances were very much apparent. Our data showed a notable acceleration in corporate debt issuance.

In addition, there was also another, even bigger, jump in demand for company fundamental data with usage of key ratios and cashflow data growing by 160 percent and 175 percent respectively.

Phase 3: return to ‘new normal’

Emerging from the pandemic demand for ESG data and analytics is once again rising strongly. Between December 2020 and March 2021, it has grown by 93 percent to stand well above pre-COVID-19 levels.

This trend is likely to continue its upward trajectory given the rapidly evolving regulatory and demand-led factors that seem to be driving the focus on sustainability.

Refinitiv unpacks more of our usage data insights in a new masterclass series produced in collaboration with TreasuryToday.

Log-in or register at TreasuryToday to follow the series

Refinitiv report: Risk mitigation and the pivotal role of ESG

The far-reaching consequences of COVID-19 have forever changed the risk landscape, and rising levels of third-party risk now demand urgent attention.

Persistent gaps in formal due diligence must clearly be addressed, but a broader sea change is needed: both financial institutions and corporates need to adopt a more holistic approach to risk management – one that incorporates environmental, social and governance considerations as a fundamental tenet of the risk mitigation process, rather than as a separate silo.

Read the report: Risk mitigation and the pivotal role of ESG

Why do carbon markets matter to COP26?

Carbon markets are a key tool for countries to cut their greenhouse gases and meet their Paris Agreement commitments.

The cost of polluting is rising in Europe, parts of North America, South Korea and New Zealand. Most likely it will do so in China, the latest country to launch a national emissions trading system.

Read the blog: Why do carbon markets matter to COP26?

Are U.S. labour markets healing?

The COVID-induced rigidities in the U.S. labour market are easing, but the labour market remains extremely tight, implying potential upwards pressure on inflation from wages.

What can the Beveridge curve tell us?

Inflation gets complicated

There are textbook ways for investors to beat inflation. Unfortunately, we do not live in a textbook world.

Inflation chatter is always a thing, but the shocks are now coming thick and fast.

Decades of globalisation had muted inflation, and the last time the Consumer Price Index (CPI) topped 5 percent was just over a decade ago.

Refinitiv Lipper explores

Refinitiv Corporate Treasury Newsbeat

Refinitiv launches USD IBOR Institutional Cash Fallbacks in production to facilitate industry transition from USD LIBOR | Refinitiv has announced that USD IBOR Institutional Cash Fallbacks are now production benchmarks, and it will launch USD IBOR Consumer Cash Fallbacks 1-week and 2-month settings pending Refinitiv Benchmark Services (UK) Limited (“RBSL”) board approval. Read more