What is a Cash Conversion Cycle?

24-08-2022 | treasuryXL | CashAnalytics | LinkedIn |

Did you know that on treasuryXL you can find information on all relevant treasury topics? One of the concepts you can find information on is the Cash Conversion Cycle.  A business’s cash conversion cycle (CCC) is a measurement of how much time it takes to turn a cash investment in the business into a cash return in the form of sales. CashAnalytics can tell you all about how to calculate your CCC, what makes a good/bad CCC and how to shorten your CCC.

Original source

Find out:

  • How to Calculate Your Cash Conversion Cycle

  • What Is a Good Cash Conversion Cycle?

  • How to Shorten Your Cash Conversion Cycle (Sustainably)

  • Sustainable CCC Improvements Require Reliable Real-Time Data

Read what Cash Conversion Cycle is all about

 

When Should You Start a Hedge Program?

23-08-2022 | treasuryXL | GTreasury | LinkedIn |

A popular Chinese proverb says “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” This is equally true in the world of hedging.

Source: Hedge Trackers, a GTreasury Company

We’ve seen volatility in currency markets, with the EUR falling 9 percent between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. We’ve seen volatility in commodities, with some commodity prices doubling and tripling and oil prices approaching 10-year highs. And short-term interest rates may quadruple in a year.

Companies that have well-run hedge programs have time to prepare and adjust to these forces. But what if you’ve been waiting for “the best time” or “the right time” to hedge?

Two years ago, we were surprised with a global pandemic – when everything settles down, will it be a good time to start a hedge program? Before we even have a chance to assimilate that, we are now faced with war in Europe. Sanctions, which will almost certainly be followed by more sanctions and more volatility, and which will be followed by what? Are you feeling like you’ve missed the opportunity to start hedging?

It’s never too late to set up a hedge program.

Now, just like last week, last year, and five years ago, the steps are the same.

  • Determine what your objective is. As our own Helen Kane says, “I believe that most hedge programs should take a deep breath, step back and determine what is really the objective…. Are they trying to protect margins? Are they trying to lock in budgeted earnings? Are they smoothing the year-over-year impact of currency into their financials?”
  • Once you know your objective, identify and quantify your exposures. Investigate the start of the exposure (often not easy to identify) and its end. The answers will be different depending on your hedge objective, and that’s why it’s critical to get that objective determined first. It is expected that you would have different objectives for different exposures.
  • You’re ready to start working on your policy, detailing what exposures will be managed with what strategies/derivatives over what time frame. You may want to consider some flexibility in the policy to systematically take advantage (or not), with clear guidelines generational rate movements – allowing more or less (but not zero) hedging in those times when rates hit 5- or 10-year highs or lows. This provides a framework to contemplate those things that we thought were so rare that we wouldn’t see them in our lifetime. Remember those days?
  • There are other documents that will be necessary. If not addressed directly in your policy, you’ll want a guideline for accounting and an appropriate control structure. You’ll also need to make sure that inception documentation supporting any special hedge accounting is compliant.
  • You’ll need to set up a process for collecting exposures at different stages (anticipated, recognized, impacting earnings, settled).
  • Make sure that you have a good working relationship and legal framework (ISDA) with your counterparties and that you set up a good process for trading and competitive bidding.
  • Of course, trade management and special hedge accounting should not be left to spreadsheets. We’d be happy to introduce you to CapellaFX, which not only is a trade repository but also accumulates your exposure data (existing and anticipated), applies hedge decisions, designates and documents exposures, drives your hedge accounting and provides effectiveness tests. Most importantly, it is user-friendly for both Treasury and Accounting and doesn’t require a derivative specialist to use or implement.

Conclusion

Does all of this seem daunting? It doesn’t have to be. Hedge Trackers can help you with every step. We have the people and the systems to assist your team, or you can offload some or all of the process to us.

Returning to our original question on the best time to plant the tree – or start a hedging program. If you haven’t already done so, recall that the next best time to start is right now.

CFO Perspectives: 5 ways CFOs can increase the efficiency of treasury operations

16-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

In the third edition of CFO Perspectives, we’ll draw from our work with CFOs to explore five ways senior finance executives can increase the efficiency of treasury operations using purpose-built software solutions. 

Credits: Kantox
Source

According to a recent HSBC report, as many as 81% of CFOs view the digitisation of treasury processes as an area of increasing importance. The same survey shows that technology has moved from ‘nice to have’ to a key differentiator for treasury. 

The good news is that ‘special purpose’ technology exists that —working alongside your existing systems (TMS, ERP)— allows CFO’s and finance teams to dramatically boost the efficiency of treasury operations.

In this blog, we briefly present five areas of improvement across the FX workflow. Taken together, they present a unique opportunity for CFOs to turn the ‘digital treasury’ into a day-to-day reality, allowing members of the finance team to remove operational risks while devoting more time to value-adding tasks.

Improvements across the FX workflow

Currency management is a process undertaken in three different phases. In the pre-trade phase, FX-related pricing is managed alongside the crucially important collection and processing of the firm’s exposure. The trade phase, quite naturally, is concerned with trade execution, primarily through forward FX contracts. Finally, the post-trade phase covers accounting, reporting and analytics processes and the ‘cash flow moment’ of payments and collections.

In all of these phases, easy-to-install software solutions provide tangible improvements in terms of the efficiency of treasury operations.

These improvements include:

Improvement 1: Set a strong ‘FX rate feeder’

Pain point: Commercial teams often lack the capability to use the currency rates they need to price in a data-driven and efficient way. With favourable forward points, they could use the forward FX rate to price more competitively without hurting budgeted profit margins. With unfavourable forward points, pricing with the forward rate would allow them to remove excessive markups.

Improvement: Whatever the number of transactions involved, automated solutions to price with the required FX rate can be quickly scaled to all the required currencies, with the pricing markups per client segment and currency pair requested by commercial teams.

Improvement 2: Process all types of exposure

Pain point: When it comes to collecting the firm’s exposure to currency risk, most Treasury Management Systems (TMS) are designed with accounts receivables/payables in mind. While this works fine for balance sheet hedging, the focus on accounting items precludes the automation of cash flow hedging based on the exposure collected earlier — firm commitments and forecasts for budget periods. 

Improvement: API-based solutions allow finance teams to automate the crucially important process of capturing the relevant type of exposure information and run a variety of cash flow hedging programs, including combinations of programs that require more than one type of exposure data. 

Improvement 3: Connect the phases of the FX workflow

Pain point: The trade phase of the FX workflow is where most of the attention of CFOs has been placed, as Multi-Dealer Trading platforms such as 360T have reduced the cost of FX trading for corporations. But while the execution of trades is oftentimes manually initiated, most systems lack the capability to fully automate the process of triggering trades.

Improvement: What special-purpose software brings is the capability not only to automate the trade part of the workflow —via connectivity with Multi-Dealer platforms—but also to link it to the pre-trade phase as well by ensuring that trades are executed at the right moment in time.

Improvement 4: Automate Hedge Accounting

Pain point: Compiling the documentation required to perform Hedge Accounting can be a costly and time-consuming process, as hedge effectiveness is assessed in by comparing changes in the fair value of the hedged item to changes in the fair value of the corresponding derivative instrument. This forces companies to rely on highly skilled personnel to manually execute these tasks.

Improvement: The perfect end-to-end traceability of automated solutions makes it possible accounting team to automate the painstaking process of compiling all the required documentation to perform Hedge Accounting – allowing CFOs to cost-effectively provide more informative financial statements.

Improvement 5: Automate swap execution

Pain point: The process of adjusting the firm’s hedging position to the cash settlement of the underlying commercial exposure is one of the finance team’s most resource-intensive and error-prone tasks. It can require an enormous amount of ‘swapping’, particularly for companies that manage many commercial transactions in different currencies.

Improvement: Swap automation, a task that most TMS are unable to perform, is a key feature of Currency Management Automation software. Perfect traceability allows members of the finance team to automatically ‘draw on’ or ‘roll over’ existing forward positions while removing operational risks.

Read the second edition of our CFO Perspectives series, 5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow from when managing FX risk.

Payment Platforms & Collections in China

11-08-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |

Cryptocurrency, digital wallets, virtual everything – there is a huge amount of change. China has been at the forefront of a lot of digital trends, partly due to the fact it had an antiquated banking system which has been thoroughly modernised, and partly because the explosion of internet shopping in the country required a digital payments solution. This is a challenge when there are no credit cards.

Source

This report is based on a Treasury peer Call which explored how this is affecting members’ companies, and how they are adapting to this brave new, digital, world.
  • Most participants are accepting payment using WeChat Pay and Alipay. None is using these tools to make corporate payments.
  • The collections process using these tools is efficient and effective: you work with a third party (usually accessed via a banking provider), who will transfer the funds to your account the following day. One participant did an RFP, with two Chinese and two foreign banks, and found the service was identical – though pricing was different, and not transparent.
  • There was no mention of billbacks, the excessively high fees and acquirors which blight the use of credit cards in other countries
  • The one complaint all participants had was the difficulty linking this process to internal systems, for the reconciliation of receipts or for compliance purposes in terms of identifying the source of cash. The third party companies do provide detailed lists of payors, but it can be difficult to upload these into the ERP system.
  • There was a lot of discussion about travel expenses. The low acceptance of credit cards in China complicates the automated links which often exist between credit cards and T&E management and control systems. Allowing employees to use Alipay and WeChat Pay generally raised problems in terms of obtaining adequate receipts. One participant’s company was doing extensive auditing of travel expense claims, but this is expensive.
  • One company is using virtual credit cards to solve some of these issues, while one is routing payments made on AliPay and WeChat Pay via credit card providers to get the automated expense reporting.
  • Another issue was that, in some cases, sales teams had opened Alipay and WeChat Pay wallets for customers to pay into – but there was no way to stop them from taking this cash to pay themselves. The solution is to require all collections to go via the third party providers, who are under instructions to only remit the cash to the Company’s bank account.
  • Most B2B collections still go through bank transfers or BADs (Bankers’ Acceptance Drafts). One participant is introducing controls to ensure BADs are only accepted if drawn on banks with an acceptable credit profile. Some participants are making payments by endorsing customers’ BADs to their own suppliers. There are some collections by cheque.
  • On the payments side, most participants are making payments via the banks’ host to host systems, or using the payment tools in their TMS products. Participants are using a variety of local and foreign banks: ICBC and Bank of China got the most mentions amongst the Chinese banks, with a spread across Citi, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank for the foreign ones. Kyriba was the TMS mentioned.
  • One participant is using Pcards for small value purchases – but this is not easy.
  • One participant was struggling with customers who have operations in both mainland China and Hong Kong, and who regularly make payments out of the wrong entity.
  • One participant has experience of linking their IT systems directly to the banking system, to get reporting from all their banks. While possible, this requires a lot of IT work.

There as also a discussion about cash pooling: this works in China.

Bottom line: China is at the forefront of innovation in dematerialised payments. As one participant put it, it has become very hard to use old fashioned cash.

But, as this is China, things are not straightforward!

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.

Hogeschool Utrecht | Opleiding Treasury Management Post-Bachelor (Dutch)

10-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Hogeschool Utrecht| LinkedIn |

Je ambieert een functie als financieel directeur van een grotere (internationale) MKB-onderneming of non-profitorganisatie. Maar hoe word je financieel directeur? Die vraag staat centraal in de training Treasury Management. Tijdens vier masterclasses verdiep je je in de belangrijkste onderdelen van treasury management: corporate finance, cash management, valuta- en rentemanagement. Na de training ben je klaar om je ambitie waar te maken.

Je bent nu controller, accountant, financieel adviseur, cash manager of bankier en hebt minimaal drie jaar werkervaring. Jouw kennis uit het financiële bedrijfsleven vullen we aan met alle ins en outs van treasury management. Je start in het voorjaar en sluit de training na de zomer af met een opdracht uit je eigen praktijk. Ook doe je mee aan een treasury management game.

Schrijf je nu in

Opleidingsinhoud

Tijdens de opleiding Treasury Management richt je je op veel praktische vraagstukken. Je houdt je bezig met bankrelatiemanagement, (alternatieve) financieringsmodellen, rentederivaten, rapportages, internationaal zakendoen en meer. Allemaal met maar één doel: ervoor zorgen dat jij je verder professionaliseert, zodat je klaar bent voor die (internationale) topbaan.

Toelating

Om toegelaten te worden tot de cursus Treasury Management moet je een hbo-diploma hebben, net als minimaal drie jaar relevante werkervaring.

Tijdens een adviesgesprek kijken we samen of de opleiding aansluit bij je ambitie én of jij past bij de opleiding. Door de interactieve colleges leer je van elkaar, dus de samenstelling van de groep is van belang. Gestreefd wordt naar een diverse groep deelnemers uit verschillende sectoren van het bedrijfsleven en de non-profit sector.

Vind alle informatie over de opleiding Treasury Management

Frans Boumans

Docent Treasury Management

 

Harmonisation of FRTB data compliance requirements by local jurisdictions is crucial

09-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

 

Banks face uncertainty over changing responsibilities under the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB), but potential jurisdictional divergence on new requirements for data vendors could add greater complexity to the roll-out of these new rules.

Read more

What Does Real-time Connectivity Mean for Your Organization?

08-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

Nowadays if you work in treasury, probably not a day goes by without you seeing a social post or article from your subscribed newsletters on the topic of real-time Bank API. It stands for the future of bank connectivity, and it will change the way data is exchanged between corporates and banks. Trent Ellis, Senior Solution Engineer at Kyriba, spends his time assisting clients to evaluate what works the best for them from a solution point of view, with both their current and future business needs in mind. In his discussions with clients and prospects, bank connectivity has always been a focus area and recently he noticed a growing interest in real-time Bank APIs.

 

By Trent Ellis, Senior Solution Engineer

Source

When it comes to real-time bank connectivity, the first thing I usually tell my clients is that it’s important to delineate between the different data flows such as inbound balance reporting, transaction details, confirmation reporting and outbound payment initiation. When an organization plans to make real-time bank connectivity a reality, the first thing they should do is to look at their data flows from daily operations. Identify and determine what data would benefit from a real-time update? Which items are critical for that real-time treasury decision making? Where are you going to maintain the balance and transaction data once it is received or payment data prior to it being transmitted to the bank?

Next, because many banks have grown their footprint by acquisition, bank accounts held in different regions (even regionally within a country) can be on different platforms with different technology. Therefore, within a single bank, API readiness can have a different status for different subsets of bank accounts based on branch and geographic location.

Now that the bank may have made an API connection available, how are you going to connect to it? Do you look at internal technical expertise and availability? Do you look to a third-party vendor? Consider a specialist that just does API connections or a TMS vendor that has other integrated modules and additional functionality beyond just the bank connection for statements and/or payments?

Real-time Bank Reporting, what does this really mean?

Banks are now offering bank balance API’s as well as transactional statement APIs, but sometimes not (yet) both. It’s more than likely not the same as what you would get from that same bank in the form of a BAI or MT940 standard bank statement as banks are still working on what data becomes available through the API. Bank balance reporting is important for real-time liquidity monitoring but will not always help your treasury or AP team confirm the status of a cleared payment, or the status of an important cash credit.

Yes, an API can deliver data in real-time but is the underlying platform that holds that data providing real-time data? Some banks are providing their “real-time” data on a predefined schedule throughout the day which means it is not what most would consider “real-time”. True real-time reporting requires process changes at the bank. Decreasing update time from day to hours or within the hour is an improvement that is easier to absorb without restructuring the process.

Real-time payments, what does this really mean?

Real-time payments are payments that are cleared and settled nearly instantaneously. Real-time payments are generally facilitated by domestic or regional payment infrastructures on a 24x7x365 basis including weekends and holiday.1

Many may not be aware that globally real-time payment infrastructures have been around for as long as 40+ years, and real-time payments can be enabled via FTP or API based on Bank / FI’s offerings and the connectivity option preferred by the corporate customer. Relatively, it has been a recent development in the US payment ecosystem. In November 2017, The Clearing House launched the first real-time payment infrastructure RTP® network in the US, built on the same Vocalink technology that powers the UK’s Faster Payment System. The RTP® network was built for financial institutions of all sizes and serves as a platform for innovation allowing financial institutions to deliver new products and services to their customers. Financial Institutions can integrate into the RTP® network directly, through Third-Party Service Providers (TPSPs), Bankers’ Banks and Corporate Credit Unions.2 The US Federal Reserve will be launching its real-time payment infrastructure FedNowSM in the 2023 – 2024 timeframe.

Globally real-time payments are growing at a double-digit growth rate across all major markets. Adoption of real-time payments will continue to be use case specific, especially for use cases that are underserved by existing payment infrastructures. In the long-term, we should expect real-time payments to be an important part of corporate’s payments mix alongside other traditional payment systems. Like other real-time payment infrastructures globally, the RTP® network has been increasing its transaction limits, which currently stands at $1million. This makes it more relevant for B2B / Corporate payment use cases – a very good example from our client HUNT Companies being the intracompany transfers for efficient deployment of working capital. However, this also means that if you need to make payments with value greater than $1million, you would need an alternative type or method for the time being. You cannot rely on the RTP® network as your only means to make payments and will still require connections for other payment types such as Wire, ACH and international formats.

Recommendations to clients

The world is certainly migrating towards real-time bank connectivity, but organizations will ultimately require various connectivity strategies to fit different geographical and banking technology. In 2022, most real-time Bank APIs are an incremental addition to existing connection methods and formats for both statements and payments. Currently, Bank APIs are not a replacement for other options, which are still required to get a complete picture of prior day statement activity and/or ability to send all required payments. Therefore, my recommendations to my clients always remain the same:

  • Identify and evaluate your data flows.
  • Where does real-time data make sense?
  • Talk to your banking partners and understand their offerings in detail.
  • Ask the question: Do your internal requirements align with the bank’s offerings?
  • Where are you going to house the data that is received/transmitted via the real-time Bank connectivity?
  • Talk to vendors that have teams of people that do this every day and evaluate their perspectives and subject matter expertise.

Find out more details on Bank APIs from the Kyriba Developer Portal, and watch any time an on-demand webinar on everything you need to know about APIs: Bank Connectivity and Beyond.

1 Real-Time Payments: Everything You Need to Know. Paymentsjournal.com. 2021
2 The RTP® Network: For All Financial Institutions. The Clearing House.

Click here to view all blogs by Kyriba

Treasurers Get Strategic About Hedging Programs as Interest Rates Keep Rising

02-08-2022 | treasuryXL | GTreasury | LinkedIn |

The current interest rate landscape (read: rates going up for the foreseeable future) is spurring treasurers and the office of the CFO to implement rate hedging strategies at a faster clip. For many organizations, hedge programs are a new initiative—and it can take some understanding to know what they do and what to look for from companies that offer them.

Farah Lotia, the Director of Interest Rate and Quantitative Analytics at Hedge Trackers (a GTreasury company), discusses what interest rate hedge programs are, the ROI benefit they deliver treasures, how to get started with them, and why there has never been a more advantageous time to implement them.

LIVE | Deep dive session about the Philosophy of the Treasury Management & Corporate Finance programme

01-08-2022 | treasuryXL |  VU Amsterdam | LinkedIn |


(online) August 17 at 10.00 am CET, you are invited to join this expert session

 

Since 1998, the School of Business and Economics of the VU University offers the Post Graduate programme: Treasury Management & Corporate Finance. The programme focuses on professionals with an academic background in economics and/or finance and at least five years’ work experience in the financial sector. The philosophy of the programme is to develop ‘Treasury Academic Professionals’, able to analyze complex treasury management & corporate finance issues independently or in multidisciplinary teams and solve and report on them. The programme differs from other programmes/courses in the field of treasury management & corporate finance through the emphasis on developing graduates as ‘Treasury Academic Professionals’ and less emphasis on knowledge accumulating, readily available in the market.

 

Become a Treasury Academic Professional

To become a ‘Treasury Academic Professional’, graduates need an overview of the standard knowledge in the broad range of topics covered by Treasury Management and Corporate Finance and need a deep understanding of Treasury Management and Corporate Finance concepts as well in order to judge applicability, create new concepts or rapidly adjust to new concepts. This requires intellectual flexibility, obtained by regular acquisition of new (academic and professional) knowledge and being able to formulate and present on a regular basis your ‘Own Opinion’ on issues in the treasury discipline.

REGISTER TODAY | AUGUST 17 | 10 AM CET


Therefore the programme organizes frequent discussions & debates in class and in the professional network. As a result, the Treasury academic professionals are able to think beyond the standard professional practice and judge and foster new development, act as true expert professionals by executing Treasury Management & Corporate Finance with a broad perspective on the corporate board level. And most and for all: Being able to enjoy the profession!

 

Below please find our 3 pillar approach to becoming a Treasury academic professional:

 

 

SPEAKER INFORMATION

Robert Dekker is Associate Director at KPMG Netherlands. He studied Economics at the University of Groningen and did an Associate’s Degree in Risk Management at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is also programme manager for Risk Management for Financial Institutions and Treasury Management & Corporate Finance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Professor Herbert Rijken is Full Professor Corporate Finance at the department of Finance at VU University Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD (1993) in Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology.

His current research interests are corporate credit risk, structured corporate finance and economics of corporate governance.

 

 

REGISTER TODAY | AUGUST 17 | 10 AM CET

 

Mark your calendar for August 24 at 10 am CET

Join the live session with Pieter de Kiewit, owner of Treasurer Search.

Strategic treasury career planning and the role of education

For a long time treasury has not been a conscious career choice for most practitioners. Nowadays an increasing number of professionals, including aspiring treasurers, think about and plan their professional goals. They think about drivers, companies, job types and also education.

In an interactive webinar Pieter de Kiewit will discuss the most relevant topics in strategic treasury career planning with a strong focus on the role of education in this. His career in international recruitment spans over 25 years. For almost 15 years his only focus is on recruitment in corporate treasury. Pieter is Member of the Management Board (curatorium) of the post-graduate programme Executive Treasury & Corporate Finance of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

REGISTER TODAY | AUGUST 24 | 10 AM CET

 

CFO Perspectives: 5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow when managing FX risk

01-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

When managing FX risk, CFOs could learn a lot from the world of asset management, where a revolution —led by indexing— has led to huge gains for investors. But how can you apply this to your business’s FX risk strategy? Watch below the video, or read the article!

Credits: Kantox
Source

In the second edition of CFO Perspectives, we’ll draw from our work with CFOs to explore the parallels between asset management and FX risk. We’ll break down the processes and tools used in asset management which can be applied to your currency management strategy, with some spectacular results.

Over the last couple of decades, the world of asset management —an industry with $100 trillion under management— has been turned upside down by a quite unexpected revolution: indexing. Instead of relying on managers’ capacity to time the markets, these firms have automated the selection of assets by quietly replicating stock indexes.

Can CFOs lead a comparable revolution in currency management?

The answer is: yes, they can! Let us see why and how they can accomplish that feat.

Having embraced indexing early on, two leading firms have assets under management north of $15 trillion. What’s more, they have achieved such a spectacular result with fees that are only a fraction of the fees charged by those who embrace speculation. They have saved, and they are still saving, hundreds of billions in costs to investors.

Similar changes may be afoot in the business world. The term ‘exposure under management’, now used by CFOs and treasurers, comes from the expression ‘assets under management’. More importantly, CFOs are eschewing speculation — just like their cousins in asset management.

When managing currency risk in the one-trillion-a-day forward currency market, CFOs are using more and more digitised, automated solutions.

A random walk for risk managers

Once in a while, a lack of currency hedging or even speculating on an FX market move can yield a positive outcome for CFOs. But luck will run out at some point. Sooner or later, blindfolded by overconfidence, ‘speculative’ risk managers flounder in their vain attempt to time currency markets — with disastrous consequences for themselves and their companies.

Like stock prices and the price of other financial assets, exchange rates are not predictable. They follow ‘a random walk’ in which the forecast is set equal to today’s exchange rate (the spot rate). Accordingly, investors —and risk managers— should embrace markets rather than trying to beat them.

This is the thrust of the analogy between the asset management revolution and the coming revolution in FX risk management, an event that will ultimately enhance the strategic role of CFOs.

5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow when managing FX risk

Let us go beyond the surface and take a closer look at the key tools and processes used by the most successful companies in asset management. These processes provide a useful template for understanding how CFOs will use Currency Management Automation solutions to manage FX.

We can single out at least five main lines of action:

  1. Avoid timing the market. Nine out of ten of the so-called geniuses of the investment world have been ‘destroyed’, in terms of comparative performance, by the more modest index funds. Adding insult to injury, the latter have charged only a fraction of the fees. The no-speculation mantra has proved immensely successful in asset management. If one accepts the view that currency markets also follow a ‘random walk’, then there is no reason to expect a different outcome when it comes to FX risk management.
  2. Achieve operational brilliance. Indexed asset managers know that their success relies on engineering products that achieve operational brilliance by taking the risk of human error out of the equation. Just as indexing is measured by the tracking error between a fund’s rate of return and that of its benchmark, Currency Management Automation is at its core an engineering product that uses Application Programming Interfaces to achieve great precision in currency hedging while allowing managers to seamlessly run the entire FX workflow.
  3. Implement scalable solutions. Successful asset managers use platforms that provide scalability, which makes it possible to quickly and cheaply enter new markets such as bonds, commodities and others, almost anywhere and in many currencies. The same idea applies to FX automation, as CFOs are set to implement scalable, data-driven pricing and hedging solutions to enter new markets, enabling their companies to buy and sell in more currencies — with FX risk systematically under control.
  4. Innovate with a purpose. Indexing is one of the few truly beneficial inventions, a technology that has saved investors hundreds of billions of dollars. Similarly, the purpose of automated FX risk management is to allow firms to confidently ’embrace currencies’, reducing costs to customers and ultimately enhancing the value of the business. When it comes to innovation, purpose matters (see: “CFO Perspectives: 3 ways CFOs can use currencies to boost their business’ value”).
  5. Keep a foot in more than one camp. The world’s largest asset manager keeps a foot in both camps: active asset management and index funds. An entire platform provides a menu from which clients can select whatever financial slice they might fancy. Likewise, CFOs have at their disposal an entire ‘family’ of automated hedging programs and combinations of programs, including balance sheet hedging and a variety of cash-flow hedging programs that respond to their firms’ goals and pricing parameters.

Read the first edition of our CFO Perspectives series, 3 ways CFOs can use currencies to boost their business’s value here.