Interview | 8 questions for Dinesh Kumar, Treasury Strategy Consultant

20-12-2022 | treasuryXL | Dinesh Kumar | LinkedIn |

 

Meet our newest expert for the treasuryXL community, Dinesh Kumar.

Dinesh is specializing in architecting and leading large scale treasury technology transformations helping clients embrace the power of technology.  He supports group wide treasury projects in the further development of a broad range of methods and processes in the related treasury IT systems, e.g., improvement of cashflow planning, FX management and treasury reporting.

He involves in designing overall organizational strategy in the field of treasury technology application services, including evaluating new processes, models, pricing, and tools and related competitive offerings delivered treasury Service providers.

Dinesh has successfully led large treasury transformations projects utilizing SAP S/4 HANA across US, Australia, and Middle East region.

 

We asked Dinesh 8 questions, let’s go!

INTERVIEW

 


 

1. How did your treasury journey start?

After finishing my studies in Finance, I started working on stock and option trading platforms at a stock broker firm. I learned the basic concepts of stocks and options. I also built up experience at  the front office, middle office, and back office. During my time at this stock broker firm I received a lot of exposure working on trading platforms.

After 2 years, I got a chance to work on a SAP treasury implementation for a giant telecom company. I worked on Money Markets, Derivatives, Forex and Cash Management. Since then I am working on Treasury transformation projects for various clients in various countries.

 

2. What do you like about working in Treasury?

 

I love the diversity of challenges. You are dealing with the financial heart of the company and need to make sure that the right amount of blood reaches every cell. I was more into technology so turning treasury operations into systems was always challenging. I worked for many international clients, I had the opportunity to learn how different companies from different sectors and industries adapt their treasury operations and cash management as per various country regulations.

 

3. What is your Treasury Expertise and what expertise gives you a boost of energy?

 

I have been working in various roles on different Treasury projects, from interim roles to system implementations. My core treasury expertise areas are the selection and implementation of Treasury Technology (i.e., SAP, Payment Hubs, SWIFT, integration with Trading Platforms), Treasury Analytics and Insight, Technology Integration and Optimization, and Application Managed Services.

 

4. What has been your best experience in your treasury career until today?

 

For me, it’s working with different geographies, different people and cultural diversity that I personally feel is the greatest experience so far.

 

5. What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned as a treasurer?

 

“Sound treasury management begins with a robust treasury policy”.

 

6. How have you seen the role of Corporate Treasury evolve over the years?

 

Treasurers play a unique role in managing a large portion of the balance sheet. In addition to the detailed understanding of the organization in which they operate, they are closest to macro-economic developments, particularly financial markets, and can offer valuable insights to support corporate strategy.

Increasingly over the last 10-15 years treasurers have been asked to play a bigger role, as a strategic partner to the board, advising on how best to build the business line with funds available. Treasurers, certainly in the larger companies, are now much more visible in the board room, recognized for the skills and knowledge they can bring to the table.

 

7. What developments do you expect in corporate treasury in the near and further future?

 

More and more treasurers are getting involved in ESG initiatives. Not only financing them but also embedding them into treasury processes and spearheading departmental sustainability projects. When discussing ESG in corporate treasury, green financing is often mentioned as one of the main instruments to support ESG goals.

I sense that treasurers generally are now exploring options other than multiple spreadsheets, excel data, and month-end accounting and reporting much more than they used before Covid. They are devoting more time and energy to enterprise digitalization and process automation. This is enhancing their ability to support the business round the clock from the office or virtually.

With the help of technologies like AI, we can make fact-based decisions much more rapidly in terms of resources available. Such advances are helping us to analyze M&A opportunities more critically, and explore funding, forecasting, and hedging options more forensically, even helping predict and shape our responses to supply chain disruptions.

Technology is allowing us to think and act differently, in a good way, and as treasurers, we have to seize it.

 

8. Is there anything that you would like to share with our treasury followers that they must know from you?

 

Finance and in particular treasury operations today are very dynamic and open to many uncertainties. And all the signs are that the current turbulence will continue for some time yet, perhaps worsen considerably.

In such a climate treasurers need a highly dynamic approach to fulfilling both their core and strategic responsibilities. They need to anticipate and react quickly to fast-moving developments.

They should not be afraid to act decisively, even though it may not be possible to do so based on having a clear direction and end-point certainty – inaction can also cause considerable damage.

 

Want to connect with Dinesh? Click here

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director Community & Partners, treasuryXL

First cross-border Confirmation of Payee solution launched for payments between France and the Netherlands

16-12-2021 | treasuryXL |

SurePay, SEPAMail.eu and StreamMind have announced the launch of the first cross-border Confirmation of Payee solution. This service enables companies and banks to check that the account information entered matches the intended beneficiary when initiating cross-border payments between France and the Netherlands and marks an important first step towards a pan-European solution in the fight against fraud.

Confirmation of Payee is a way to give consumers, banks and companies greater assurance that their payments are being routed to the intended recipient and are not being accidentally or deliberately misdirected.

Payments across Europe have increasingly shifted to digital channels, leading to a surge in fraud cases throughout the continent due to methods such as phishing, spoofing, APP scams and CEO fraud. Additionally, fraud is becoming increasingly international, whereby fraudsters are using foreign bank accounts for fraudulent purposes.

SEPAmail.eu offers an account check solution in France for more than 90% of bank accounts and SurePay’s IBAN-Name Check solution checks 99.5% of all online payments in the Netherlands.

This allows banks, consumers and companies in France and the Netherlands to check the accuracy of the account holder. This significantly reduces fraud and errors in payments. In addition, the IBAN-Name Check increases efficiency and improves the customer journey. In the Netherlands the IBAN-Name Check is used by over 150 companies such as insurance companies, lenders, government agencies, energy companies and many others, to prevent fraud or when accepting new suppliers, customers and employees.

Recording Panel Discussion | Treasury Trends for 2023

28-11-2022 | treasuryXL | Nomentia | LinkedIn |

Recently, we had a panel discussion about a few major treasury trends for 2023 together with Nomentia and experts Pieter de Kiewit, Patrick Kunz, Niki van Zanten, and Huub Wevers. If you didn’t get the chance to attend the webinar, you can find the recording here.

During this interactive live discussion we covered some of the following topics:

  • Market and FX Risk management in current times of uncertainty.
  • Top treasury technologies to consider for 2023. Will APIs deliver their promises?
  • Building the bridge between Ecommerce and treasury.
  • The rapidly changing role of treasury to facilitate business success
  • Treasury technology visions beyond 2023.

 


 

[WEBINAR] FRTB – Are Banks Ready To Be Compliant?

23-11-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

Join experts across the industry for this complimentary webinar to explore how to prepare for – and comply – with the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book (FRTB) regulation in 2023.

DETAILS:

  • Webinar: FRTB – are banks ready to be compliant?
  • Date: Tuesday, November 29
  • Time: 09:00 EST / 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET
  • Speakers:
    • Hany Farag, Senior Director and Head of Risk Methodology and Analytics, CIBC
    • Fausto Marseglia, Head of Product Management, FRTB and Regulatory Propositions, Refinitiv, an LSEG Business
    • [Moderator] Lisa Regan, Head of Sales, EMEA, Enterprise Data, Refinitiv, an LSEG Business\
    • Volker Wellmann, Risk and Resource Manager at BNP Paribas, BNP Pariba



 

 

 


Only one week left! Live Panel Discussion: Treasury Trends for 2023

10-11-2022 | treasuryXL | Nomentia | LinkedIn |

A friendly reminder that next week at 11 AM CET (November 17th), we’ll be collaborating with Nomentia.

Participate in our live panel discussion regarding 2023’s predicted treasury trends. We invited industry experts to join us and have an open debate about the issues that treasurers would need to think about in 2023. Additionally, there is the option to ask questions.

Date & Time: November 17, 2022, at 11 AM CET | Duration 45 minutes

Some of the topics we’ll cover:

  • Market and FX Risk management in current times of uncertainty.
  • Top treasury technologies to consider for 2023.
  • Will APIs deliver their promises?
  • Building the bridge between Ecommerce and treasury.
  • The rapidly changing role of treasury to facilitate business success
  • Treasury technology visions beyond 2023.p

 

November 17 | 11 am CET | 45 minutes

Panel discussion members:

Pieter de Kiewit, Owner of Treasurer Search (Moderator)
Patrick Kunz, Independent Treasury Expert (Panel member)
Niki van Zanten, Independent Treasury Expert (Panel member)
Huub Wevers, Head of Sales at Nomentia (Panel member)

 

 


 

 

 

How Treasurers Can (Still) Get Ahead During Uncertain Times

08-11-2022 | treasuryXL | GTreasury | LinkedIn |

Victoria Blake, the Chief Product Officer at GTreasury, recently ran through four trends that corporate treasurers ought to be paying careful attention to—particularly as ongoing economic uncertainty heads into 2023.

Blake argues that “treasurers without a connected treasury are left playing an ever-widening game of catch-up.” She offers specific advice for how treasurers can approach FX rate visibility, cash forecasting, bank fee analysis, and API connectivity. This is a must-read treasurer as they plan their treasury technology strategies for 2023.


MENA Investment Banking Review First Nine Months 2022

02-11-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

Refinitiv Deals Intelligence brings you the MENA Investment Banking performance review, covering First Nine Months 2022.
Access this report for Investment Banking fees, volumes, and league tables across M&A, Equity Capital Markets, and Debt Capital Markets. Examine deal flows, top deals, most active nations, and most active sectors.

 


Report Highlights

INVESTMENT BANKING FEES 
An estimated US$1.1 billion worth of investment banking fees were generated in the Middle East & North Africa during the first nine months of 2022, 5% more than the same period in 2021 and the highest first nine-month total since 2008.  Almost half of this year’s fees were generated during the first three months of the year, with quarterly fees declining in the following two quarters.  Fees totalled US$186.4 million during the third quarter of 2022, the lowest quarterly total in the region in six years.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
The value of announced M&A transactions with any MENA involvement reached US$69.7 billion during the first nine months of 2022, 17% less than the value recorded during the same period in 2021.  Despite the decline in value, the number of deal announcements in the region increased 5% from last year to the highest first nine-month total since our records began in 1980.
EQUITY CAPITAL MARKETS
MENA equity and equity-related issuance totalled US$15.3 billion during the first nine months of 2022, the highest first nine-month total since 2008.  Proceeds raised by companies in the region increased 166% compared to the first nine months of 2021, while the number of issues increased 110%.
DEBT CAPITAL MARKETS
MENA debt issuance totalled US$18.3 billion during the first nine months of 2022, down 80% from the value recorded during the same period in 2021 and the lowest first nine-month total since 2011.  The number of issues declined 68% from last year at this time.

Download the report


Understanding the Importance of Working Capital for Treasury

27-10-2022 | treasuryXL | TIS | LinkedIn |

Working capital is a critical consideration for any business – particularly in an uncertain economic environment. If a company’s working capital is not managed effectively, the company may struggle to meet its obligations, secure the right level of funding, or invest in growth. But for many companies, gaining full visibility over working capital is often a difficult task – especially given how it is an activity that spans many different parts of the business.

Going a step further, recent economic and geopolitical events from the past couple of years have presented even more challenges to working capital management. In fact, PwC’s Working Capital Study 21/22 found that net working capital days reached a five-year high in 2020, “driven by the shock and uncertainty of the COVID 19 pandemic.” More recently, the 2022 AFP Strategic Role of Treasury Survey identified working capital improvements as one of the two most challenging tasks faced by treasury professionals today.

In order to manage working capital effectively, companies first need to understand it – you can’t manage what you can’t measure, as the saying goes. With this in mind, let’s dive a bit deeper into the core dynamics of working capital and the subsequent implications for treasury and finance.

What is Working Capital Anyway?

Simply put, working capital is the cash that businesses can use to meet their day-to-day financial obligations, such as for paying rent, employee salaries, and supplier invoices. Calculated as the difference between a firm’s current assets and its current liabilities, a strong working capital position is essential to the smooth running of any company. For this reason, working capital is often described as the lifeblood of a business.

Working capital can be measured using a variety of metrics. The following concepts are key when it comes to understanding the component parts of the working capital cycle:

 

 

  1. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) measures how long it takes a company to collect cash from customers and clients (i.e. accounts receivable).
  2. Days Payables Outstanding (DPO) measures how long the company takes to pay its suppliers (i.e. accounts payable).
  3. Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) measures how quickly the company sells its inventory.
  4. Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) measures how long the company takes to convert the cash spent on raw materials into sales. This is calculated as follows: CCC = DSO + DIO – DPO.

As a rule of thumb, the shorter a company’s cash conversion cycle, the more efficiently it is using its working capital – although typical cash conversion cycle times can vary considerably between different industries, world regions, and company sizes. Any company’s cash conversion cycle can also be adjusted by optimizing one or more of the above components: companies can speed up customer collections, delay/expedite payments to suppliers, and/or alter the timeframe that cash is tied up in inventory.


You might also like: What is Working Capital Management, examples of typical acitivties and frequently asked questions; Explained by treasuryXL experts


How Does Working Capital Impact Treasury & Finance?

Treasury and finance teams have an important role to play in optimizing their company’s working capital.  Working capital is critical to a company’s financial health: if the business doesn’t have enough cash readily available, it may struggle to pay its obligations on time. It may also seek more external financing than is really needed or may lack the funds needed to invest in innovation or business growth.

In order to effectively manage these cash inflows and outflows, treasury must not only have an accurate and timely view of their “current” working capital status, but they must also have a grip on future cash flows as well. This means that treasury must be proactive in developing cash forecasts that reflect anticipated changes in working capital, including deviations in supplier invoicing or payment behavior, as well as changes to the level of planned spend by procurement and other internal departments.

By working with other departments such as procurement, AP, and AR, the treasury team is well placed to drive improvements to the cash conversion cycle and unlock the company’s working capital. Because treasury typically seeks to maintain global visibility and control over cash positions, payments activity, and general financial workflows, they are in the perfect position to evaluate and influence high-level working capital decisions. For this reason, treasury is sometimes referred to as the “steward” of working capital internally.

However, there are a variety of hurdles that can negatively impact treasury’s view of, and control over, working capital.

 

Challenges in Managing Working Capital

While the importance of effective working capital management is clear, there are a number of reasons why this can be a challenge:

 

 

Disparate Data Sources: By its nature, managing working capital means optimizing activities that span different departments within the organization, including accounts payable (AP), accounts receivable (AR) and procurement, as well as treasury and finance. Working capital needs to be managed holistically, with access to data from these different parts of the business – but this can be constrained by siloes and disparate systems and data sources.

Lack of Alignment & Communication: Effective working capital management can be held back by a lack of awareness or competing priorities across different parts of the business. Because there are a range of departments that need to be on the same page in order to drive working capital optimization, it can be difficult to align the KPIs and drivers of each department to achieve a cohesive strategy. For this reason, a strong focus on working capital is needed from senior management in order to ensure a consistent approach across the organization.

Global Operational Complexity: Payment practices, vendor or customer behavior, and internal business models can vary considerably across different countries and regions, which can make it difficult to manage working capital consistently at a global level.

Supply Chain Relationships: The relationship a company maintains with its vendors and suppliers within the supply chain can have a massive impact on working capital. For example, companies frequently adjust their working capital position by either reducing or extending the time they take to pay invoices to suppliers. However, these strategies can have an adverse impact on vendor relationships, especially if companies choose to delay payment as long as possible. As such, working capital strategies that focus on altering vendor invoicing or payment terms should always be treated carefully.

 

How Does TIS Help Treasury Manage Working Capital?

In order to drive improvements to working capital, treasury teams first need full visibility over their company’s global cash, payments, and invoicing activity. As noted above, obtaining this data in an accurate and timely manner presents a major challenge for most companies, as does the task of effectively analyzing and leveraging it.

In order to simplify these tasks for treasury, TIS recently launched a new solution, TIS Working Capital Insights, which provides companies with 360-degree visibility over their core working capital metrics and KPIs.

 

 

With this suite of capabilities, organizations can seamlessly integrate their ERPs and corresponding AP and AR data with our solution in order to review payment terms and behavior for vendors and customers, analyze invoice and billing activity, and measure all elements related to their net working capital status and cash conversion cycle.

As TIS enables clients to aggregate and classify their data, users can evaluate their metrics globally or granularly according to specific entities, regions, or customers and suppliers. Users can also leverage TIS’ visual dashboards for intuitive reporting and refine their analyses by any timeframe to view activity and cash flows through customizable and flexible parameters.

By leveraging these tools in conjunction with TIS’ other liquidity and payment management solutions, organizations can access all data and information related to their global cash balances, payment statuses, and broader working capital operations for the entire company. The result is total visibility and control over working capital, and a much easier workflow for identifying the best strategies to optimize it.

For more information about TIS Working Capital solutions, download the full factsheet or request to speak with one of our experts!


Live Panel Discussion: Treasury Trends for 2023

25-10-2022 | treasuryXL | Nomentia | LinkedIn |

 

Join us on our live panel discussion about treasury trends for 2023. Together with Nomentia we invited industry experts who will have an open discussion on the things you need to consider as a treasurer in the year 2023. There’s the possibility to ask questions as well.

 

 

Some of the topics we’ll cover:

  • Market and FX Risk management in current times of uncertainty.
  • Top treasury technologies to consider for 2023.
  • Will APIs deliver their promises?
  • Building the bridge between Ecommerce and treasury.
  • The rapidly changing role of treasury to facilitate business success
  • Treasury technology visions beyond 2023.p

 

November 17 | 11 am CET | 45 minutes

Panel discussion members:

Pieter de Kiewit, Owner of Treasurer Search (Moderator)
Patrick Kunz, Independent Treasury Expert (Panel member)
Niki van Zanten, Independent Treasury Expert (Panel member)
Huub Wevers, Head of Sales at Nomentia (Panel member)

 

 


 

 

 

Everything you need on the Standardised Approach

13-10-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |

 

How can data and analytics help banks meet the FRTB Standardised Approach deadline? This blog by Refinitiv helps you understand everything you need on the Standardisded Approach.

Read more