The 3 Fundamental Treasury Concepts: Working Capital Management

17-11-2022 | Vasu Reddy | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

The 3 fundamental treasury concepts being discussed currently include Working Capital Management, Bank Relationships and Treasury Transfer Pricing which are pivotal pillars for effectively and efficiently optimizing cash, liquidity,  funding and managing risk for any Treasury function to support the achievement of the organizations business objectives and strategy. In the current blog of a series of 3, Vasu Reddy explains the best practices and benefits of Working Capital Management.

Trade and Working Capital Management Products offered by banks

Working Capital Management involves working with supply, purchase, procurement, production, delivery and sales.

What are the best practices to improve working capital balances?

  • Letter of Credits for imports, Bank Guarantees instead of cash prepayments, Documentary Collections
  • Trade loans, overdrafts
  • Structured Trade and commodity finance
  • Supplier/commercial Finance – including ESG – Green Bonds 
  • Bills & LC Discounting to improve cash collection
  • Receivables Discounting to monetize cash and reduce past dues with poor paying customers with no recourse
  • Securitization of receivables on customer contracts executed mainly by Mobile operators 
  • Selling Debt to off-taker/3rd parties with minimal haircut  
  • Procurement/Travel credit cards

Benefits from these practices

  • Trade finance improves working capital Efficiency, reduces borrowing costs and enhances cash flow.

What are the best practices for Cash and Liquidity Management?

  • Implementation and use of Online banking –Centralized single banking platform across region of operation
  • Robust cash planning and forecasting policies to ensure accurate cash flow forecasting by  working with Accounts Receivables, Payables and FP&A teams including businesses to submit monthly forecasts with post month-end review discussions to understand any material variations and investigation thereof. This must be CFO Endorsed to get overall Treasury, Finance, business collaboration. 
  • Overnight/Money market deposits – Invest excess surplus cash 
  • Structured Cash Sweeping/Cash Pooling arrangements for all LE’s – to minimize having excess cash in one country and simultaneously having borrowing in another country
  • Interest Optimization structures with Regional/Global banks to take advantage of wallet size 

“Cash is the life blood to sustain operations”  Vasu Reddy


Benefits from these practices

  • Reduced Borrowings/overdrafts, increased income 
  • Cash Visibility and improved  reporting and financial planning– Group Level 
  • Strong credit rating – improved Shareholder relationship/Returns
  • Strong positive cash flow and Balance sheet – Higher Dividend distribution
  • Cost savings, reduced manual interventions – errors, reduced head-count

Thank you for reading!

 

Vasu Reddy

Corporate Treasury, Finance Executive

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

 

SIGN UP TODAY

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)

 

 

 

 

 

What is meant when we read or hear about Volatility?

09-11-2022 | Harry Mills | treasuryXL | LinkedIn

We all have an intuitive feel for what volatility is – we know when a market is exhibiting high or low volatility because we see differences in price changes. But it pays to be more precise with our language and to understand what is meant when we read or hear about volatility.

By Harry Mills

Source

Defining Volatility

Let’s start with a more instinctual and accessible definition:

Volatility is the rate at which prices change from one day to the next. If some currencies or other financial assets routinely exhibit greater daily price changes than others, they are considered more volatile.

Harry Mills, Founder & CEO Oku Markets

In his preeminent book, Option Volatility & Pricing, Sheldon Natenberg refers to volatility as “a measure of the speed of the market,” which is a particularly useful reference point when we consider that volatility and directionality are two different things: an underlying’s price can slowly move in one direction over time with very low volatility, or perhaps it swings wildly from day to day, but over a year it’s not changed much.

Now we have a feel for what volatility is, how do we quantify it? This third definition explains what it actually is: the annualised standard deviation of returns, and Natenberg refers to volatility as “just a trader’s term for standard deviation.”

This isn’t an article on standard deviation per se, but if you’re unaware of what this means then it is a measure of the dispersion of data around the average. Take for example if we measure the height of 1,000 people:

  • If all 1,000 people are exactly 5’7″ then standard deviation is zero
  • If standard deviation is two inches, then we know that 68.2% of people will be between 5’5″ and 5’9″ (see the normal distribution chart below)
Normal Distribution chart (Wikipedia)
Normal Distribution chart (Wikipedia)

What about “annualised” and “returns”?

Volatility is always expressed as an annualised number – this uniformity means that everybody knows what is meant when we talk about volatility being X%. In that sense, it’s rather like interest rates, which are also always described as an annualised figure.

This might not be so immediately useful to a trader or a risk manager, though, who might be thinking of daily or weekly price movements and where their risk or opportunities lie. Volatility is proportional to the square root of time, so to convert annualised volatility into daily, we simply divide the volatility by the square root of the number of days in a year – but we need trading days – on average there are 252, equating to 21 trading days a month. The square root of 252 is 15.87, but most traders approximate this to 16…

Hence, if we have a contract trading at 100 with a standard deviation of 20%, then: 20%/16 = 1.25%. We would therefore expect to see a price change of 1.25% or less for every two days out of three (+/- 1 standard deviation is around 68%).

Returns… I won’t go into detail, but if you want to explore this I would recommend chapter 10.6, The Behaviour of Financial Prices, in Lawrence Glitz’s superb Handbook of Financial Engineering which explains how price returns follow a normal distribution and prices follow a lognormal distribution. I’ll also add that calculating the standard deviation of prices doesn’t provide meaningful information because what we are looking for is the change from one period to the next, so we need to look at the daily returns!

Still here? Ok… let’s take it down a notch and look at the types and uses of volatility

Types of Volatility

There are a few types of volatility that can be measured, but by far the most commonly used and referred to are historical and implied volatility:

  • Historical volatility is a backward-looking measure that shows how volatile an asset has been over say, a 20-day period. It’s useful to look at different time periods and to chart the daily movement in the volatility.
  • Implied volatility is the future expected volatility – the term ‘implied’ is helpful because it literally means the volatility that is implied by the premium of an option contract. It’s a critical factor that influences options prices and draws the attention of traders and risk managers.

Uses of Volatility as an Indicator

Volatility is a common measure of risk, and it is a key component of Value at Risk modelling. But be warned of the ubiquitous disclaimer that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Historical volatility is useful to understand how an asset or a currency has performed in the past – you can line this up with significant macroeconomic events and understand why there may have been a period of change, and you can get a feel for how the underlying “normally” behaves. For example, trading in the Turkish lira will probably present a higher risk than in, say the Swiss franc.

Summary

  • Volatility is the rate at which prices change from one day to the next
  • It demonstrates the “speed of the market” and is different from directionality
  • Technically, volatility is the annualised standard deviation of returns
  • You can approximate daily volatility by dividing the annualised volatility by 16
  • Historical volatility tells us what happened in the past
  • Implied volatility is the expectation of future volatility, and critical to option pricing

Thanks for reading!

 

Harry Mills, Founder at Oku Markets

Interview | 8 questions for Konstantin Khorev, Seasoned Treasury Professional

01-11-2022 | treasuryXL | Konstantin Khorev | LinkedIn |

 

Meet our newest expert for the treasuryXL community, Konstantin Khorev.

Konstantin has 18+ years of experience in corporate treasury, gained in various environments: from public companies with +100BUSD turnover, to PE and privately owned companies, as well as at a prominent treasury consulting firm.

Being exposed to a wide range of different challenges and projects, Konstantin has built a strong expertise in the full spectrum of treasury and risk activities and in cross-functional collaboration and treasury partnership with business operations, tax, accounting, audit, and internal control.

Konstantin holds a Ph.D. degree in financial mathematics and is a CFA charter holder since 2009.

 

We asked Konstantin 8 questions, let’s go!

INTERVIEW

 

1. How did your treasury journey start?

In 2005 I changed my career path from investment management to corporate finance with a leading oil major. Couple of years later, being already a professional with several years of experience in related areas, I decided to join the treasury department within the same company. I made my decision mainly because of a great team and a lot of challenging projects there – we basically were requested to bring best practices into treasury function in multinational corporation with +100BUSD turnover. The first project was setting up an international multicurrency cash pool structure.

2. What do you like about working in Treasury?

Cross-functional collaboration (business, accounting, FP&A, tax), possibility to implement projects that make structural changes, e.g. in how company manages cash and financial risks, make payments, automate processes, etc.

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

Change and project management, setting up a function from scratch or bringing best treasury practices, with special personal interest in the area of automation and data analysis. Having my first background in mathematics and computer science I also like to develop my own IT solutions (python, VBA, SAP scripting) that can solve certain automation or data problems and thus bridge a gap between client’s needs and available market solutions. Observing the professional growth of team members, I am coaching or used to coach is also a big source of excitement to me.

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

I would say I can not highlight one single project. I enjoy and I am proud of every moment when I see the change realized, or cost-reduction/value-added created.

5. What has been your biggest challenge in treasury?

Setting up supply chain financing in a country where our team and company have been among pioneers implementing the product. Apart from tax, legal, accounting challenges related to the jurisdiction, as well as bank negotiation it required a lot of effort to explain the benefits and persuade all the stakeholders (from CFO to supply managers and suppliers). The ultimate result was more than rewarding: win-win solution both for the company decreasing working capital needs by 50% and for the suppliers getting access to much cheaper (and sometimes even unavailable at all) bank financing.

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

Invest time explaining what treasury is about and why certain things are crucial for internal counterparties.

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

Playing bigger and bigger role as a business partner to other functions. Embedding more opportunities that are provided by IT solutions.

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

Automation and machine learning to play more role in daily and later strategical treasury operations. Distributed Ledger Technology (blockchain is an example) still to show its full potential. Fintech companies substituting banks in more areas and having bigger market size.

 

Want to connect with Konstantin? Click here

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director Community & Partners, treasuryXL

Brush up on your treasury knowledge? Get our eBook: What is Treasury?

27-10-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

How can you fast brush up on your treasury expertise, Treasurers, CFOs, Cash Managers, Controllers, and other Finance Addicts? Or how would you describe “What Treasury is” to family and friends? Well, there is an easy solution for it. Download our free eBook here: What is Treasury?

This eBook compiled by treasury describers all aspects of the treasury function. This comprehensive book covers relevant topics such as Treasury, Corporate Finance, Cash Management, Risk Management, Working Capital Management.

This eBook was prepared by treasuryXL based on the most useful best practices offered by Treasury professionals throughout the previous years. We compiled the most crucial information for you and wrote clear, concise articles about the key topics in the World of Treasury.

We took a deeper dive into each of the above-mentioned treasury functions and highlight:

  • The purpose of each named Treasury function (What is?)
  • What specialists do
  • Examples of Activities
  • Summary of Frequently Asked Questions and answers
  • Conclusion

How to receive the eBook ‘What is Treasury’ for Free?

We simply giveaway two presents for you! By signing up for our newsletter you will automatically receive the following in your inbox:

  1. On Fridays, our Coffee Break weekly newsletter will land in your inbox. In this weekly newsletter, we will highlight the whole week full of the latest treasury news within our community.
  2. The 41 pages eBook, What is Treasury?
Subscribe and Download

 

Subscribe, Join, Download and Relax.

Welcome to our community and have fun reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director, Community & Partners at treasuryXL

 

 

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

 

SIGN UP TODAY

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)

 

 

 

 

 

Interview | 8 questions for Sugandha Singhal, Vice President – Head Treasury at SRF Limited

24-10-2022 | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

We are so happy to embrace Sughanda Singhal as one of our newest treasuryXL experts for the community.

Sugandha is a Treasury Professional with diverse experience in Treasury, Strategic Planning, MIS, and Business analytics. She is passionate about breaking down complex problems and solving them using system-oriented thinking. With strong focus on process improvement, she has lead transformation of the treasury function both in terms of cost-effectiveness and process agility. A firm believer that real change in society must start at individual level she channelizes her spare time in volunteering for the cause.

Sugandha is also the highly commended winner of Adam Smith Asia Award for ‘Best working capital management solution’, winner of ‘Finance Transformation Initiative award of the year’ with C2FO and ‘Out of box thinker Award’ by SRF Limited.

 

Sugandha’s impressive career is an example for many. What is her secret? What drives her to perform at such a high level every day?

Well,…. let’s find out!

 

We asked Sugandha 8 questions, let’s go!

INTERVIEW

 

1. You have an impressive career in Treasury coming all the way up where you are right now. What is your secret?

The secret of success is not just one single mantra but a combination of smart habits. I realized very early that in treasury you spend most of your working hours networking and executing. Back home being a mother to two lovely teenage girls, I have always been hard-pressed for time. Thus changed my early morning routine to dedicate an hour to planning my work. I started setting up weekly learning goals to be completed flexibly during the week. Another important change was developing independent opinion through research rather than being influenced by what others say. These small habits practiced over the years helped me achieve my targets successfully.

2. The last two years must have been incredible for you, winning great awards for example. We are curious about what makes you most proud in your career?

While yes, I have been fortunate to lead certain critical projects that were recognized widely. When I think of what makes me proud it’s not any one project or an award but the journey I have taken as a woman and especially as a mother. I feel proud when I see youngsters, especially girls getting inspired by my journey and motivated to become leaders themselves. Being in a position where one can more effectively encourage and empower young women and girls to become leaders is an accomplishment that matters.

3. What do you like about working in Treasury?

We are living in very exciting times when digital transformation is still unfolding and is providing a wealth of learning opportunities. What I love about my current role is the fact that I have this unique opportunity to shape the future of the Treasury function and how it interacts with other processes/people in the business. It’s the everyday challenges and fast-paced work that excites me about my role.

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

While I had the opportunity to lead multiple aspects of corporate treasury like borrowing, investment, policy formulation, working capital management, risk management, hedging, etc. what excites me the most is transforming the working capital landscape through business process re-engineering and digitalization.

5. What has been your biggest challenge in treasury?

The biggest challenge in treasury has been managing people while driving change.  On one hand, you have new technology, new compliances, new solutions that you need to implement, and on the other hand you have internal teams resisting change. This means while you are busy implementing the project through data architecture, solution design, onboarding suppliers & customers, etc. you are also leading a cultural change within the organization. To succeed, one needs to ensure the wider adoption of a digital mindset and overcome resistance to change through upskilling and communication.

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

The two most important lessons that I have learned as a Treasurer are first, the only constant in our profession is change, and second, people are the anchor helping you sail through this sea of change. While we all know that change is inevitable and that people are the key, somehow, it’s often easily forgotten. In my experience, if you know the right person at the right time, half the task is done. I feel what has made a difference in my career is networking and relationship building.

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

I would say over the last few years the role has not just evolved but has completely transformed from being transactional to being strategic. Internally, in the past, treasury was all about ensuring fund availability, dealing with trade products, hedging, and managing excess funds. Today we are seen as the strategic partner to businesses who actively provide solution sales, re-engineer business processes, and act as an advisor to top management. Externally, the environment in which we operate has transformed, we now see very high volatility, significantly increased speed of information sharing, digitalization, enhanced compliances, and ESG focus that has made corporate treasury more agile and tech-oriented than what it was a few years back.

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

In the future, corporate treasury will become pivotal in driving the corporate sustainability initiatives. With corporates formalizing their ESG pledges, the treasury department will be expected to apply the ESG lens on everything from raising capital and investing surplus cash to supply chain finance. Secondly, the treasury team will become more and more connected to core business activities such as sales or procurement focusing on meeting fast-changing expectations/requirements of both customers as well as suppliers. Lastly, technological disruption will continue in ways beyond what we can imagine today, and treasury teams will be expected to be the front leaders in driving this transformation.

 

Want to connect with Sugandha? Click here

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Kendra Keydeniers

Director Community & Partners, treasuryXL

Types of Forward Contract

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Sibos 2022 | How did our expert Philip Costa Hibberd experience the event?

19-10-2022 | Philip Costa Hibberd | treasuryXL | LinkedIn |

 

We sent our expert Philip Costa Hibberd to the SIBOS conference to discover and explore the World’s Premier Financial Services event.

Last week, the SIBOS conference took place in Amsterdam. Sibos 2022 brought together more than 10,000 participants in Amsterdam and online, as this event returned in-person for the first time in three years.

Philip is delighted to share his experience with you. Happy reading!

 

What is Sibos?

The Sibos conference is an annual event organized by Swift that brings together leaders in the payments, banking, and financial technology industries. The conference provides a forum for attendees to discuss the latest trends and developments in the industry, but – as it turns out – it is mostly used as a venue where bankers meet other bankers with the occasional FinTech thrown in the mix.

During the 4 days of the 2022 edition, I learnt that little focus is given to the needs of the corporate treasurer. Throughout the conference, a few interesting recurring themes emerged nonetheless, which I’ll describe in the paragraphs that follow.

Purpose of the financial industry

Queen Maxima – acting as the “United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development” – kicked off the opening plenary by speaking about the importance of financial inclusion and access to banking services for all.

 

The first priority is to make sure we do no harm […] but we have a chance today of moving beyond doing no harm to actually doing good. So, beyond transaction volume and customer acquisition can we create the rails for transformative change to help users become more financially healthy?

 

Sadly the answer I heard from the bankers speaking on stage during the sessions that followed was not promising. “Maximising shareholder value” was still the dominating mantra… which – as experience teaches us – has seldom led the banking industry to “doing no harm”, let alone “doing good” in the past.

 

Banks vs FinTechs

A bit more hope for the industry “doing good” came from the voice of FinTechs on stage. As it turns out, a mantra based on “innovation and disruption” makes it easier to attract scarce resources (such as talent) and ironically deliver shareholder value as a consequence.

It was interesting to observe the evolution of the Bank-FinTech relationship. The change in how banks perceive FinTechs today compared to a few years ago was remarkable. Once seen as a threat, FinTechs are today considered an ally by banks.

 

When asked “Are FinTechs Friend or Foe?”, bankers gave answers as:

 

“Partnership with FinTechs is our main strategy”. 

“Partnership with FinTechs is crucial. They bring agility and they are a matter of survival for us”.

 

It was hardly a surprise then to learn on day 2 of the conference about BNP Paribas’ acquisition of Kantox, a leading fintech for automation of currency risk management. The relationship between banks and FinTechs will probably only get warmer and tighter from here… but only time will tell if that is good news for us.

 

Regulation-driven innovation

Besides FinTechs, another often cited source of innovation for banks was “the regulator”.

Singapore was the most cited example of successful regulator-driven innovation. Its central bank has been encouraging innovation in the financial sector with generous grants to adopt and develop digital solutions, AI technology, cybersecurity capabilities, etc. On top of that, it has developed an exceptionally accommodating regulatory framework. It has for example introduced a “regulatory sandbox” for FinTechs and banks to test their products and services in a live environment without them having to be concerned with compliance hurdles (at least for the delicate initial phases of innovation).

There are hopes that Singapore’s success will be taken as an example by other regulators across the globe, but the most basic expectation from the industry is for regulators to at least set guidelines to improve standardization across the market. As nicely put by Victor Penna, there is still a lot of work to be done:

 

“Can you imagine if I sent an email from Singapore to Belgium and they couldn’t process it? That is exactly what is happening today with payments. This has to change.”

 

One last often cited trend where regulators are expected to play a dominant role in innovations, are Central bank digital currencies – CBDC in short.

CBDC (Central bank digital currency)

CBDCs are digital currencies issued by central banks. Typically central banks have two kinds of liabilities:

  • Cash: takes a physical form and is available to the general public
  • Central bank deposits: which take a digital form but with limited access

CBDCs are a third form of liability that complements cash and central bank deposits: they take a digital form and are directly available to the general public.

More than 100 central banks are estimated to be working on their own projects. They are important in the context of innovating the financial sector because they have the potential to provide greater efficiency and transparency in financial transactions. Additionally, CBDCs could help to reduce the cost of financial services and increase access to financial services for underserved populations.

There is still little consensus today on what exactly the impact will be, not least because of the fragmentation of all the initiatives. For example, when it comes to the digital Euro project, the impact on corporate treasury payments is expected to be limited. The project is still in the validation phase, but the assumption is that even if/when the project were to move into the realization phase (decision expected in September 2023) usage will be limited by design with the introduction of low limits to the maximum balances which could be held (exact limits need to be defined, but think of a few thousand euros max).

 

Realtime banking and 24/7/365

Banks have invested a lot in the technological backbone needed to support open banking and instant payment requirements across the world and seem to be puzzled by the modest adoption. The ambition is to move away from batches, cut-off times, and end-of-day statements in favour of instant payments 24/7 and provide information-on-demand via APIs.

From a treasury perspective, this brings some challenges. Moving to APIs can be hard, especially if you have a fragmented ERP/TMS/Banking landscape. But the biggest challenge is probably the way that we organize our work and our processes. As jokingly put by Eddy Jacqmotte group treasurer at Borealis:

 

 “Instant Treasury is nice: but I don’t like the idea of instant treasury on Saturday and Sunday”.

AI and (big) data

The ever-decreasing cost of storage and processing information, combined with the ever-increasing flow and value of user data has transformed the “AI” and “(big) data” brothers from geeky kids in the corner to rockstars in the centre stage.

Besides the obvious use cases such as fraud detection, sanction screening, reconciliation, payment repair, etc. the new trend is to use AI to generate new tailored content and to feed it to users to measure their interest in a specific topic and nudge their behaviour. Instead of asking you directly if you are interested in a mortgage, the algorithm might casually inform you about the price per square meter of properties in the neighbourhood where you go for coffee every weekend. If you interact with the prompt, the algorithm will take notice and will keep on feeding you with “property-related” information, until you find yourself asking for a mortgage…or showing interest in something else that the bank can do for you.

Sounds sketchy? It might be, that’s why another trend in this area has been making its way to the foreground: Explainable AI.

Explainable AI is a form of AI that can provide understandable explanations for its predictions and decisions. This is important especially in the financial industry because it can help to build trust with customers and regulators and avoid (or at least make explicit and controllable) unwelcome biases.

For example, the Apple Card / Goldman Sachs scandal in 2019 could have been prevented if the algorithm used by Apple had been more transparent and accountable. According to researchers, the algorithm used by Apple was biased against women, resulting in lower credit limits for women than men. If the algorithm had been more explainable, the bias could have been discovered and corrected before the card was launched.

 

 

 

 

In essence: AI is powerful, but transparency is key. On that note, I have a confession to make: the previous paragraph was written by an AI and not by me…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Philip Costa Hibberd

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

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

By Pieter de Kiewit

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

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

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

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

 

Hasta luego,

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Pieter de Kiewit