Recap ATEL Annual Conference 2019
| 22-10-2019 | François de Witte | treasuryXL |
Each year in the 3rd week of September, ATEL, the Luxembourg Association of Corporate Treasurers, organizes its Annual Conference. This year the ATEL Annual Conference was held on September 19, 2019. It was a very special edition, as it coincides with the 25th anniversary of the creation of ATEL. There were over 200 participants, and this was a good opportunity to have snapshot of some recent tendencies in treasury.
“The annual conference is a great way to take stock of the sector’s developments while celebrating our quarter-century run in a friendly atmosphere,” stated François Masquelier, Chairman of ATEL and Deputy Chairman of the EACT.,
The Conference started with a series of workshops. I followed the one on Cybersecurity in Treasury, given by BNP Paribas, and the one on “®evolution of Payments” given by BearingPoint.
BearingPoint expect major changes due to Instant Payments. The existing solutions to obtain customer information on the receipt of payments are not enough anymore. Corporations require immediate information on received payments. The Westhafen Expert Dialogue has defined immediate customer information of received payments as a best practice. The format used is the Credit-notification N54 defined based on the camt.054. The proposed transmission channel is either via API: Incoming payments are transferred from the bank to the corporation via a web-service-notification (HTTPS, push) or the through the banking server (EBICS.
The plenary session started with a video of Finance Minister Gramegna congratulating the association on its 25th anniversary and coming back on the establishment of the euro as a great accelerator for the profession and underlining Luxembourg’s key role in maintaining a positive environment for treasurers.
Isabelle Badoux presented Sanofi’s treasury transformation journey focusing on centralized treasury, central bank interaction and the conception of a “payment factory.”
Luca Lazzaroli, then presented the EIB, the largest multilateral lender and borrower in the world. The institution invests over € 1.2 trillion in innovation, environment, infrastructure and SMEs with a special accent on sustainable growth in Europe.
Vincezo Dimase from Refinitiv concluded the plenary session by presenting the challenging transition from LIBOR the so-called ARR (Alternative Reference Rate – e.g. the ESTER – Euro short term rate, which will replace the EONIA). By the end of 2021, the financial sector will abandon the IBOR, and this will have a major impact on the corporate treasurers, as several long-term contracts using the IBOR go beyond end 2021.
Following on this conference we had a nice get together with all the participants where I had interesting exchanges of experience. The ATEL Annual Conference was a very good event.
I am impressed by ATEL, who proves to be able in the small country of Luxembourg to group top experts along hot topics in treasury. On 26/9/2019, we also had at the Luxembourg House of Training the official Ceremony where 13 treasury professionals received their “Certified Path in International Treasury Management and Corporate Finance“, organized in collaboration with ATEL. A new session of this Certified Path will be held starting from January 2020. All practical information and program are available here. I was also part of the lecturers and of the jury.
Will you join next year?
François de Witte
Founder & Senior Consultant at FDW Consult
Managing Director and CFO at SafeTrade Holding S.A.
treasuryXL ambassador
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