Flex Treasurer: Who needs a treasurer?
| 05-10-2017 | Olivier Werlingshoff |
Do all international companies need a Treasurer or a Cash Manager? Yes and No would be my answer. In this article I will give my opinion on the reasons (not) to hire a Treasurer or Cash Manager.
First we have to focus on the definition of a Treasurer. Wikipedia: “he or she is responsible for liquidity risk management, cash management, issuing debt, foreign exchange and interest rate risk hedging, securitization, oversight of pension investment management, and capital structure (including share issuance and repurchase).”
Activities are Cash Management, Risk Management. Corporate Finance and Treasury operations & control. In a lot of companies all these activities and processes are part of the job of a controller and a finance manager.
When the company has financial problems the cash management activities, especially the cash flow forecast and the (inter)national banking environment, will come into the spotlight. A reliable cash flow forecast is built up on the right information about the cash position and the planning for the period to come. The problem is how accurate are the predictions for the future in the ERP systems? The right information can be obtained by asking not colleagues of the finance department but the sales colleague and procurement. This can be a time-consuming exercise.
There are a few new fintech companies who focus on the optimization of cash management processes. It is possible to manage all your bank accounts with one single system, where different ERP and company systems can be connected to each other which make it easier to set up a cash flow forecast. The search for the right information can be facilitated.
If you focus on the corporate finance activities such as an IPO or a refinancing, specific and knowledge is needed. This does not happen often.
My suggestion is to hire a Flex Treasurer and let him make a scan of all the treasury processes in the company. The Flex Treasurer can also implement improvements on the cash management and risk management activities. When all improvements are done see if the activities can be integrated in the existing jobs or you could hire a cash manager.
If a company decides to do an IPO or a refinancing there are plenty of companies specialized in this field. Therefore it would be smarter to use an interim consultant till the job is done.
Owner of Werfiad
