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Treasury & Banking in India
20-06-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |
This call took place against the background of the war in Ukraine – but it was a useful chance to catch up on the ever-improving situation in India.
India has always been complex, with many regulations and poor clarity. This is clear from the comments below, where participants often have different experiences on the same topic. But, overall, the economy is working well, people are making profits (this was not always the case), and regulations are becoming more user-friendly, even if they remain challenging.
Source
Business structure: most participants have one legal entity which faces customers, and a different one which acts as an international shared service centre, invoicing other companies in the group on a cost plus basis. This can lead to inefficiencies in cash management: everyone struggles with domestic cash pooling and intercompany loans, while the shared service centre has guaranteed profits and cash generation. One participant has all activities in the same legal entity, which makes life easier.
Intercompany loans within India create transfer pricing and tax challenges: there is a required or recommended interest rate of 8%, compared to deposit rates of 4% to 4.5%.
Cross border cash pooling and intercompany loans are generally very difficult: many approvals are required. Dividends are subjected to withholding tax of 15%, which is sufficient to deter some, but not all, participants from paying dividends. However, this is an improvement on the previous 22% dividend tax, which was often not creditable against tax in the receiving country.
Netting of intercompany invoices is not allowed. However, one participant is using an Indian entity to centralise all invoices within the country using a POBO/ROBO process, and limiting the transactions to a single, large, gross in/gross out settlement. They are also looking at a non resident INR account.
Participants mostly use deposits for investing their excess cash. One is using the TIDE deposit: the bank automatically sweeps fixed amounts of cash above a defined threshold into deposits. These receive a higher rate if they remain for more than two weeks, but can be released if needed, with a lower interest rate being paid.
Most participants use international banks, mainly Citi and BNPP. Most complained that Citi are reluctant to use automated FX platforms, and are behind on the electronic transmission of import documentation – but one participant had a more positive experience. JPMorgan again received positive comments for their approach.
The participants who use local banks generally had positive comments about them, and found they were a big help with pricing, especially on loans and letters of credit.
Tax remains complex and challenging.
Bottom line: the – excellent – report below reflects the significant complexity of doing business and managing treasury in India. But it is an important market, and one which is improving. So it is definitely worth the effort!
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TIS acquires Cashforce, an AI-powered provider of cash management and forecasting solutions.
17-06-2022 | treasuryXL | Cashforce | TIS
Revolutionizing Global Liquidity Management for Treasury and Finance
Treasury Intelligence Solutions (TIS), a global leader in enterprise payment optimization, today announced their acquisition of Cashforce, an AI-powered provider of cash management and forecasting solutions.
This acquisition will see Cashforce’s leading cloud solution – currently deployed at many of the largest and most sophisticated corporate treasuries in the world – become integrated with TIS’ SaaS payments platform. This unified solution will provide enterprises with an unmatched suite of capabilities for cash management, global payments, and fraud mitigation along with superior connectivity, workflows, and reporting functions.
Over the past few years, TIS and Cashforce have collaborated closely to provide a complementary offering for treasury and finance teams. These efforts were met with immediate success in the market as demand for improved cash management and forecasting tools has risen sharply. Now, TIS’ acquisition of Cashforce presents the perfect opportunity to integrate both products together as part of a more complete offering.
For the thousands of enterprise treasury and finance practitioners who currently use TIS, this acquisition provides access to faster and more accurate cash reporting, forecasting, and working capital management. To date, cash positioning and forecasting are still being performed manually by many treasury groups, which represents a major pain point for CFOs and business leaders when attempting to make strategic financial decisions. However, the robust capabilities provided by Cashforce eliminate many of these inefficiencies and ultimately enable companies to gain quick and accurate insights into their financial position based on reliable payments and liquidity data.
According to Erik Masing, Group CEO of TIS, “Cashforce has been a premier partner of TIS for several years and has contributed significantly to the cash forecasting and management capabilities we offer clients. The acquisition is a natural extension of our business and will allow TIS to further integrate Cashforce’s solution with our platform in order to offer advanced forecasting and data management capabilities to all our clients. This means enterprises can significantly reduce complexity in their global payments and cash management tech stacks by leveraging standardization and transparency afforded by a single, elegant solution.”
For Cashforce, the acquisition means that existing clients can now supplement their robust forecasting capabilities with TIS’ industry-leading payments and bank connectivity features. As explained by Nicolas Christiaen, Founder and CEO of Cashforce, “Giving businesses complete visibility over their cash and liquidity data has always been the core objective of Cashforce. While we have spent years perfecting our capabilities in this regard, TIS has been strengthening their suite of payments, bank connectivity, and cash management tools. When combined, these two sets of capabilities form the ideal solution for global treasury and finance teams to achieve full control and visibility over their entire payments and liquidity architecture – including all entities, back-office systems, and banks.”
With the added capabilities of Cashforce’s solution, TIS now offers a single, scalable cloud platform for clients to address needs in the following areas:
For more information on TIS’ acquisition of Cashforce and the advantages our combined solution will provide to enterprise treasury, finance, and executive teams, contact us at [email protected] or by using the information found on our website.
About TIS
TIS is reimagining the world of enterprise payments through a cloud-based platform uniquely designed to help global organizations optimize payments, manage cash visibility, and mitigate risk. Corporations, banks, and business vendors leverage TIS to transform how they connect global accounts, collaborate on payment processes, execute outbound payments, analyze cash flow and compliance data, and improve critical outbound payment functions. With $2 trillion in payments processed annually, the TIS corporate payments platform helps businesses improve operational efficiency, lower risk, manage liquidity, gain a strategic advantage – and ultimately achieve enterprise payment optimization.
Visit us for more information at https://www.tispayments.com.
The Relentless Rise of Real-Time Data
16-06-2022 | treasuryXL | Refinitiv | LinkedIn |
Demand for real-time data is growing fast as financial firms face regulatory, trading, operational and competitive challenges. Rob Lane, head of real-time feeds at Refinitiv, discusses the changing data needs of banks and buy-side firms and how the cloud is helping improve access to a key source of competitive advantage in pursuit of more informed and agile decision-making.
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