On 12 February the ACT will be running the ACT Cash Management Conference in London.
This flagship conference provides a unique opportunity to share best practice, hear practical case studies from leading corporates and network with fellow cash management and treasury professionals.
We conducted a short Q&A with one of this year’s speakers, Austin Matthews, Assistant Treasurer at Sky and this is what he said;
1. Tell us a little about yourself – how did you first get involved in treasury?
After graduating I started working at a telecoms company called Energis in the cash team – performing bank reconciliations and allocating customer receipts. I progressed through various roles there (such as payment processing and producing cashflow forecasts) into the Treasury team and decided I enjoyed the profession. I then started studying and qualified as an accountant, before taking the AMCT and MCT exams. I’m currently Assistant Treasurer at Sky, having worked for Shire, Cable & Wireless and Thames Water along the way. I’m glad to have started on the bottom rung – it has helped to give a more rounded view and additional insight into all the challenges involved in particular projects.
2. What are you looking forward to seeing at this year’s ACT Cash Management Conference?
I am looking forward to refreshing my knowledge on cross-border cash-pooling so I will be very interested in the case study presented by UPS.
3. Regulation is always a challenge - what are the key regulatory issues for you today?
We’re currently grappling with the regulatory changes to European Money Market Funds and trying to stay on top of developments with Brexit and the LIBOR replacement.
4. At the event you will be speaking as part of the one of panel discussions looking at what makes good cash management, so for a little taster, what does make for good cash management?
Relentless focus. I always believe it’s important to know exactly what the company has in the bank on a daily basis, what do the near and mid-term cash forecasts look like, what cash is available or restricted etc etc? Alongside this, you need an organisation that understands the importance of liquidity and sets targets around cash conversion or OCF.
5. Where do you see cash management in the future – what will the key challenges be?
I think we’ll continue to see a big move away from consumers using traditional banking and increased take-up of newcomers like Monzo and Revolut, as well as the establishment of a truly stable universal electronic currency. As a Treasurer it will mean getting comfortable with a totally different control environment and changing consumer habits. We also seem to be seeing the start of a move to better data analytics from financial systems and I hope to see more progress in developing products to more accurately forecast operating cashflow.
ACT Cash Management Conference
12 February 2019
Click here to take a look at the full programme.
