Treasury is really all about financial risk management, and the role of the treasurer is, fundamentally, to ensure that their organisation has access to finance to invest in growing the business, pay the bills and generate returns for stakeholders. Therefore, the ability to fund a business is arguably the most important part of the role.
Funding can take many forms:
Access to long-term capital (be that debt or equity) can be relatively straightforward for the very largest organisations, which can choose market, timing and scale to fit their own criteria. However, for the vast majority, there will always be trade-offs required, access to certain markets may be unavailable, restricted or simply too expensive to be economic.
Likewise, medium-term bank debt (for example, through revolving credit facilities) may be more or less straightforward to arrange, and there are many permutations of possible structures and many new entrants and leavers in this particular market as banks expand or retrench according to their latest strategic goals.
Currently, it is in the area of short-term funding and working capital management that the greatest change and innovation is taking place. Digitalisation of markets, developments in technology improving cash management forecasting in particular, and changes in payments rails resulting in more efficient flows all facilitate the efficient use of working capital (the cash sloshing around the business).
The cost of funding has fluctuated over the last decade – the period of low interest rates making funding (relatively) cheap and easy for all was replaced by a sharp increase in funding cost and, for some at least, access to liquidity became constrained (hence the arrival of new entrants such as private credit in the corporate funding arena). We would now seem to be heading towards a more stable period, but the impact of regulatory change (e.g. Basel) may result in increased costs for lenders, which may be passed on to borrowers.
The ongoing geopolitical uncertainty means that market dislocations can occur at short notice and therefore the treasurer needs to be prepared and ready to act at short notice if necessary.
Due to its scale of both programme and exhibitors, the ACT Annual Conference 2025, taking place on 20-21 May 2025, offers a unique opportunity, to hear from suppliers and peers about the latest developments in funding; to understand the direction of travel in the markets, particularly given the current relatively uncertain geopolitical conditions and to hear from peers about what they are doing, and their recent experiences.
