Conferences often fail to get across real learning and relevant lessons you can take back to the office. That’s why for this year’s ACT Smart Cash Management Conference on the 14-15 March, we have recruited four influential, experienced personalities to dive into the content and ensure the audience is provided with fresh thinking in a new format which will regularly meet during the conference: the cashback panel.
Conferences often fail to get across real learning and relevant lessons you can take back to the office. That’s why for this year’s ACT Smart Cash Management Conference on 14-15 March in London, we have put together a programme full of new formats and content to ensure focused discussion on the latest innovations and strategies aiding cash management professionals.
In the first of our series covering the moderators, meet Bandhu Das who works at HM Treasury.
I am Head of Cash Management at HM Treasury. I am responsible for devising policies and standards on cross-government banking, cash management and money transmission issues for nearly £800bn public expenditure programmes both in the UK and overseas.
I also lead government’s critical cashflow forecasting enterprise (approx. £2 trillion in annual gross flow) with a large team of cross-functional forecasters from 50+ national organisations.
My main objective is to ensure that the UK government has the right amount of cash in the right place, the right time place and in the right currency to meet all its obligations in an economical, effective, efficient and secured way.
The scope and scale of the overall government cash management enterprise is huge. It is an exciting and dynamic environment (from financing of space programmes to school meals) with thousands of transactions taking place every hour.
The budget is my team’s first step in devising a cashflow profile for the whole year. We break the annual budget to the nitty-gritty of daily cashflow. We monitor changes daily, continuously refine the forecasts, and take corrective smoothing action when it's needed.
Many of the challenges are similar in private and public sector. Technology is moving rapidly. The external environment is uncertain, volatile and ambiguous, and there is a continuously increasing scrutiny on treasury teams in providing cost savings and value-added services.
There are also the common elements of functional leadership that can be applied in both the public and private sector. For example, how we communicate issues and influence people outside treasury teams, how we manage uncertainty and how we manage many stakeholders with varying demands and shifting priorities.
I am keen to meet as many of my peers as possible from different organisations and industries. I will be encouraging them to share their success stories as well as the challenges they face and how they go about solving them – it’s a great learning opportunity.
Plus, I am also keen to learn about innovation in the cash management space and any lessons I can take back to my day job.
In my experience, the single most important factor for success is the ability of the treasury team and the rest of the businesses to be truly collaborative
There is always a big question on what is next and the technologies we use to become ever more efficient and valuable. I think it’s important that we start thinking about machine learning and predictive analytics in cash management. We also continuously need to scan for updates in the payments landscape and see how they can help us deliver better services to our customers and stakeholders (for example, with enhanced reporting analytics).
In my experience, the single most important factor for success is the ability of the treasury team and the rest of the business to be truly collaborative in pursuit of a single objective or mission. For us, it is about saving cash for taxpayers.
Politics, regulations and technology will continue to impact cash management in coming days and months.
If I had to pick one, it’s the use of technology that we are likely to be discussing the most in future. From seeking ways not just to automate processes and achieve cost efficiency, we’ll be talking about using technology to enable the overall treasury function to improve effectiveness when managing liquidity, risk or offer more insightful advice for strategic decision-making.
Visit the conference website to find out more and book your place!
