This article was written by Michael Briody, Corporate Treasury Workflow Specialist at Bloomberg.
With this increased reputation comes more responsibilities, meaning treasurers need to become more proactive and strategic – if they already aren’t – in order to fulfill these new expectations.
Increasingly, the C-suite is looking to treasurers to be up to speed and knowledgeable on the latest regulations, and rules and best practices around them. The corporate treasurer must be able to paint a picture for the C-suite on the company’s current financial landscape, how the firm is in compliance with regulation, and how their risk profile looks. In fact, before even being asked, treasurers need to be proactive in providing updates and information to the C-level executives, board of directors and other pertinent stakeholders.
This means that treasurers need to rely on technology more than ever before. It is important to partner with reputable, secure data and solutions providers that will help them do their jobs more efficiently and decrease their reputational risk. Having such a partner will help with automation of manual workflow and ensure accurate data.
In addition to risk and compliance, treasurers are leaned on more and more to provide insight and suggestions for where firms can achieve greater efficiency. This again is an area where technology and data will be critical to how successful a treasurer can be at providing maximum value to an organization. The treasurer has become the front line for ensuring that treasury departments are implementing solutions to help drive automation where possible and to streamline their manual processes. Among the greatest time and cost savings that can be realized are by removing human involvement in manual, and often paper-based, processes to an entirely automated system. This can help redirect resources more efficiently and allow human employees to focus on more value-added tasks.
It is clear that treasurers are playing a more active role in formulating trade ideas and strategies to help with company’s overall profitability. For example, treasurers can help save hedging costs for their company by knowing what currencies are highly correlated – via technology and data tools – and then subsequently take advantage by hedging the least expensive currency. By using technology and data to hedge more efficiently, treasurers can play this new, more consultative role much more proactively. The same sentiment can also be applied to best execution and countless other strategies.
Working with accurate, clean data and to be able to make the most of it with robust analytics means treasurers can communicate strategic ideas to the C-suite effectively. In addition, it means if management asks for a report, it can be produced in a matter of hours as opposed to days or weeks with reliable data provided by trusted sources such as Bloomberg.
There is an awakening going on in the treasury world; treasurers may not have previously considered their reputational risk. However, it is something than can be greatly enhanced by working with a trusted technology partner to provide more strategic insight and consultative value inside the organization.
This article is reproduced from the Bloomberg’s Professional Services blog, and is licensed by The Association of Corporate Treasurers.
