Treasury Innovation Zone
eBAM that Works!
With Delega announcing the start of the pilot phase of its cloud-based solution for bank account management, TMI talks to the firm’s CEO, Riccardo Balsamo, about his expectations for this truly collaborative project. The lack of an effective bank account management solution is one of those challenges that has been around for an extremely long …
How to Create the Treasury Tech You Always Wanted
Low-code/no-code (LCNC) programming offers non-IT professionals a chance to self-create the tools they want and need. TMI talks to Nicholas Franck, a long-haul corporate treasury and banking professional and LCNC convert, about the technology that could be a treasury game-changer. No, that headline is not clickbait. Those treasury functions that have discovered LCNC software already …
How to Protect Ourselves from Unethical Al
AI is now part of everyday life. As a result, we have a technology – and one that is being continually improved – that helps us to perform tasks more efficiently. But we also want from AI is a system that will not interfere with or undermine human capabilities. One of the biggest challenges around …
Natural Intelligence: The Power of Swarm Learning
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI Swarm Learning is a new decentralised AI technology co-invented by Hewlett Packard Labs. Eng Lim Goh, PhD, Senior Vice President, Data & AI, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), explains how it works. Diverse industries, from healthcare, agriculture and retail to public transportation, aerospace and finance, create vast quantities of data …
Breaking New Ground
Harnessing Payments Innovation in APAC By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI The pace of payments technology development across APAC is breathtaking. Treasury must understand the scale and significance of these changes to fully harness their benefits. In the company of Bank of America’s Venkat ES, Head of Treasury Products, Asia Pacific, Global Transaction Services, and …
Accelerated Digitalisation in Africa: a Welcome Outcome of the Pandemic
By Thabo Makoko, Head of Cash Management and Transactional Banking, Absa CIB Digitisation of treasury processes had been developing slowly but surely across Africa until the pandemic hit. Now it has taken off in a big way. The results are impressive, as Thabo Makoko, Head of Cash Management and Transactional Banking, Absa CIB, explains. To …
Creating Emerging Market Supply Chain Opportunities
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI Even robust mid-market firms in emerging markets can experience difficulties in securing sufficient finance to grow. It can mean larger established-market buyers and suppliers are needlessly losing opportunities to work with these firms. TMI discovers how one fintech is seeking to bridge the funding gap. Supply chains are often …
A2A in Action: Pay by Bank Adding Options for Corporates and Consumers
By Brad Goodall, CEO, Banked, and Ad Van der Poel, Co-Head of Product Management for GTS EMEA, Bank of America UK fintech Banked has teamed up with Bank of America (BofA) to deliver a ‘pay by bank’ real-time online account-to-account solution. TMI finds out more from Brad Goodall, CEO, Banked, and Ad van der Poel, Co-Head of …
Instant Treasury for an Instant World
By Wim Raymaekers, Global Head of Corporates Strategy, SWIFT How can real-time account information help make life simpler for corporate treasurers? Wim Raymaekers, Global Head of Corporates Strategy, SWIFT, explains. Having up-to-date information about global cash availability is essential when it comes to making strategic business decisions. But all too often, corporate treasurers can’t get …
RPA in Treasury: Making Friends with Robots
On behalf of those yet to explore robotic process automation, we ask a brace of technologists to reveal its real advantages and limitations, and speak to one business expert whose organisation is leading the way. There’s no denying it – mundane and repetitive tasks are a drain on resources. By taking time away from more …
API Days: From Talk to Action
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI Since the first APIs started appearing in the bank-to-treasury space a few years ago, driven in part by the open banking revolution, there has been much talk of their transformational power. We consider the reality behind the claim, exploring the possibilities and the limitations. The promise of system flexibility, …
Reporting Rules Changing for Crypto Assets
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI The $1tr. Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, recently signed by US President Joe Biden, includes a tax code change that brings crypto under the tax reporting microscope. What does increased interest on the part of the regulatory authorities mean for corporates holding or considering such assets? TMI asked Antoine Scalia, Founder …
Celestial Payments and Other Advances
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI J.P. Morgan tested the world’s first bank-led tokenised value transfer in space in 2020. In doing so, it signalled the start of what could become the subject of the next space race: satellite payments. Tyrone Lobban, Head of Blockchain Launch at J.P. Morgan’s Onyx business, updates TMI on this …
Digital Gold Creating Yield for Treasurers
By Jai Bifulco, Chief Commercial Officer, Kinesis When the first ever government-backed, sharia-compliant, gold-based financial infrastructure was launched in Indonesia this month, it signalled new ways of thinking about corporate payments and yield generation. TMI decided to find out more. Payments systems come and go, with various capabilities attributed to each. But when one solution …
Brexit Driving Euro Transaction Fees Skyward: Time to Re-negotiate?
By Laurent Descout, CEO, Neo Since Brexit, banks have been charging customers to deposit euros into their euro accounts in London, forcing costs to soar. TMI asks an industry expert why this is happening and what can be done about it. Businesses have been used to paying low fees for their European banks to transfer …
Global ‘Just-in-Time’ Liquidity Network Nearing Completion
By Nick Ogden, Founder, RTGS.global network “As we become increasingly used to interacting on a real-time or instant basis, it’s obvious that the international payments system is nowhere near fit for purpose in today’s global digital economy,” states Nick Ogden, serial fintech entrepreneur, founder of WorldPay, ClearBank and now the RTGS.global network. Working with regulators, …
Cash is Dead. Long Live Bitcoin*
*Other digital assets are available When BCB Group, a crypto-dedicated payment services provider, launched BCB Treasury in February 2021, its aim was help corporate treasury departments invest in digital assets. TMI spoke to the firm’s Chief Growth Officer, Ben Sebley, about the platform and the wider impacts of treasury’s adoption of Bitcoin and other crypto …
RPA: Hype or Hope for Finance Teams?
By Harel Tayeb, CEO, Kryon Due to the ongoing effects of Covid-19, many sectors of the world’s economy are accelerating their digital transformation journeys – and the finance sector is no exception. As a result of this ongoing change, conversations are taking place about digitising certain processes to future-proof workflows and keep finance teams as …
Why Trade Finance Market Places are the Way Forward
By Dominic Broom, CEO, Fineon Exchange The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a significant slump in global trade volumes in 2020, with the latest World Trade Organisation (WTO) forecast estimating that global merchandise trade will shrink by 9.2% year-on-year. If there is any silver lining to the crisis, however, it is that it has accelerated the …
How to Innovate – and be Successful
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI Innovation comes with no guarantees of success. Is there a way to increase the odds? We ask Annerie Vreugdenhil, Chief Innovation Officer, ING , to describe the processes she employs with her team. In the treasury world, ‘innovation’ may be interpretated as simply offering new products or services; it’s …
Top Treasury Technology Innovations to Watch in 2021
by Eleanor Hill, Editor, TMI It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, but it can also be the catalyst for adopting innovations – in a rapid time frame. Nowhere was this more clearly displayed than the world of treasury technology in 2020. As has been well documented, the Covid-19 pandemic pushed treasurers …
The Potential of Quantum Computing in Trade Finance
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI The financial mechanisms underpinning global trade are undergoing significant change. Tradeteq CEO Christoph Gugelmann explains how quantum computing has the potential to transform this trillion-dollar industry over the next few decades. It is noteworthy that trade finance – an industry that has been in existence for centuries and which …
BIS: Cyber-attacks on Financial Sector Never Been Greater
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI The connected nature of business today means it has never been more important for treasurers to recognise and respond to the risks impacting their partner ecosystem. In particular, given the agenda for digitalisation, understanding the ever-changing threat of cybercrime to the financial sector, and how it reacts, could become …
Remote Control: Can Treasury Break Free From the Office for Good?
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI With the pandemic forcing many to work remotely, the idea has gained traction among professionals that this is not such a bad thing after all. To what extent can treasurers operate effectively away from the office? We ask an expert. Corporate treasury teams are usually quite small, tight-knit affairs, …
Adopt Me: Why Innovations Must Be Humanised
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI As book titles go ‘Technology Is Dead’ is likely to pique the interest of more than a few treasurers, given that the profession is frequently bombarded with messages to the contrary. TMI spoke to its author, Chris Colbert, to find out more. Fintech specialists live and breathe technology, so …
Specialist Treasury Technology: A Breed Apart?
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI The idea that best-of-breed selection, as opposed to a traditional ‘full stack’ TMS, is the way forward gets the TIS ‘Executive Briefing’ treatment in its latest paper. But are treasurers ready to abandon their love of TMSs and migrate to best-of-breed solutions instead? When research by HSBC demonstrated in late 2019 …
Digital RFPs: No More Pain, Many More Opportunities
By Tom Alford, Deputy Editor, TMI It seems that change is in the air for many corporates. Indeed, a recent Treasury Dragons event demonstrated that there is a healthy appetite amongst corporates to move to another core system or banking provider. With one poll showing 65% of the audience of over 100 corporates are considering …