operations,” she says. “Organizations
may consider the sale of underper-
forming assets and business units,
which would require treasury’s input
on which businesses are the most ef-
ficient users of capital and generators
of profit.”
Delivering that data requires the
right technology, which figures prom-
inently among the secondary issues
and challenges affecting cash man-
agement capabilities:
Regulatory requirements. A
source of pain for years, regulatory compliance requirements
continue to increase and intensify. Corporate treasury groups
and bankers are especially
burdened by activities related
to KYC (Know Your Customer),
reports Jeffery. In most cases,
companies are solving these
challenges within their organization, he reports, adding that
“the pain is increasing at escalating rates.” Protiviti’s Thomas
adds that the highly regulated
nature of cross-border cash
management activities also
marks an ongoing challenge.
Fraud. “Payment fraud contin-
ues to grow increasingly auto-
mated, sophisticated, and adap-
tive,” Jeffery reports. “This has
led to more attacks and a greater
level of financial success” for the
attackers. In response, Jeffery
and his team expect more orga-
nizations to invest in anomaly-
detection tools, conduct more
training and testing around pay-
ment security, and assess and
strengthen end-to-end payment
processes.
Cybersecurity. Payment fraud is
often perpetrated via cybersecurity breaches, another challenge
for increasingly digital treasury
functions—and one which ION’s
Sreepada says treasurers are focusing on as a critical issue this
year. Grant Thornton’s Hughes
agrees. “As businesses engage
in digital transformation and
make use of open networks and
other future-ready services from
banking partners, they will be
exposed to new and diverse risks
and cybercrime,” Hughes notes.
“Leaders must balance decisions
about adopting advancing digital technology and banking solutions with the risks inherent in
these opportunities.”
Treasury technology. Exter-
nal volatility and uncertainty
make it even more important
for treasury functions to gain
better visibility into their cash
positions. This need, BELLIN’s
Schlecht emphasizes, is driving
treasury functions to evaluate
new or upgraded treasury man-
agement systems. Payment
complexity—driven by global
growth, foreign exchange vol-
atility, payment advances, and
the growing threat of fraud—is
challenging existing treasury
technologies. “Treasury, A/P,
and IT groups now have to sup-
port an escalating level of com-
plexity with limited resources,”
Jeffery says. “They know they
shouldn’t have to solve the
same problem in four or five dif-
ferent underlying systems.”
Talent. New cloud-based solutions, application programming interfaces (APIs), open
banking, and robotic process
automation (RPA) all require
new skills. “Bank APIs, enabling real-time updates of
bank balances and transaction
data, and machine learning
applications for better forecasting and fraud detection are reshaping the treasury function,”
Sreepada says. According to
Hughes, the implementation
of some of these advanced
technologies creates a talent
challenge for many traditional
treasury functions. “New required skill sets have emerged,”
she says, noting that treasury
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