Treasury professionals who manage cash are faced with many challenges, especially if they have not invested in a modern solution to help centralize their payments operations. These challenges are amplified when considering the recent escalation in payments fraud. More than three-quarters (78 percent) of organizations admitted that their payments operations were targeted by fraudsters last year, according to the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP’s) 2018 Payments Fraud Survey. Companies using disparate payment systems, applying inconsistent controls, and adopting manual payment policies, rather than digitized policies were more likely to have experienced loss from fraud, according to the survey. Furthermore, AFP’s research found that business email compromise (BEC) has become a very significant fraud threat, with 77 percent of organizations experiencing it in 2017.

Considering the large number of fraud attempts, it is not surprising that detecting and stopping fraud attacks has become a major priority for organizations.

The real leaders in treasury are not only prioritizing the fight against fraud, but they are overhauling their payments processes by investing in a treasury management system (TMS) that enables them to illuminate the many vulnerabilities and challenges posed by antiquated solutions.

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Payments can be painful

Aside from the difficult prospect of losing millions of dollars to fraudsters, the world of payments can be a world of pain – as every treasurer knows. This pain typically comes from:

• The organization using a host of different systems to process payments– from banking portals and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems through to off-the-shelf accounts payable systems and even home-grown solutions.
• Formatting different payment files for different banks, not to mention managing the connectivity between those banks and the organization’s diverse payment systems.
• Doing manual reconciliations between the payments that were made and what actually arrived at the bank, as well as making accounting journal entries and updating the accounts payable sub-ledger.
• Not knowing whether a large payment has been planned, which needs to be funded, or whether substantial sums of cash are needlessly sitting in bank accounts that yield little interest in anticipation of a payment that has been delayed.

Alleviating the pain

A payments module integrated with a TMS can take away treasury’s pain by bringing automation, centralization and standardization to the payments process. It may achieve this by:

• Giving treasurers visibility of large number of payments being made across the organization in real time, which allows them to fund and invest more strategically.
• Streamlining payment connectivity so that only a single payment hub is uploading payments to the banks. This has the effect of eliminating duplicate costs as well as standardizing payment controls.
• Offering an automated format transformation service so that payment file formatting becomes a thing of the past. For example, Kyriba has a vast library of bank formats that covers more than 11,000 different payment scenarios, including the hundreds of ISO 20022 variants.
• Having a multi-currency, multi-language solution to empower and manage your teams around the globe.

Reap the benefits

Of course, having a TMS is not just about fighting fraud, and streamlining payments processes –  it is also about improving treasurers’ working lives so that less of their time is absorbed with transactional activities, freeing them up to deliver more strategic value to the organization.

There is the opportunity to pursue standardization – in other words, treasurers can push their organization to use one standardized bank format for payments globally and to follow standardized processes for making payments, regardless of who initiated them. Also, investing in a TMS with an integrated payments module means outsourcing connectivity, which reduces the organization’s costs in terms of hardware and IT and takes less time to deploy than in-house connectivity.

The benefit of real-time fraud detection means that treasury is able to automatically screen for potentially fraudulent activity or quarantine payments based on an organization’s payments policy for further review before a payment is made. Additionally, it could require extra approvals if a payment is being made to a newly modified bank account for the first time, or flag up a payment to a supplier if it has exceeded the average recurring amount.

Ultimately, there is no reason why treasurers should suffer the labor of antiquated payments systems– not when a modern TMS can bring fraud protection, automation, centralization and standardization to the process.

The purchase of a new treasury management system (TMS) is a major technological investment for any organization. For this reason, chief technology officers (CTOs) and IT personnel often support treasury teams during the request for proposal (RFP) process for a new TMS. In fact, responsible technology vendors would normally suggest that the CTO is involved in the process from start to finish. That’s not to say that the CTO and treasury will necessarily agree on everything to do with a TMS, but the selection process is likely to be smoother if treasurers understand what their CTO wants and expects from the solution.

To begin with, it is worth remembering that the CTO already oversees numerous platforms within the organization – platforms that present various problems that the IT team is expected to fix. Inevitably, this takes up time that IT could be spending on more strategic activities, such as digital transformation. So the introduction of a new system that needs to be managed internally is probably the last thing that the CTO wants. For this reason, a software-as-a-service, cloud-based TMS is likely to be a popular option. It is also essential that treasury has a good understanding as to what the IT team will require from the new system, particularly with regard to data storage and security.

The good news, however, is that a new TMS is fundamentally beneficial to the IT team as well as to treasury. Today, for example, CTOs are often tasked with supporting internal connectivity between an organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and its banks to facilitate payments and bank statement reporting. Even though SWIFT can be integrated into ERP systems, it is still expensive and time consuming to support the associated connection protocols. Furthermore, accommodating numerous different bank formats, which vary according to factors such as payment type, institution and country, is either a completely inefficient use of high-value internal IT resources or a financial drain if the work has to be outsourced to a third party. A TMS reduces the burden on IT in all these respects.

It is definitely in the treasurer’s interest to collaborate with a CTO when selecting the TMS that will satisfy both treasury and security requirements. What, then, are the four key questions that a CTO is likely to ask when evaluating a new TMS?

1. How secure is the TMS?

Security matters more important than anything to a CTO, particularly because treasury data usually represents the highest level of risk within a company. He or she will inevitably favor a TMS that has outstanding security features, even if it means compromising in other areas. In fact, even though the low system maintenance requirements associated with a cloud-based TMS will appeal the to the CTO, he or she would be willing to pass up on an otherwise attractive solution if it sacrifices data security. In the CTO’s eyes, the ideal TMS is both secure and hosted in the cloud.

Related reading: Is Treasury Winning the Fight Against Payments Fraud?

2. Will the TMS integrate with my organization’s single sign-on process?

Understandably, the CTO wants to have control over who can access the organization’s data. This control is typically achieved through a single sign-on process (an authentication service where employees use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications). The risks of not having a TMS that integrates with the organization’s single sign-on process are huge: people could potentially leave the company without their credentials being deactivated, allowing them to still access the system.

3. How mature is the TMS?

Your CTO will want to know that your proposed TMS has been tested – many, many times before and by many, many other successful organizations. He or she will want to read case studies and hear from others about how the system works in practice. Expect your CTO to take a keen interest in any problems and issues that have arisen with the system over the years, and how the vendor has applied lessons learned to improve the solution consistently over time. The CTO will also want to know that the TMS will meet the requirements of departments beyond treasury, including legal, IT and information security. Also, does it deliver the latest technology in areas such as cyber defense, data protection, disaster recovery and incident management?

4. What standards of assurance does the TMS provide?

The CTO will want to examine the TMS vendor’s SOC 1 and SOC 2 reports in depth. SOC 1 is a statement of operational controls, which sets out the internal controls, processes and procedures that the TMS vendor abides by when handling data. SOC 2 is a report by a third-party auditor that has audited the TMS vendor’s performance against those controls, on the basis of evidence provided. The CTO will review the vendor’s SOC 2 report to get third-party assurance that the vendor’s stated controls are actually being applied in practice. Since the SOC process is expensive, the CTO will be reassured by the fact the vendor is investing in it and see this as an indicator of the vendor’s maturity.

Final thoughts

Every CTO expects to be held accountable by the CEO for the selection of a new TMS. And, guess, what? The CTO probably doesn’t want to get fired because the organization picks the wrong one. So when it comes to evaluating TMS vendors, the CTO will probably assess them using a research methodology that evaluates different software vendors according to their market leadership in areas such as data security capability.

Expect the CTO to ask the TMS vendor to complete a security questionnaire, which could potentially include hundreds of questions, and then undertake careful analysis of the answers provided. This thoroughness is absolutely appropriate in light of the scale of the investment being made, and the serious risks involved.

Ultimately, the process of choosing a new TMS involves a partnership between treasury and the CTO, and a partnership between the organization and its TMS vendor. Like all collaborations, these partnerships will only work well if trust and understanding exists on every side, with each partner having a genuine appreciation and respect for the requirements of the other.

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As companies address the challenges of today’s rapidly changing market conditions and business needs, treasury is increasingly asked to support better execution of the broader business strategy. Below we identify six initiatives that corporate treasury functions should be prepared to assist, followed by questions to help financial professionals consider their current state and how their treasury can become a strategic function for the enterprise.

Transforming treasury operations

How do you measure whether your treasury operations effectively and cost-efficiently support the needs of the evolving business?

Successful treasuries are evolving their operations to align with today’s volatile and complex business environments. Forward-thinking treasury departments periodically review and redesign their processes, as appropriate, to effectively balance efficiency, innovation and performance excellence to support their current and anticipated future needs. Operational techniques are used, such as cash pooling, treasury and shared services centers, in-house banks, payment factories, re-invoicing and netting. All should be routinely evaluated for deployment to drive standardization, centralization and scalability of treasury capabilities — all positive indicators of an effective and cost-efficient treasury operation.

Related reading: AFP TiP Guide 2018: Selecting the Right Treasury Management System

Related reading: CFO Perspective: Out with the Grand Strategist. In with Informed Operatives

Related reading: How JVCKENWOOD's CFO Benefits from a Treasury Management Solution

Automating treasury

Are you getting the most out of your existing treasury systems? Does your enterprise have a strategic plan for treasury technology?

As the role of treasury is becoming more visible and strategic, the treasury function is expected to do more, do it better and faster, while simultaneously reducing cost. In context, treasury systems should be reviewed and reassessed periodically to determine whether they are being leveraged to their fullest extent, appropriately supporting the enterprise’s evolving needs. If it is determined that business needs are outpacing existing systems, then more suitable solutions should be identified, evaluated and adopted to support the enterprise’s requirements. Forward-looking treasuries are creating automation road maps with enterprise goals, objectives and detailed execution plans that conform to the overarching goals of the enterprise technology road map.

Executing corporate transactions

To what extent is your treasury ready to support your enterprise through evaluation, planning and successful execution of a strategic transaction — whether it’s a merger, acquisition, divestiture, spin or IPO?

The treasury function should be able to effectively support any strategic transaction undertaken or anticipated by the enterprise — from due diligence and pre-close through close and post- close. Processes can be automated to increase the enterprise’s forecasting and predictive capabilities, enabling more reliable information available for upstream decision-makers to negotiate optimal positioning for potential transactions.

Leveraging treasury analytics

How does your treasury leverage analytical tools to accomplish the following?

• Evaluate potential future outcomes and risks
• Protect the enterprise’s assets
• Support business decisions
• Unlock cash from the business
• Finance the enterprise
• Invest excess cash

Analytical tools and other emerging technologies are being leveraged by leading treasury functions to help support decision-making processes by enhancing and enabling existing capabilities that can lead to improved data integrity and quality, as well as more reliable reports and insights within the accounting, finance, governance and regulatory spaces. For example, robotic process automation (RPA) is being used to automate routine procedures; artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to analyze large amounts of data; and blockchain is being applied to potentially improve overall operational efficiency via better asset management, supply chain management and delivery.

Evaluating specialty treasury activities

Has your treasury been tasked with supporting any of the following new activities?

• Establishing a payment entity
• Factoring receivables
• Managing benefit plans and real estate
• Enhancing payment security
• Managing insurance

A high-performing treasury department should be able to create value for the enterprise at an increased and measurable level. In order to support execution of ad hoc tasks and new activities, a treasury department should establish and routinely reassess processes and procedures to ensure they evolve alongside changes in the business environment and technology. At the same time, leading treasury departments strive to maintain their capabilities with timely assessments of workforce competencies and follow up with strategic hiring and training. This helps ensure resources are on the leading edge of knowledge and development and can respond to the latest request necessary to support the enterprise. It goes without saying that all of the above areas are now within the remit of most treasury groups and are essential for being at the forefront of controls and security.

Managing accounting and controls

How does your treasury provide an adequate control environment to address emerging risks and meet the regulatory requirements of a dynamic regulatory landscape? In today’s environment, risk management has increased relevance for treasury. Enterprise risks such as global instability, fraud prevention and cyber breaches are relatively new risks, in addition to currency, interest rate, commodity, credit and securities prices. Treasury can be the promoter of more stringent controls around payments, for example, which are carried out to facilitate a more rigorous controlled environment. Data security leveraging the latest cryptographic and data protocols has become increasingly adept at detecting fraud and other emerging risks. To the extent treasury has responsibility, it can help provide or promote an adequate control environment to address enterprise risks and regulatory requirements.

Valerio Trinchi is a senior manager in Ernst & Young LLP’s Global Treasury Services practice within Financial Accounting Advisory Services.

This material has been prepared for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon as accounting, tax or other professional advice. Please refer to your advisors for specific advice.

Employing financial technology solutions has become a comfortable and productive way of life for many corporate finance leaders, who increasingly rely on these cloud applications to optimize and enhance a core piece of their jobs, from treasury to accounting and beyond.

Despite the proliferation and rapid adoption of financial technology solutions by global organizations from all industries, however, the solution providers should not escape scrutiny in one key area: security.

Additional reading: Kyriba Now Enables Clients to Conduct Their Own Pen-Tests

Additional reading: Four Key Questions a CTO Needs to Ask When Evaluating a New TMS

“Most FinTech vendors have access to highly sensitive financial information, so a company playing in this space needs to have some minimum things in place so their customers have a strong sense of their commitment to security,” said security expert Nick Biasevich, the director of technical sales enablement at Kyriba.

According to Biasevich, there are three minimum requirements any vendor should be able to provide:

• A Cyber Defense Center: A dedicated team whose sole purpose is to protect clients and their customers from potentially disastrous cyberthreats and cyberattacks. The principal tool these defense teams use is a security information and event management system, or SIEM, which actively monitors every end-point in the company, looking for any type of suspicious activity. Without a SIEM in place, companies have to do this manually, an extraordinary amount of work that leaves organizations open to security risk.

• Authenticated Pen-Testing for SaaS Platforms: There is probably no better test of platform security than authenticated penetration testing, or “pen-tests,” in which the software provider opens-up its SaaS-based application for a client’s IT personnel to take their best whacks in attempting to uncover security flaws. This compares to an unauthenticated pen-test, which is conducted outside of the platform and is not as rigorous or efficient in security screening. An authenticated pen-test requires full cooperation between the vendor and the prospect or client to complete, and is deep sign of the vendor’s security commitment.

• SOC I and SOC 2 Type II Certification: These certifications are key in assuring that a vendor’s security practices are up to standard. SOC 1 is a statement of operational controls, which sets out the internal controls, processes and procedures that a FinTech vendor abides to when handling data. SOC 2 Type II is a report by a third-party auditor that has audited the vendor’s performance against those controls, on the basis of the evidence provided. A SOC 2 Type II certification means that a vendor has proven that its system is designed to keep its clients’ sensitive data secure. This latter type of certification is expensive and time-consuming and is hard proof that a vendor takes security extremely seriously.

There were more than 1,000 global FinTech vendors, according to a 2016 report by Atherton Research. That number has likely grown significantly, fueled by new business models and increasing trust in cloud-based vendors to deliver secure, scalable global applications. 

Related reading: Top Security Considerations for Selecting a Treasury Management Vendor

“There are, of course, other security factors to consider from a buyer perspective, but if a vendor is not doing these basic things, the maturity level simply isn’t there, and certainly is not on par with Kyriba,” Biasevich said. “These three items are a good security sniff test for any vendor.”

As we turn the corner on 2018, most CFOs will be focused on the simultaneous tasks of helping their chief executives to exploit the opportunities that come with a booming economy, while also buffering their organizations from the risk of potential economic deceleration, increased FX and interest rate volatility, and an ever growing regulatory and compliance burden. As a result, CFOs will inevitably expect their treasury functions to provide practical and strategic advice to help with all of these elements.

So how can CFOs better leverage treasury to make sure their organizations are able to adjust to whatever the new year brings?

The uncertainty of 2019 will only increase if global economic decline settles in as some experts predict. While the party isn’t yet over for businesses globally, the indicators are that some of the guests have already left. Global growth reached 3.1 percent in both 2017 and 2018, but the World Bank predicts that it will decelerate over the next two years due to the dissipation of global slack (unused economic resources) and tighter central bank monetary policies, among other constraints.

In addition, the US and China are engaged in a trade war, European GDP growth is slowing, and the economic impact of “Brexit” is still not yet clear, and geopolitical tensions and sanctions against countries such as Iran and individuals and businesses in Russia among other places are on the rise. It all points to the strong possibility of choppy waters ahead.

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Improving risk, cash and working capital management

With the global economic outlook uncertain, there is clearly a case for corporate treasuries to be more strategic. In fact, Kyriba’s recent survey with CFO Publishing, 3 Key Areas Where CFOs Say Treasurers Need To Be More Strategic, found that CFOs want their treasurers to focus more on optimizing risk management, cash management and working capital. It’s not hard to see why.

Looking first at risk management, 42.7 percent of those surveyed (out of a total of 150+ participants) said that their organization’s treasury function needs to do a much better job of supporting business objectives than it does currently. This is likely related to two macro-trends that are increasing the importance of risk management for CFOs today.

The first macro-trend, geopolitical tensions, can lead to volatility in the FX and commodity markets and sudden shifts in trade flows. These, in turn, make it more important for organizations to have hedging strategies in place that mitigate currency and price fluctuations. Organizations also need access to the capital markets so that they can secure funding to offset any declines in trading volumes. In an uncertain world, it is critical that organizations have full transparency around the financial and operational risks they face – something that can usually be achieved through technology solutions with extensive and seamless global bank connectivity.   

The second macro trend, rising inflation, could result in more countries hiking up their interest rates in the same way that the US has already done, and will likely continue. Funding will become more costly and companies will see their margins squeezed. Ultimately, the combination of inflationary pressure and a more challenging international trade environment could lead to a reversal of the benign economic conditions we are enjoying today. This would have the effect of limiting the availability of liquidity, reducing corporate profits, increasing FX volatility, and further heightening the need for better risk management.

Cash management is another area where improvement can be made. One of the most surprising findings of the Kyriba survey was that 40 percent of the respondents – all of whom were senior financial executives across multiple industries in North America – believed that treasury needs to do a better job at cash management in order to support business objectives. Because cash management is such a key part of treasury, this finding suggests that in some organizations cash management may not be strategically aligned with business objectives. Rather, it appears to be treated as a side-activity that takes place independently of what else is happening in the business. Alternatively, cash managers may not have the ability to keep pace with the accelerated rate of business transactions today. When the CFO asks for a cash forecast to support a decision for an acquisition, the report should be ready in hours not days.

In 2019, CFOs and their treasurers need put a strategic lens on their cash management. They also need to use all the levers at their disposal to maximize the availability of working capital, optimize return on investments, and mitigate the risk of fraud.

Working capital is always vital. Cash is the lifeblood of a company. It is even more vital in a world of slowing growth that is increasingly defined by populism, protectionism, and jittery markets. Not surprisingly then, the Kyriba survey found that 39 percent of respondents thought that their treasury function needed to be much more strategic at working capital management.

Accurate cash flow forecasts underpin working capital management. So CFOs who want optimal working capital management need to focus on enhancing the quality of forecasting that takes place within their organizations. It appears there is a significant amount of work to do here, since the survey found that unreliable cash visibility and forecasts are of big concern for 40 percent of CFOs.

Managing investor expectations underlines the importance of cash visibility. In 2018, a few large companies returned cash to shareholders by buying back their shares, and a number of mergers and acquisitions were executed. However, the estimated $1 trillion that remains trapped on large corporate balance sheets globally indicates that CFOs do not have the insights they need to confidently draw down their cash reserves.

The power of technology

Modern treasury management solutions (TMS) with global connectivity and integrated business intelligence provide the cash visibility and data visualizations that companies need to make critical business decisions. Yet the Kyriba survey found that just 60 percent of companies use a dedicated TMS. CFOs should question what is stalling technology adoption within their finance organization.  

Every sizeable company in the world today needs a system that it can use to manage its liquidity performance – a single source of truth to allow the company to optimize its cash through automated investments, working capital and risk management programs. In addition, the system should have the necessary data visualization capabilities to analyse the company’s cash position in multiple what if scenarios. With clarity into cash exposures and idle cash, a CFO has the confidence to use the analyses from treasury to drive growth for the business.

No one can predict the future with absolute accuracy – not even the World Bank. Perhaps global economic growth will hold up or it will slow down more than expected. Given the uncertainty that exists, CFOs can only plan for different scenarios. Ultimately, CFOs should look to empower their treasury in 2019 with modern technologies that will help drive strategic decision support in real-time. If the primary function of your treasury organization is treated as a back office, or unrelated function, you are not prepared to successfully navigate the evolving trade landscape and thrive amid all the rapid change that we see in the world today.

Information technology leaders, CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and their teams, have an increasingly heavy burden to launch new technology that drives competitive advantages at their organization. The demand for improved security, scalability and efficiency are top priorities for business leaders around the world. Most companies are going through some type of digital transformation to meet these demands, but with so many areas in need of an upgrade to their existing and aging solutions, how do IT teams prioritize projects? Gaining the most value for the organization starts with Finance. Enabling the team to protect and grow cash, and accelerate free cash flow should be the primary consideration for IT teams.

Additional reading: 15-Minute Guide to Payment Hubs

This article will point out a couple of areas for IT teams to support the organization and get some quick and easy wins for their corporate-wide digital transformation projects such as mission-critical processes related to AP, AR, accounting and treasury through qualified cloud vendors.

1:Connectivity as a Service

IT teams globally integrate financial applications for different reasons – for example, consolidated reporting, forecasting, ERP posting, payment generation, sales statistics and more. These integration points can become very complex and costly because of all the different protocols, file formats, firewalls, encryptions and security requirements that must be satisfied. In addition, once you have these integration points working, you still have to actively manage and troubleshoot any issues.

Today’s multi-tenant cloud treasury technology is more sophisticated than ever before and can help to streamline this integration process, as well cut down on the implementation and maintenance costs. Vendors have libraries of thousands of prebuilt bank protocols, ERP connections and file formats that have already been developed and successfully tested with hundreds of other clients. By leveraging a cloud vendor to own and manage your connectivity, it takes IT out of the business of building and testing file formats, connection protocols or having to complying with special encryption processes that most banks require. The whole connectivity process can be managed and supported by a qualified vendor, saving hundreds – if not thousands – of IT hours to use on the other strategic digital transformation projects. Some common examples where cloud technology can simplify and replace current processes:

• Payment file formatting
• Transmission to and from your banking partners
• Eliminate logging into multiple banking portals and exporting reports
• BAI and MT940 reporting from the banks
• Automating ERP posting files for accounting
• APIs to banks and other data warehouses
• Aggregating forecasting data

2: Technology Enhanced Security & Compliance

With the amount of fraud and cyber security cases rising by the year, corporations need to make changes to secure the transaction lifecycle. As IT teams go through this transformation process, they can set up themselves up for success – and reduce their workload -- by using a vendor’s technology and best practices to lock down their security. Below are some of the most common solutions our clients look to deploy to enhance their current security and compliance processes.

• Bank account management– Delivers approval workflows for internal controls such as bank account changes, signatory changes, and authority signing rules that are commonly synced with payment processes.
• Extended security layers– By leveraging a vendor’s library of security options, IT professionals can easily lock down the application -- and financial data -- better than most banks. Those options include: 
  • IP filtering is a security feature that enables clients to restrict login to a pre-defined set of IP addresses – or ranges of addresses – that are set up and maintained by the system security administrator. If used on its own, IP filtering is an effective fraud prevention tool. IP filtering can also be used in combination with other extended security capabilities to create greater protection – for example, any user logging in outside of the pre-defined set of IP addresses is required to use dual-factor authentication.
  • Dual-factor authentication creates a randomly generated one-time password using the user’s smartphone, a token, or a SWIFT 3SKey digital certificate. When dual-factor authentication is activated, the user is prompted to enter the one-time password after submitting their normal UserID and password. This makes dual-factor authentication an effective fraud prevention tool when used on its own.
  • Enterprise SSO allows single sign-on with a client’s internal security environment. Enterprise SSO uses SAML 2.0 for LDAP authentication, meaning that each user’s security credentials (for example, their Windows UserID and password) can be used to log in to the application and drive user access. With Enterprise SSO, no additional UserID and password is required, and all password controls are managed internally by the corporate IT team and policies.
  • Virtual private networks (VPN) enable users to access an application through a dedicated network maintained by the vendor. The VPN is ideal for centralized or regionalized treasury teams.

• Real-time fraud detection and transaction screening – These outsourced capability creates user-defined screening algorithms to detect high-probability fraud activities from both internal and external fraudsters. The screening runs checks against all OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) and sanctions lists to make sure you are not making payments to countries or companies the U.S. Department of Treasury has blacklisted.

CFO, CIO and treasurers are focused on keeping up with the ever-changing technology landscape to stay competitive and secure in a global environment. This is requiring better collaboration between treasury and IT on digital transformation projects that help secure end-to-end transaction lifecycles and processes. As part of these projects, many companies are also updating internal policies related to connectivity options, security requirements, fraud detection, bank account management, and signatory changes. Have you considered outsourcing these capabilities as part of your digital transformation projects? If not, get some quick wins by putting them on your priority list for 2019.

Note: Want to learn more about how Kyriba can help accelerate your payments transformation project? Register now for our live webinar. 

How does Kyriba’s acquisition of FiREapps help CFOs and treasurers battle mounting foreign exchange losses?

In this new video, senior leaders at Kyriba breakdown the company’s recent acquisition, and talk about the value of creating the industry’s most robust end-to-end solution for managing FX risk, including:

• Why managing FX effectively is such a huge problem, costing organizations billions each year
• How the unique combination of FiREapps and Kyriba changes the game by combining critical pre- and post-trade processes
• What one IDC analyst has to say about the acquisition in terms of creating value for organizations

To learn more, Kyriba will host a webinar entitled, “How Kyriba’s FiREapps Can Help You Control FX Risk,” on April 30. Register now..

The landscape of global payments is evolving as concerns of fraud and the desire for more efficient processes increase. To give insight into how treasury organizations are thinking about the future of payments, Kyriba commissioned Strategic Treasurer to survey more than 300 organizations to gain a more comprehensive view of the global payments environment. The below infographic visually outlines some of the findings. 

Additionally, in keeping up with the challenges and opportunities that global payments present, Kyriba VP of Strategy, Bob Stark, joined The Treasury Update podcast to discuss critical factors that are driving significant payment changes on a global scale, as well as to outline the key findings of the 2019 Global Payments survey. 

To learn more, download the full report. And for an even deeper dive, watch the Global Payments 2019 Survey Results webinar to gain a better understanding of the drivers, attitudes and perceptions of new payment initiatives across the globe.