On 1 August 2006, I started my day at the office by closing the books in my role as CFO at the SME I was working for. I got a cup of coffee and browsed through my e-mail. At the same time, the post was delivered by the internal mail guy, Jan – a nice guy who I chatted to about the latest football match. I opened my letters and there was an invitation about something called SEPA – the single euro payments area. As I had a lot on my plate, I threw the invitation in the bin, thinking it wasn’t something important.
A few months later, our bank approached us with new contract negotiations for the current credit facility. We finalised the new credit facility deal fairly quickly and talked a bit about the future, which they were optimisitic about. I explained to them that our organisation was going to expand abroad and that our local market would expand to include six other EU countries. The bank agreed to help us with this expansion and offered to open six new bank accounts across Europe with us. This offer fitted into the company’s plan perfectly, as I had already considered the extra bank and transfer costs.
Winter started to settle in and I thought about our future developments. Would the company stay on course with its expansion plans and, if so, would I actually be prepared to move to another – possibly sun-drenched – country? I discovered that there were more interesting countries to enter beside the ones we were already contemplating. I discussed these markets with the marketing and sales departments to find out whether these countries appealed to them as well. The company, after all, had enough money at the bank for investment opportunities.
In February 2007, a colleague recommended taking on some cash management training so I agreed and thought it was an effective way to expand my knowledge. At the training course, I learnt about how a pooling structure could help my business and the specifics of cross-border payments. SEPA was also mentioned but I had reached my maximum brain capacity for that day so I paid little attention. The next day I re-examined my training and I started to see that our bank was overcharging us on all fronts; I decided to contact them and confront them about this. They were calm and explained that putting in place the pooling structures that I requested would translate into a lot of change in my company’s structure. As I like change, and I knew that I had well-kept books and administrative processes, I decided to make the improvements.
As spring 2007 arrived, my books from 2006 were largely finished and I started to change all my relevant cash management data. Supported by an eager work force, the first report about the new cash pooling structure was presented a few weeks later. The only thing I had to do was contact the bank to make the account balance changes. I realised I would need some extra help in this and I calculated that even if I needed to hire a new person to do this, I would still profit from the cash management project.
A few months later, while already dreaming about my holiday in a few weeks, I was surfing on the Internet. I noticed something about new payment methods initiated by a few banks that was being obstructed by the government. The article I read said that this thing called SEPA offered huge possibilities, such as invoicing and mobile payments, but I didn’t have a clue about what they were talking about. Something about a single euro payments area was mentioned and that triggered my curiosity but I was about to go on holiday so put it to one side.
On return from my holiday in Greece, I opened my inbox and saw that my bank wanted to talk to me about some new developments, so my secretary made an appointment for two months time. There was an invitation from the cash management course I attended about a SEPA seminar but as it was on my daughter’s birthday, I threw the invite away. SEPA again, I thought, but I had to wait until I had more time to think about it in detail.
In September, I got an e-mail about a survey on SEPA readiness in the public and private sector published by Deloitte and Atos Origin. I thought I should really take a look at it in the short term so I went to a management meeting about the new strategic path we should take as a company. The company was thinking about moving to new tax regimes across Europe. The tax and legal department made a convincing presentation that entering these other countries could reduce costs and taxes on holding level. All in all, my team and I had our work cut out for us in calculating these opportunities for the company.
Two weeks later I received a reminder from Deloitte and Atos, so I opened the link and I was startled by the impact SEPA could have on my business. I was interested in the opportunities and threats resulting from this legislation and the new direction the company wanted to follow. The first thing I did was plan a team meeting. My gut feeling was that I was too late for this SEPA thing and why had I not heard about it sooner? Why didn’t my bank tell me this? I appointed one team member to read everything about SEPA and keep us up to date. I grabbed the phone and called the guys from the survey.
A few months later, after a SEPA scan had been done at our company, I was more knowledgeable on the impact SEPA would have on us as a SME. Luckily, a lot of opportunities could be integrated within the company and as our knowledge of SEPA increased, it became clear that it could create new tax havens in the EU. I called my own bank and a few foreign banks to discuss some possibilities. Our tax guys got new information from the SEPA scan to anticipate what we faced ahead. The cash manager was also eager to work on this and a new SEPA team was appointed to take us to the next level.
Surfing on the Internet a few weeks later, I read something about SEPA II and Giovanni legislation, and started to make new plans for a holiday, far, far away from the EU and the company.