Lessons from the Crisis: What's Next for Treasury?
A new report from Aite Group highlights the experience of corporate treasury groups and treasury services banks throughout the last year. The report is based on conversations with representatives from some of the largest US banks, along with corporate practitioners and technology vendors, conducted by Aite Group during the 2009 fall conference season. The report details the impact of technology on corporate treasury during the crisis, and makes recommendations for the bank and vendor communities about positioning themselves for recovery and beyond.
In conversations with financial institution executives, Aite Group found that the treasury services businesses of most US banks remained stable and, in some cases, grew fairly significantly, despite the crisis. About two-thirds of top 100 US banks’ treasury services business saw the economic crisis as mostly a non-event, while only one-third experienced a near disaster. Those corporations and treasury services financial institutions that performed best over the past year had developed a strong ability to gather information that was timely, accurate and usable.
“The global economic crisis highlighted the importance of information and usable data for US banks and their corporate clients,” said Judson Murchie, analyst with Aite Group and co-author of this report. “This paradigm shift created new market expectations for financial transparency, leveraging the available data necessary for banks and corporations to support strategies and prove financial stability. In most cases, these market expectations actually helped raise the profile of treasury services within institutions, given that business’ ability to grow deposits and generate fee-based revenues.”
Senior analyst and report co-author Nancy Atkinson adds: “As the economy moves toward recovery, banks must maintain positive momentum and ensure greater customer satisfaction and operational efficiencies going forward. Technology should be leveraged to aid in systems connectivity and integration, provide enterprise fraud prevention and risk management, enhance the customer experience, help corporate customers prevent losses and provide timely and actionable data.”