Study Reveals Asian Treasurers’ Focus on Payments Efficiency
With payments automation and bank connectivity still limited in Asia, 56% of the region’s treasury professionals polled by Reval that optimising existing payments processes is their top priority.
The softaware-as-a-service (SaaS) provider of treasury and risk management (TRM) solutions conducted the poll in the webinar that it recently hosted entitled
‘Keeping Pace with the Evolution of Treasury Payments’
.
“As Asia has a diverse financial sector with dynamic emerging markets, handling payments is far more complex than in Europe or the Americas,” said Tony Singleton, Managing Director Asia Pacific (Apac) at Reval. “Corporates like our client Global Logistics Properties handle more than 1,300 bank accounts at over 30 banks on a daily basis.”
According to the poll, only 9% of treasuries in the region have fully automated payment workflows and have straight-through processing (STP) to multiple banks, and 26% are still handling payments manually using spreadsheets.
“Using spreadsheets is not only burdensome, but also inefficient and error-prone,” said Singleton. “A SaaS TRM solution enables a high degree of payments efficiency and fraud control.
“Although most treasurers focus on streamlining existing processes, we see the first innovators on Reval already moving onto more sophisticated concepts such as payment factories and shared service centres [SSCs].”