The changing face of treasury

Corporate structures, reporting, technological systems, oversight and control are all struggling to keep up with the evolving function of treasury, according to a new report by PwC.

Treasury shown in a new light: 2014 global treasury survey explores ways in which treasurers have begun to play a more vital role in business operations since the financial crisis. This has seen a progression from historical transactional focus on producing data to using these insights to assess risk for the business, as well as increasing involvement in working capital management payment processing, commodity risk management and exposure discovery

The research points to the need to move away from treasury as a distinct department and instead treat it as a function or strategic approach that feeds into all parts of an organisation. This may see a shift towards greater focus on KPIs, which only a minority of companies currently apply to treasury reporting.

Big data challenges are also impacting on treasury reporting capabilities, requiring better data integration across enterprise resource planning, treasury management systems and banking in real time, found the report.

In particular, treasurers and CFOs should be focussing on re-evaluating their operating models, assessing the business case for transformation and reviewing options for systemic and strategic integration, according to PwC.

“The direct crisis management actions that treasurers took in the first few years after the crisis have now been replaced by a focus on sustainable solutions that integrate with systems and processes across the organisation,” said Sebastian di Paola, Global Corporate Treasury Leader at PwC. “Today, we see a corporate treasury profession that’s maturing and consolidating its role as the custodian of financial and liquidity risk management.”

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