RegionsNorth AmericaUS Treasury Professionals ‘Confident of Business Continuity Plans’

US Treasury Professionals ‘Confident of Business Continuity Plans’

US treasury and finance professionals are fairly confident in their organisations’ business continuity planning, according to a survey conducted by Capital One’s treasury management group.

Capital One polled 170 finance professionals at the Association for Financial Professionals’ (AFP) annual conference in Washington DC in early November. The survey was designed to gauge the sentiment of conference attendees on business continuity, corporate mobility and investment in treasury management tools.

More than 95% of respondents said their treasury department is either “very prepared” or “somewhat prepared” to continue business-as-usual if an interruption requires employees to work remotely, with only 4% “not prepared at all.” Just 36% of respondents indicated that their organisation has needed to employ their disaster recovery plan in the past five years.

“We’ve been seeing treasury departments make investments in technology that not only enhance their day-to-day operations, but also support their business continuity planning,” said Colleen Taylor, head of treasury management and enterprise payments at Capital One Bank.

Corporate treasurers may at first embrace tools like corporate mobile banking for the convenience factor, but these are the services that will keep their departments running in a disaster situation.”

Indeed, 61% of survey respondents noted that their organisation has a corporate mobility policy that allows them to access mission-critical information remotely. Of this group, 52% indicated their department only uses mobile banking functionalities if they are working remotely or have extenuating circumstances. Just over a third (36%) noted that only a few key executives in their department complete finance functions from their mobile device on a regular basis.

Security continues to be the reigning challenge that companies without corporate mobility policies are facing, with 55% noting that their department is wary of granting access to sensitive corporate data on a mobile device.

However, this number has dropped 11 percentage points since a similar poll in 2013, with more treasurers (36%) noting that the primary barrier to adoption within their organization is establishing bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

Additional survey findings:

  • Fifty-five per cent of respondents intend to implement new treasury management tools or services in 2015. The investment trend has continued, with 48% and 41% of respondents, in 2013 and 2012 respectively, saying they planned to implement new treasury management tools or services in the coming year.
  • Fifty-nine per cent of respondents currently use a commercial credit card to manage payables processing, even with last year and down from the previous year’s response of 69%.

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