Taking a look at how banks, corporate treasurers and fintechs can work together to achieve common goals
At Eurofinance 2018, the 27th conference on International Treasury Management, the cooperation between banks, corporate treasurers and fintechs to achieve common goals of speed and transparency was very much in evidence. Clarissa Dann reports on how buzz words made way for road maps and milestones.
A year ago at EuroFinance Barcelona, we heard about preparing for the future – and our write-up then (Tomorrow’s intelligent treasury) showed how treasurers were at the beginning of their future proofing journey. Twelve months on, some 2,100 delegates including 900 corporates descended on Geneva, the event having last graced this French region of Switzerland in 2008.
What became clear from panel sessions and one-to-one conversations was that #tomorrowstreasury means different things to treasurers whose revenue sources are consumers, and to those that are from other businesses – and whether they are service- or manufacturing-based companies.
The former not only know what PSD2 is, but are intensely curious about what open banking can do to help everything become faster, better and cheaper. The latter are rather more circumspect and will be slower to move (with a few exceptions) but – it would appear – loyal to their relationship banks to help navigate change. The other issue that reared its head in a number of panels and offline conversations was one of confidence in a bank’s ability to deliver efficient payment services – are they investing in robust platforms that work today or is there more prioritisation of innovation labs and hubs to “reinvent”?
In a nutshell, many treasurers don’t care about the nuts and bolts of the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), or application programme interfaces (APIs) or blockchain – they just want their transactions to all to work – all the time and in real time – and provided this happens, the underlying mechanics and enabling regulation are not that interesting to them.
“Loyalty today,” quipped third-day speaker Howard Tullman of Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, is “not having the opportunity of doing something better”.
Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”, and the notion of fintechs eating the bank’s lunch seems to have lost most of its credibility, despite the odd bit of bank deprecation from the usual suspects. In fact, it was good to see how the Tier 1 banks are working with fintechs and appearing on panels with them.
Blockchain may have been the buzzword at previous EuroFinance events, but the B hype was far less in evidence as treasurers discussed solutions to basic problems of speed, transparency and transaction costs. The move from B to C was actually from Blockchain to Cooperation….with a bit of D for Data and E for Ecosystem thrown in.
