Do you know that corporations handling FinTech solutions become smarter than banks?

Probably the most inefficient part of a corporation is the financial supply chain (the flow of cash), and for corporate executives FinTech is therefore a life time career opportunity. Central pooling of cash takes huge efforts, as do payment processing, trade finance, supplier and distributor cash costs too much etc. Incremental changes are not enough, we will experience step changes. Best practice doesn’t suffice in a disruption. The good thing is that the financial supply chain consists only of data. Electronic data and paper data. That’s much easier to streamline than goods and services. Since we’ve fixed the physical chain, the financial chain should be much easier.

I mean that FinTech is not only disrupting the banks, it is also providing huge opportunities for example for the corporate treasurer to become cross-functional and strategically relevant for real. We have been astonished how the banks have been acting to neglect the force of FinTech. Corporate treasurers could learn from that and take the chance to embrace FinTech instead. Forces from outside of corporate treasury, for instance the CFO and the CPO, are already starting to act.

Increasingly treasurers are asked to provide support to the businesses and they are often puzzled. What does “support to business” mean? Is it up to the IT department to make in-store customer collections as convenient as possible to drive revenue? I’ve previously brought it up here, where I proposed the treasurer to step up to take that career opportunity. Trade finance is another area where there is huge potential through decreasing the number of intermediaries and manual processes. The current trade finance industry products are very expensive and many times, not fit for purpose. So massive opportunities there too.

When Treasury Peer launched The Talent Show last fall, we expected all treasurers to see the opportunity to rise to a strategic function. To our surprise many treasurers don’t yet see the relevance of optimizing the financial supply chain. Instead we’ve received very much praise from the CPO and the CFO and other C-level when they realize the potential to develop new revenue streams, decrease costs, lead times and untie capital. Almost all of them understand they can use FinTech to the company’s advantage.

This means that The Talent Show is attracting more C-level than we expected and forward-thinking treasurers that are able and willing to put treasury into a strategic context. So, just launching The Talent Show has already succeeded with the first target of bridging stakeholders: fixing the supply chain requires cross-functional cooperation.

The Talent Show takes place 26-27 April in Malmo (Greater Copenhagen), Sweden. Don’t miss it!

Remember we don’t speak about another working capital initiative here. This is much, much bigger in scope. It’s the first time ever where treasury can become a strategic function. We don’t speak about approved invoice financing (“Supply Chain Finance”) only. We aim to lean 6 sigma the whole financial supply chain, which encompasses activities in the entire company. The treasurer has a golden opportunity to be the catalyst and pioneer by stepping out of his or her comfort zone. Just do it!

Speakers:
EVP and CFO at TURKCELL
Former CPO at TESLA
CFO at ABENGOA
HEAD SOURCING DIVISION at H&M
HEAD STRATEGIC FINANCE at PORT OF ROTTERDAM
FINANCIAL ADVISOR TO CEO at OCTAL
TREASURER PROCUREMENT at SABMILLER
Endnote by GERARD CHICK

Roundtables led by:
Lean 6 Sigma manager at IKANO

Jury from our corporate advisory board is chaired by:
GERARD CHICK

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