I had the opportunity to pick the brain of Dave Robertson, a partner at Treasury Strategies.  His firm has a unique vantage point from which to spin today’s story:  Companies as diverse as PepsiCo, New York University, Merrill Lynch and Idaho Power have worked with Treasury Strategies to manage their treasury, payments, and cash.  They take over 25 years of experienced know-how to address issues like optimized liquidity and risk management, global banking structures and FX strategy, and help their clients choose and integrate technological solutions like online trading platforms, debt and investment systems and SWIFT.

What do treasury challenges in today’s banking environment look like?  How does technology play a role?

Companies want improved transparency into financial risk exposures – credit, FX, liquidity – this in turn is causing companies to focus on improved technology and integration with their banks. We see many of our clients adopting SWIFT standards, working to find banks with strong information capabilities and near real-time reporting, with full detail and they are integrating and automating downstream financial and risk management practices (such as cash flow monitoring / forecast, FX exposure estimation, monitoring and management).

Can you give us an example of a recent project?

In the corporate sector, we assisted a Fortune 500 firm in adopting a combination of SWIFT and Treasury Technology to improve the management of cash and financial risk across multiple subsidiaries around the globe.  In the financial sector, we helped a super-regional bank evaluate the FinTech space, analyzing where and how they can play in the market. This work is helping them drive their new business roadmap and also helping them evaluate acquisitions to accelerate growth and acquire new assets.

There are a lot of new sources of capital, particularly in small business lending. It’s coming from pureplay lenders, but also from e-commerce companies, like PayPal and Amazon. Will regulators push upstart financial service firms to take more traditional sources of funding? If so, how does this all play out?