Growth Entails Owning Your Cash Position

Treasury must reassess structures, processes and its choice of banks to optimise cash

by Fiona Deroo, Head of North America Liquidity and Investments, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

According to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2015 CFO Outlook survey, CFOs are confident about the US economy and anticipate growth in their sales, workforce and companies in 2015. For treasury, this return of confidence and related growth necessitates a renewed focus on visibility, control and optimisation of cash. To that end, the fluid geopolitical and macro-economic outlook, and the evolving implications of banking regulations, require treasury to reassess its structures, processes and people.

Account structures, global cash concentration and liquidity structures, including end-to-end working capital solutions, are at the heart of treasury’s functions. Before embarking on any growth initiative, it’s important to take a fresh look at all treasury operations to identify gaps, reduce risk and costs, and enhance synergies across the organisation.

Leveraging a global overlay bank

For treasurers managing liquidity globally, gaining visibility into global cash positions is key: the provision of solutions to achieve these goals is the critical function of a transaction bank. Corporates that operate internationally usually work with multiple banks, either through necessity (because their core bank does not operate in a certain geography) or by design (to reduce counterparty risk or to maintain bank relationships in order to have access to credit).

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