Treasury Innovators

FIS scoops Best Cash & Treasury Management Solution and supports a duo of corporate wins

The TMI 2021 Awards season emphasises the role vendors can play in the success of their corporate clients. FIS not only takes the Technology & Innovation Award for Best Cash & Treasury Management Solution itself, but two of its clients – Hitachi Energy (Formerly Hitachi ABB Power Grids) and Atlas Copco – have also won accolades in TMI’s Corporate Recognition Awards.

In 2021, FIS’ long-lived Integrity solution was reinvented and rereleased as the FIS Treasury and Risk Manager - Integrity Edition. Its underlying technology has been fully overhauled within the cloud, along with considerable expansion of its functionality covering new risk management, connectivity, and payment hub capabilities. These include:

Core Treasury

Risk management

FIS has now incorporated FIS Risk Analytics Manager into Treasury and Risk Manager – Integrity Edition. The  risk module offers a fast and seamless API connection to Risk Analytics Manager, facilitating the complex calculations required for risk management simulations, and other advanced algorithms, with zero-performance impact to the treasury management solution. 

Payments

The new FIS Payment Hub – Integrity Edition is a fully managed payments platform that centralises all aspects of global payments processing, connecting treasury technology infrastructure to banking partners. The solution acts as a bank connectivity hub, connecting treasury technology infrastructure to banking partners in a scalable and secure manner, without the need to establish and maintain costly individual connections. The Integrity Payment Hub harnesses a number of recent connectivity innovations, including SWIFT GPI and API. 

Vision and commitment

FIS’ developments in the areas of treasury platform modernisation, cloud, and API, follow findings from its 2021 treasury Readiness Report. Its commitment to research helps it understand how best to align solutions to changing best practices in corporate treasury, guiding product development strategy. With FIS’ clear vision and commitment to developing existing and new fields of endeavour, FIS Treasury and Risk Manager - Integrity Edition, is the worthy winner of the 2021 TMI Technology & Innovation Award for the Best Cash & Treasury Management Solution.

FIS’ solution set also helps clients achieve TMI award-winning status.

Hitachi Energy: Best treasury transformation project

Formed following the divestment by ABB Group of its Power Grids division to Hitachi Group, Hitachi Energy inherited a diverse banking and account landscape with fragmented ERPs. In a short space of time, it created an entirely new global treasury organisation with an HQ team in Zurich and seven treasury clusters in key global locations.

The project included several components:

At the heart of the new set-up was the decision to implement a SaaS TMS. Following a quick selection process, it implemented FIS Treasury and Risk Manager – Integrity Edition, together with FIS SWIFT Services for SWIFT FIN messages, and solutions for trading, trade processing, netting and settlement.

A particular test of the implementation was the lack of clear history for the Power Grids business. The resulting light yet scalable solution was built, prioritising SaaS models, to carry significant complexity that includes:

In the first few months following implementation, the team successfully re-hedged all the FX and commodity exposures of the underlying business, managed cash pooling and multi-bank sweeping structures, and took care of diverse intercompany netting, funding, and trading flows.

In setting up a new standalone treasury, with the build-up phase of the solution completed within just six months while setting up treasury operations in eight locations and hiring new recruits, despite the setbacks brought by Covid-19, Hitachi Energy has more than delivered on expectations.

The team’s work proves the case for its choice of a lighter SaaS-TMS set-up. The solution build and integration, particularly its two-way FX trading interface and intragroup netting solution, showcase good solution innovation and partnership with technology providers. The firm has taken full advantage of the latest cloud-based technology, modernising and scaling its treasury. It deservedly takes the 2021 TMI Corporate Recognition Award for Best Treasury Transformation Project.

Atlas Copco: Best in-house bank implementation

Headquartered in Sweden, global industrial firm Atlas Copco is the country’s largest company by market cap. With customers in more than 180 countries, in 2020 the group reported revenues of SEK 100bn ($11.6bn). With growth in mind, its treasury team is on a fast-paced digital journey to maximise the efficiency of its treasury operations.

Its goal is to increase the speed and efficiency of treasury processes, reduce the need for external banking services, and make it easier for other parts of the business to engage with treasury. In practical terms, it’s meant restructuring the company’s 22 cash pools spread across five banks, as well as 600 bank accounts, and rolling out the cloud-based version of FIS Treasury and Risk Manager - Quantum Edition to the group’s entities.

To achieve rapid results, treasury worked on these goals concurrently, completing the TMS implementation in 10 months during 2019, and the in-house bank (IHB) roll-out in 11 months from September 2020 to July 2021. The IHB now serves 180 entities across 33 countries and supports 16 currencies.

TMS implementation enabled automation of multiple treasury processes, with previously manual requests now carried out within the system, enabling a more rapid response. With continuous support from management and FIS, group-wide communication easily demonstrated these benefits to all stakeholders. A very positive response ensued, with many entities asking to be moved onto the TMS at the earliest opportunity.

Intercompany transactions had been settled using external bank accounts, which were costly and subject to increased cyber risk. Now, around 180 entities in 33 countries have enrolled in the IHB. Transactions between the operating entities and the Treasury Centre – such as netting payments, currency exchanges and internal loans and deposits – no longer need physical cash transfers: everything is settled within the company’s Treasury Centre in Ireland by debiting or crediting subsidiaries’ accounts, in near real time. 

The Treasury Centre replaced the external banks’ calculation and posting of cash pool interests, providing bank statements to the IHB participants. Focus is now on creating a Payment Factory, further reducing the role of external banks and reducing payment-related risks.

With the right technology in place, positive interaction with the entities and a highly knowledgeable and proactive treasury team, this project was carried out successfully in less than one year despite pandemic disruptions.

Atlas Copco treasury has become more efficient by replacing external banks. Flows to Atlas Copco treasury have increased, and the perceived value of treasury from a subsidiary perspective has risen. This was an ambitious project in which excellent communication and management support, and the right technology partner, kept it on track. It is TMI’s clear winner of the 2021 Corporate Recognition Award for Best In-house Bank Implementation.

Steve Evans, SVP, Product Management Group Executive, Corporate Liquidity & Bank Treasury, FIS, told TMI: “We are pleased to have once again been recognised as having the best treasury and cash management solution and that our clients have also been recognised for modernising their treasury operations with the latest digital technology”.

Evans added: “Our continued solution investment and innovation, whether it be related to expanding mission-critical functionality across risk and payments, or supporting the latest technology trends including ESG, crypto, and API, puts all of our corporate treasury clients around the world in a position to succeed”.