Treasury Technology
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Asian Treasurers Embrace Technology

Asian Treasurers Embrace Technology

by Kevin Grant, Hanse Orga Executive Board Member

Hanse Orga’s current experiences in the Asia-Pacific region show clearly that technology innovation is now a primary catalyst for achieving business process improvement in treasury and finance.

Kevin GrantTraditionally, many finance operations in the region relied substantially on manual administrative processes because of the low cost base compared with Europe and North America. The sustained and powerful surge in business growth has transformed the situation radically. Asia-Pacific is a vibrant economic region, with more and more companies opening subsidiaries, and more goods being sourced there. The strength of economic activity has led to the necessary growth of supporting finance operations, such as regional treasury hubs in Hong Kong and Singapore, and shared service centres, for example in Malaysia and the Philippines. The recent vigorous growth in new technology projects that we are seeing reflects both an acknowledged need for the superior control, security and transparency of financial processes, and also their growing cost effectiveness compared with older alternatives.

Today, Asia-Pacific is a most dynamic area for the incubation and delivery of financial technology creativity and innovation. This reflects the region’s forward-thinking ethos, which is unencumbered by the baggage of the past compared with many other geographies and business cultures. The Asia-Pacific reaction to evaluating and adopting potentially valuable new ideas is ‘how can we do it?’ rather than ‘what can we do to resist it?’ Our experience is that Asia-Pacific is a superb proving ground for complex technology projects, and that ‘if you can do it in Asia, you can do it anywhere.’ The work ethic here is dynamically positive, with people being very flexible in implementing new automation concepts, and adapting to new practices so that the business benefits may be swiftly and fully achieved. We established an office in Hong Kong to provide local and regional support for existing clients, and for the many new projects that are coming on stream, both in China and other countries.