October 09, 2019 By Ted Howard Banks are still using the London Interbank Offered Rate but SOFR is slowly gaining traction. The members of NeuGroup’s Bank Treasurers’ Peer Group (BTPG) recently heard Chatham Financial discuss the switch from Libor to SOFR on their Q3 interim conference call. The big takeaway is that Libor remains firmly embedded in a lot of transactions, and even though banks understand that the tainted benchmark will disappear in the near future, the transition is inching…
January 31, 2020
NeuGroup Launching Retail Treasurers’ Group with Starbucks
NeuGroup is pleased to be piloting a retail treasurers’ group with Starbucks, who will be hosting the launch meeting on June 8-9. There is a lot going on in the retail space impacting treasury and finance matters, including digital transformation and the integration of online, in-home, in-office, on-the-go and in-store channels; rapid transformation of payments and merchant services in response; as well as the mixing of digital workers with humans to ensure a customer experience that is memorable and convenient.…
January 24, 2020
Happy Year of the Rat
Chinese New Year celebrations unfortunately are being overshadowed this year by virus fears, but let’s not let fear get in the way of embracing the start of the Year of the Rat on January 25 and what it stands for. The rat is the first of the 12 animal cycles, so it represents renewal and new beginnings. This seems very appropriate for the start of a new decade. 2020 is the Year of the Metal Rat so it is a…
November 29, 2019
Prepare for a Surging Green Wave of ESG Products
By Joseph Neu BNP Paribas highlights a veritable tsunami of sustainability-linked finance products. “Treasurers should be preparing for a tsunami of sustainability-linked finance products,” one NeuGroup member treasurer told me recently in response to market events of the last year. To underscore the importance of that notion, Hervé Duteil, chief sustainability officer for BNP Paribas in the Americas, presented his view to NeuGroup’s Tech20 Treasurers’ Peer Group last month. He described three big waves, or “revolutions,” in sustainable finance:…
By Antony Michels Company is highlighting innovations that work for all seven of ION’s treasury management systems. In the latest example of its cross-product, multi-brand strategy, this month ION Treasury is launching a cash forecasting solution powered by machine learning for its Reval and ITS treasury clients. ION says the strategy is to build solutions like this once and deploy them to all of its treasury brands, including Wallstreet Suite, Treasura, IT2, Openlink and City Financials. Cross-product solutions. The cash…
November 29, 2019
Cloud Accounting May Require New Controls, Impact Covenants
Treasury executives whose companies are relying more and more on cloud services should confer with their accountants about new requirements that potentially could impact loan covenants as well as operational elements tangentially affecting treasury. Companies are increasingly choosing treasury management systems (TMSs) and other applications via the cloud rather than installing the software in their own data centers. The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) new accounting standard aims make the accounting between the two approaches more similar by requiring companies…
November 22, 2019
FinConnect 2019
Expanding our reach further, we were recently able to bring the NeuGroup Process and facilitation experience to the CFOs of the SoftBank Vision Fund I. We believe it’s a one-of-a-kind peer group and my thanks to Navneet Govil for having the vision to bring NeuGroup to help facilitate its first Finance summit, FinConnect 2019. It was great to personally moderate sessions on Aligning Finance with Global Expansion Strategy and Digital Transformation in Finance, but even better to allow the CFOs…
November 6, 2019
We’ll Get to Libor Later
By John Hintze Two surveys say nonfinancial firms are falling behind in Libor transition efforts. Nonfinancial companies are taking a passive approach to prepping for the transition away from Libor, relying heavily on their banks and other financial firms to carry most of the burden. According to recent surveys, however, the financial community is lagging. In its recently published “Liboration: A practical way to thrive in transition uncertainty,” Accenture spells out financial services firms’ lackadaisical efforts toward the transition, even…
November 6, 2019
Prepping Pensions for Potentially Perilous Periods
By Joseph Neu Managers of frozen or closed pension funds need to be prepared for transitional periods. Managers of pension funds on a decumulation journey (with more cash flows going out of the plan than coming in) need to be wary of the different dynamics in this stage of the savings cycle. Investors are more vulnerable to shocks and more susceptible to forced selling, all with a greater time dependency on realizing returns. This is particularly true during periods of…
Insight Feature
A New Money Market Platform Leverages JPMorgan’s Depth in Technology and Innovation
The abrupt stampede to safety in financial markets unleashed by COVID-19 in March 2020 created chaos and concern for investors, financial institutions and regulators. And it put extra scrutiny on the ability of digital solutions, systems and tools that underpin global trading, execution and settlement to serve and satisfy millions of financial professionals trying to do their jobs from home.
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