Finance and Treasury Management have rarely had it so difficult. Their critical need to be constantly prepared is being compounded by recent regulatory shifts, technological developments, and, in many cases, large changes in corporate structures and business models. The resulting mosh pit, which some called a ‘nausea-inducing mixture of mid-highs and deep-lows’ at this year ‘s Money 20/20 USA, has seen the industry lean heavily towards to tech solutions.
Last night, a panel was organised in London by The Asset & Liability Management Association (ALMA) and the Centre of Finance and Technology Entrepreneurship (CTFE) to discuss the emerging landscape as the result of cloud technology, RPA, graph analytics, and cognitive computing implementation. The associations’ respective experts – Jamie Paris; ALMA member and Managing Director, Global Head, Balance Sheet & Liquidity Management, Treasury at Standard Chartered Bank; and Huy Nguyen Trieu, co-founder of CFTE – were joined by HSBC employees Christopher Blake, Senior Manager, and Steven J Romanus, Head of ALM Big Data Solution Delivery.
Key takeaways:
- The panel outlined technology’s journey over the last few years associated with regulatory requirements for liquidity reporting, and gave insight on problems which could be solved Treasury.
- Cognitive computing is one of the most popularity tested technology in the industry due to its ability to perform tasks like structuring large amounts of unstructured ambiguous and self-contradictory data.
- In performing beneficial ownership, KYC or other new AML activities, it is not uncommon for an analyst to need to interact with a large number of systems. Using cloud computing to facilitate accessing and enriching data has made the technology highly prized by large institutions like HSBC.
- Cloud computing also offers a number of other benefits, such as improved risk-scoring capability. This is particularly true with the advent of advanced risk systems that can learn from data over time.
- Data is the key to optimization but Steven Romanus, HSBC, estimates that only 0.5% of data being generated is actually analysed.
- Genuine harnessing of data can allow companies to answer departments most important questions cash flow forecasting or the risk involved in disruptions like Brexit, but should not be toted as an extra-ordinary power.
- “Artificial intelligence is a very powerful tool but it’s just a tool. People still have to make a decision,” affirmed Huy Nguyen Trieu, co-founder of CFTE.
CFTE has plans to couple up with ALMA for their upcoming London event: Technology In Action.
To learn more about HSBC’s experience with fintech use within their Treasury, consult this article by Global Client Integration Head for Payments & Trade, Mark Evans.
[do_widget id=custom_html-2]
