Corporate cash managers are stretched too thin and should consider centralizing their liquidity management, or risk be swallowed by the competition, a recent ABN AMRO report suggests.
The report found that 70% of corporate treasurers agree that centralized liquidity management is a smart move, in fact the majority of them have done it.
“Treasurers face huge pressures, including risk management, regulatory management and too much manual cash management, that reduce the time available for strategic planning,” said Peter Murer, head of Siemens Financial Services’ cash management advisory, to delegates at Eurofinance in Berlin.
ABN AMRO has developed Mulit Bank Cash Concentration, a solution that would allow corporate cash managers to sweep local and cross-border third party balances to a designated ABN AMRO account, in which the client chooses the time, frequency and residual balances.
“Automated centralization of funds is already well-developed, allowing treasuries to get the control they need,” said John Gibbons, head of relationship management EMEA at commercial banking at AMB AMRO. “Now it’s a case of enhancing the model by including more currencies, automating more processes and creating more global liquidity management structures.”