What does the future hold for corporate treasurers?
Now that the initial shock has passed, many are turning to face the future. Unsurprisingly, treasurers said they believed they would be focusing more on risk management (35%.) A further 27% said they would increasingly focus on supply chain management. Additionally, 21% of respondents said treasurers will be required to hold greater reserves and 14% believe they will be required to draw up expanded disaster response and business continuity plans. Only 1% of respondents indicated that the crisis was such an outlier that it would not have any effect on corporate treasurers’ responsibilities.
The poll was taken during a Bloomberg webinar on 31 March that attracted 80 leading treasurers, CFOs, and other financial executives with multinational corporations. The webinar was held to review the findings of the aforementioned report, Changing KPIs force treasurers to improve their risk technology, produced collaboratively by Greenwich Associated and Bloomberg.
The report found that nearly 90% of treasury departments said their key performance indicators (KPIs) had changed and that to meet them treasurers would need additional resources. Another interesting finding of the report was the importance of data quality and the difficulty in obtaining it.