Amid the scramble for cash during the pandemic lockdowns, efficient treasury management was key to ensuring that companies made the most of the liquidity already available to them, minimizing the need for, and cost of, emergency measures. Corporates looked to free up otherwise trapped liquidity through techniques such as cash pooling, either through physical sweeping or – as the imperative to go digital mounts – through virtual accounts.
UniCredit, now led by chief executive Andrea Orcel, has emerged as a leading provider of vital cash management products, such as virtual accounts, and wins our award this year as western Europe’s best bank for transaction services.
International Italian sports equipment provider Tecnica is a prime example of what the bank can do. Advised by UniCredit, Tecnica identified that it needed central visibility and control over its global cash positions, which had become split between independent subsidiary accounts across the company’s vast sales and production network. This had previously afforded local teams autonomy and control over their finances, but made it difficult to quickly assess cash positions and allocate liquidity where it was needed.
The Italian bank implemented a complete payment factory solution, with just two bank accounts per country and daily international sweeps from local accounts (including those held with other banks) into the company master account held in Italy.
Since Tecnica holds local accounts with multiple banks, UniCredit offered a fully-automated third-bank cash pooling solution. This enables Tecnica to retain local accounts with the best possible partner – should UniCredit not have a presence in that particular country.
The solution also included international payments via Swift gpi, enhanced with the bank’s proprietary International Payments Tracking solution.
“For some clients, for example in the insurance industry, we have set up millions of virtual accounts, one for each customer. And, with a little tailoring, virtual accounts also work well for a wide range of mid-size companies in countries such as Germany and Italy,” says Luca Corsini, co-head of global transaction banking.
Amid rising concern over fraud in online payments, UniCredit introduced its IBAN check service to allow companies such as utilities to pre-validate a new customer’s bank account and verify that it relates to the same individual’s tax code. In international payments, UniCredit’s correspondent banking processes operate across more than 50 country corridors on the Swift gpi framework, with 20% of payments booked at the beneficiary bank within five minutes.
