The relationship between corporate treasurers and their banks has always been complicated.
On the one hand there is frustration at what are perceived as overly cumbersome documentation and compliance processes. But, as a recent Coalition Greenwich report ‘As challenges mount, corporates seek enhanced support from their banks’ points out, treasurers are also increasingly turning to their banks for advice to help them optimize cash and treasury management, financing and even business performance.
The most sought-after advisory services combine proactive and effective relationship managers with digital tools such as predictive analytics. Most of the Asian corporates surveyed said they were already experiencing the value of these offerings from their banks.
Although the figure was much lower for European corporates, those who were benefitting were seeing the effects in critical areas such as payments and receivables.
“While our advice can take many forms,” explains Matthew Davies, co-head of global corporate sales, global transaction services (GTS) and head of EMEA GTS at Bank of America, "a specific example we are currently focused on is on-time treasury, converting the assumption that everything has to be real-time to one where clients can pick and choose what is real time and what can be paid via batch processing.
“This
