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Treasury Organisation

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Treasury Organisation

• Agenda– Centralised vs Decentralised– Payment factories– Collection factories– Re-invoicing centre– Factoring centre– In House Bank– Shared service centre

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Treasury Organisation

• Move towards centralisation of Treasury– Developments in technology, ERP and TMS– Regulatory environment and good

governance

• Different levelsGeographicProduct line or business divisionCustomer type, e.g. corporate/consumerPolicy making

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Treasury OrganisationInfluencing Factors

• Size of company

• Industry norms e.g. retail sales distribution vs decentralised manufacturing

• Nature of cash flows e.g. electronic vs paper

• Geographic distribution, time zones, communications

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Treasury OrganisationInfluencing Factors

• Business culture e.g. active acquirers

• Use of technology

• Location of expertise

• Need for control

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Treasury Organisation

Disadvantages of a decentralised organisation– Inability to leverage economies of scale– Duplication of functions– Many different systems to support– Cash management activities e.g. netting, interco lending etc may

not be possible– Loss of visibility of information resulting in delayed or incomplete

reporting– Lack of control for risk and liquidity management

Recommended reading: The pros and cons of Treasury Centralisation, Gtnews Feb, 2010

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Treasury Organisation

Disadvantages of a centralised organisation- Loss of autonomy and ownership of results by business units

- Local vendor and bank relationships will suffer locally

- Need for increased communication and coordination with head office

- Lower morale/lack of interest in operating units due to reduced responsibilities and concerns about job losses

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Treasury Organisation

• Central policy, local execution

• Centralised execution

• Regionalised execution, central policy

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Treasury OrganisationRegional

• Why manage in the region?– Time zones/contact time/cut-off times– Same day value– Local expertise– FX markets/environment– Potential tax savings– Better pricing– Lower staff costs

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Treasury OrganisationPayment Factories

• Central facility set up to handle a group’s payment orders. Accounts payables function may continue to be handled at local level.- Gather payment instructions into one file- Single electronic gateway- Covers central bank reporting- Handles inter-company transactions- Receives all account and transaction information

from the bank(s) and distributes to subs for reconciliation.

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Treasury OrganisationPayment Factory

• Significant cost savings from reduction in number of banks

• Reduction in overall cost of payments• Centralised handling of FCY payments• Cross border payments can be re routed and re

formatted as domestic• Use of lower cost ACH• For subs, new business does not necessarily mean new

bank accounts• Better security and more accurate cash flow forecasting• Central information can lead to better liquidity and risk

management

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Treasury OrganisationCollection Factory

• Same concept as Payment Factory applied to collections BUT

• May or may not give the same benefits• Will depend on nature of the accounts

receivable and location of accounts. Think about small value, high volume

cross border. May be issues for customers paying into accounts not owned by the payee.

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Treasury OrganisationRe-invoicing Centre

• Subsidiaries buy and sell in their own currency from the central treasury or in house bank

• FX risk is transferred to the re-invoicing centre

• Enables leading of payments to cash poor subsidiaries

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Treasury OrganisationFactoring

• Subsidiary sells to sister company (or third party)

• Sells invoice to in house factoring company

• Allows subsidiary to fund itself and removes FX risk to centre

• Payment due is made direct to factoring centre

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In House BankIHB

• An IHB is a vehicle where group treasury acts as the primary source of all banking services to operating units at arms length

• Transacts aggregated business with ‘real’

banks

• May be part of centralised or decentralised structure

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IHBAdvantages

• Economies of scale

• Reduces bank margins and costs

• Cash Management techniques e.g. netting, cash pooling, intra group funding

• Reduces number of bank transactions

• Treasury professionals

• Profit centre?

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IHBDisadvantages

• Group still reliant on local staff– Cash forecasts to identify future surpluses

and deficits– To identify currency exposures– To ‘play the game’– To actually carry out transactions

• Reduces local involvement and commitment

• Local banks lose business

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IHBFunctions

• Liquidity management– Cash pooling– Netting (cashless)

• Inter-company loans and deposits• In house factoring• Re-invoicing• Risk management (matching)• Advice and consultancy• Long term funding and investments

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IHBTypical Structure

Sub-accounts for subsidiaries Sub-accounts for subsidiaries Belgium HK UK USA Belgium HK UK USA

- Control - Bookeeping - Interest calcs - Statements Sub-accounts for subsidiaries Sub-accounts for subsidiaries Belgium HK UK USA Belgium HK UK USA

Central Treasury

IHB EUR A/cIn Brussels

IHB HKDA/c in Hong

Kong

IHB GBP A/c In London

IHB USD A/cIn New York

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Shared Service Centre

• Shared service centre acts as a single business unit that performs common finance and administrative functions

• Delivers services to subs or other business units regulated by service level agreements

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Shared Service CentreFunctions

• Human resources

• Facilities management

• Procurement

• Internal audit

• marketing

• Travel arrangements

• Tax and so on and so on

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Shared Service CentreCash Management Functions

• Bulk payments, especially international

• Local in country paper collections

• E-commerce applications e.g. einvoicing

• Foreign exchange processing

• Account reconciliation

• Trade finance

• Tax