According to nearly 400 treasury professionals surveyed, strategic and financial risks, along with cybersecurity, will dominate the risk landscape for the next 18-36 months.
This finding from the 2019 AFP Risk Survey: The Evolving Treasury Ecosystem highlights the challenges facing finance and treasury professionals as they help their organizations navigate the deep disruption occurring across all economic sectors.
In the face of these external challenges, this year’s annual risk survey prepared by the Association for Financial Professionals with the support of Marsh & McLennan Insights, continues to examine how the treasury department is supporting the broader organization. The 2018 survey examined the function’s use of transformative technologies and this year’s survey examines how the treasury ecosystem is evolving its use of non-traditional vendors.
The survey data suggests despite the growth in “fintech”, the treasury ecosystem is slow to evolve. Two-thirds of treasury professionals report that their treasury departments have no plans to supplement banks and other entrenched vendors with non-traditional vendors in the immediate future. This is driven by both a degree of risk aversion and challenges associated with identifying, evaluating and building relationships with non-traditional vendors of treasury solutions.
Larger organizations with annual revenue of at least $1 billion are more inclined to use non-traditional vendors than are smaller organizations
That said, changes are afoot as one-third of departments, especially in larger organizations, anticipate using more non-traditional vendors. Non-traditional vendors have brought innovations to market that are disrupting existing solutions. This data reinforces that the adoption of innovative new technologies and process can rapidly accelerate once they have demonstrated proven and reliable benefits.
We hope this survey provides your treasury group with valuable data to benchmark its approach to evolving the treasury department in this rapidly shifting business environment.
