Top-Priorities-for-2020

Treasury and Trade Solutions 6 Invest in talent for tomorrow The new decade will bring rapid change, creating challenges for treasurers, but also tremendous opportunity to reassert the value of treasury. As industries reshape, treasurers equipped to support the corporate growth and progress agenda — beyond risk management and financial efficiency — will be recognized as leaders of centers of excellence that create value for the franchise. Those who do not risk being permanently disintermediated. In this, talent management will come to the top of the treasurer’s agenda. Expertise in risk management and cash management is no longer sufficient. Treasury professionals will need to have a broad set of hard and soft skill sets, combined with deep understanding of technology and data science. These skills are needed to modernize treasury for the coming technologically advanced age and to start leveraging machine learning, artificial intelligence, application programming interfaces, and big data. If these terms are not in the treasurer’s lexicon, they will soon need to be. And, indeed, treasurers are recognizing that the pace and scale of technological disruption call for staff with increasing expertise in technology and emerging real-time financial services. 3 Concluding Thoughts The 2020s look set to be a time of momentous change. The focus of our paper this year is on future- proofing treasury. That does not de-emphasize the need for companies to have strong foundations across core treasury pillars, delivering financial efficiency and strong risk management. We do believe that treasurers will need to simultaneously manage across the near term of inevitable current-year priorities, the medium term of building foundations that may only pay off after a few years, and the long-term informed by a clear vision of objectives and a strategic plan to future proof the Treasury function. Those who do so will be best placed to succeed in this new decade. At Citi’s Treasury Advisory Group, we look forward to the partnership with clients. Talent management will come to the top of the treasurer’s agenda. 3 Source: In January 2020, Citi Treasury Advisory Group polled a group of clients in Asia, EMEA, and North America. We asked clients what expertise they were prioritizing for future Treasury talent needs — Real Time and Alternative Payments, Technology (e.g., API), Big Data, Advanced Risk Management, or Tax and Regulations. The modal response was 28% responding “all of the above”, while Risk Management and Tax and Regulations (long the bread and butter of treasury management) came last. Acknowledgements We thank Citi clients and our colleagues for their kind input and feedback and Olivia Kohari for her editorial support.