ASAA 2022 Citi Yearbook

Overall Winner Treasury Today Asia’s Top Treasury Team 2022 Infosys Ltd Sachin Chougule, Associate Vice President, Finance & Treasurer Infosys treasury team prove their value with partnership approach to achieve best in class currency risk management, investments, working capital, cash flow and compliance The Infosys treasury team based in India manages the group’s global requirements around investments, liquidity and working capital, Forex (FX) and currency risk, regulatory compliances, aligning and embedding itself within the overall business objectives of Infosys. Operational resilience and Covid-19 response – with many of the countries globally (and India) facing multiple lockdowns and consequently working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic, the team had to respond swiftly to the unprecedented situation given the heightened operational risks of treasury operations and to ensure business continuity. The team delved into stress-testing scenarios for each group entity and country to ensure smooth continuity of its business operation. The team quickly triggered business continuity planning (BCP) with its banking partners and put in place digital documentation and transaction processes instead of wet-ink documentation. This was further complemented by robust systems set-up, 24/7 co-ordination, and additional measures for risk mitigation. All these actions ensured that business and treasury operations could continue to operate seamlessly. FX and currency risk management – with global presence in over 50+ countries, currency risk management is a key focus area for the treasury team. Infosys has a robust FX and currency risk management policy in place. The team constantly monitors market developments globally to tailor its response to the dynamic and complex FX environment. Robust and resilient actions of the team during an ever-changing, volatile and challenging environment ensured 29 consecutive quarters of positive FX net impact. Investments – a third of the average balance sheet is directly under treasury’s management and the team manages large investible surplus of over US$4bn, with substantial exposure to marketable securities. The highly volatile market environment over the last 12-18 months, bottoming out of interest rates, geo-political uncertainty, and current rising interest rates scenario, all required an extremely dynamic response from the team to ensure resilient and optimal portfolio returns, which not only anchor the yields for the long-term but also ensure opportunities for early participation in a rising interest rate environment. Liquidity and working capital management – Infosys operates globally from 247 locations across 54 countries, through 125+ entities (both subsidiaries and branches). The operations therefore are exposed to all geographies and multiple time zones. Liquidity and operation risk management is the key performance indicator (KPI) whilst managing the cash flows. The team is also responsible for ensuring objectives on working capital metrics are met and there is no deterioration, even during the current market environment. To this end, the team worked extensively with its core partner banks to continuously improve and automate all banking aspects with the objective of achieving new-age banking solutions. Further, the team successfully scaled-up the accounts receivables (AR) programme with the dual objective of working capital management and AR risk mitigation. The team also led the launch of supplier invoice pre- payment programme to embed working capital efficiencies in Infosys’ procure-to-pay process and help strengthen its vendor relationships. The liquidity management has been extremely robust and effective which resulted in approximately 10% reduction in average idle balances over the past three years, despite the company’s growth of almost 30% in the same period. Additionally, it is worth noting that there has not been a single credit default in the portfolio despite extreme geo-political and global uncertainties. Treasury has been an Sachin Chougule, Infosys Ltd and Aman Singh Chadha, Citi 4 | treasurytodayasia Adam Smith Awards Asia © February 2023