Spotlight on Fides’ New Cash Management Platform
The world of treasury never stands still. Here, Fides Treasury Services’ CEO Andreas Lutz talks to TMI about the pace of change in business, the need for better liquidity management, and the newly released Fides ONEHub cash management platform.
TMI: What are the major trends you are witnessing in the finance industry today?
Andreas Lutz (AL): We live in a world where change has become the norm – from economic uncertainty to market volatility and industry consolidation. But not knowing what one day to the next will bring in terms of business risks and opportunities does not mean that one can become complacent.
On the contrary, the pace of change drives the need for innovation, making it more crucial than ever that companies adapt. For Fides, that means putting the right tools at the fingertips of corporate treasury and finance teams to ensure they can spend their time contributing to the success of the business.
TMI: Could you give us an example of this rapid change within treasury and finance specifically? And what is the impact on those teams’ technology needs as a result?
AL: The lines between businesses and consumers don’t exist the way they once did. Real-time payments are a great example of this change: people don’t want to have to wait days or even hours for their pay cheques to clear, and businesses want better cash visibility to improve cash positioning and reduce business risk. Now, more technology is in place to get us closer to being able to realise this vision. But this, of course, opens new avenues for payments fraud, and therefore increases the need for more robust security measures, validation tools, sanctions filters, and so on.
Finance and treasury teams are also put in a tough spot by real-time developments – they have to operate faster, more efficiently, and more effectively to mitigate risk and ensure business stability and viability from a balance perspective. They also need instant cash visibility to drive real-time cash management, and that’s historically been difficult to achieve. Without centralised data, you can’t have that cash visibility, thereby making accurate forecasting and liquidity management essentially impossible.
TMI: Presumably Fides has been working on solutions to assist here? What’s new in your armoury?
AL: Of course! I mean, it’s always nice to chat to TMI, but yes, we do have something new to share with your readers – our Fides ONEHub solution. In our opinion, this new offering brings together all the essential cash management tools that finance and treasury teams need.
ONEHub is an exciting evolution of the Fides Multibanking Suite. It consolidates our existing liquidity management and payments solutions, will incorporate additional Fides innovations, and also serves as a gateway to financial solutions from our extensive array of partners.
As TMI readers will know, Fides is best-known for bank connectivity, also termed treasury aggregation. And ONEHub aggregates the data from the clients’ banks, providing a consolidated view for liquidity management and payments. This eliminates a significant portion of the manual work that often consumes far too much time for treasury staff. With ONEHub, companies can optimise treasury workflows and accelerate daily operations, giving them scalability to quickly adapt to change and innovate faster.
TMI: Finally, what else is on the horizon for Fides?
AL: As I mentioned earlier, the pace of change means nobody can afford to slow down. Fides’ mission is to continue to deliver innovative products and services, and I’m pleased to say that after years of making cash pooling solutions available to banks, we’ll soon be rolling out a new cash pooling solution to our corporate clients. This is something that our clients have been requesting and we know they’ll be able to use. Fides Cash Pooling will be the first of many new modules available through Fides ONEHub, and we’re excited about its release.
Learn more about Fides at www.fides-treasury.com
