Finance Automation Is Having Its Sourdough Starter Moment
This article is a contribution from our partner, Embat Theo Wasserberg, Head of UK&I at Embat In early 2020, everyone suddenly had time to bake bread. Instagram was filled with proud photos of bubbly starter cultures. People read obsessively about hydration ratios and fermentation schedules, and then came the actual baking. Only most loaves emerged as dense, sour bricks. The fundamental lesson isn’t about desire or ingredients, it’s about the gap between growing a starter and maintaining one. These are completely different challenges. The first requires enthusiasm; the second requires changing how your kitchen works. I’ve spent 2025 watching finance teams get stuck in exactly the same place. The Kitchen That Can’t Bake The conversations I have with CFOs follow a pattern. They’re excited about AI, they’ve read the articles, attended conferences, and maybe run a pilot. But then they show me their architecture: legacy ERPs that can’t expose data properly, point solutions that don’t talk to each other, manual reconciliation processes that shouldn’t exist in 2025. They’ve got the starter culture bubbling away – the ambition, the budget approval, the stakeholder buy-in – but the kitchen itself can’t support what they’re trying to bake. Think about what this parallel actually means in practice. Both involve living systems that resist rigid rules. Sourdough starters are colonies of wild yeast and bacteria – they respond to temperature, feeding schedules, and flour quality in ways that can’t be fully programmed. For twenty years, finance automation assumed the opposite: that every transaction would follow a predefined path, that exceptions were rare bugs rather than daily reality. The 30% Brick Wall That’s why rule-based systems automated 30% of work and then hit a wall. They were designed for a world where payments arrive with perfect reference numbers and customers never consolidate invoices. It’s like writing a recipe that only works if your kitchen is exactly 21°C and your flour is exactly 12% protein. Real kitchens – and real finance departments – are messier than that. What makes AI different is that it’s built for messy, unstructured environments. It learns patterns rather than following rules. When a payment arrives with a typo in the reference field, it doesn’t freeze and wait for human intervention – it recognises intent from context. This is precisely how an experienced baker can look at their starter and know it’s ready, even though it doesn’t match the textbook description of “doubled in size with large bubbles throughout.” You Can’t Bake Sourdough in a Microwave But here’s where the sourdough parallel gets uncomfortable: AI adoption requires the same thing successful bread-baking does. You can’t just add a starter to your existing routine. You have to rebuild the routine around the starter’s needs. Most finance teams I work with are trying to drop AI into their current architecture the way someone might try to bake sourdough in a microwave because that’s the heating appliance they already own and use. The technology is irrelevant if the surrounding infrastructure can’t support it. This is the architecture problem, and it’s why so many pilots produce impressive demos but never scale. We were at Google’s Gemini Founders Forum when they named it: AI theatre, the gap between what looks transformative on stage and what actually survives in production. Prove Something and Then Scale The contained‑value approach we advocate – focused use cases, defined datasets, and measurable outcomes – is the same advice every sourdough guide gives. Start with one simple loaf. Master that. Then experiment. Don’t attempt twelve kinds of bread at once with a starter you fed for the first time yesterday. Yet that’s precisely what happens in corporate finance when companies launch sweeping “AI transformation initiatives” before they’ve automated a single reconciliation workflow successfully. I tell treasury teams: prove you can automate one thing completely before you write a roadmap for twenty things. Get cash visibility working in real-time for one entity before you roll it out globally. The discipline is in resisting the urge to scale before you’ve proven you can execute at a small scale. When the Dutch Oven Finally Arrives The interesting thing about the regulatory wave hitting finance is that it doesn’t actually change the fundamentals. PSD3 and ISO 20022 will help – they’re the equivalent of finally getting a proper Dutch oven after months of failed attempts with a sheet pan. Standardised connectivity will remove fragile data flows, which is one of the biggest technical barriers we see. But here’s the uncomfortable truth – a tool only matters if you’ve learned the fundamentals. Teams that have been practicing contained-value AI deployments will scale quickly when those regulations hit. Teams that have been waiting for perfect conditions will still be reading articles about transformation. Nobody Wants to Learn Using a Microwave Kitchen What all this means for talent is straightforward, but nobody wants to say it out loud. The best finance graduates don’t want to work at companies still reconciling CSVs across fifteen spreadsheets for the same reason nobody wants to learn to bake at a restaurant still using a microwave. It signals that the organisation doesn’t understand its own craft. And here’s where the gap becomes a problem. When I talk to treasurers who can’t provide real-time liquidity visibility, I think about what message that sends to incoming talent. The narrative is clear: if your systems look and behave like a microwave kitchen, top talent will go elsewhere. Where Reality Bites The fundamental lesson for 2026 isn’t about technological maturity; it’s about exposure. The technology is already adequate. What changes is that the space between companies that executed and companies that deliberated becomes impossible to hide. In sourdough terms, you can claim you’re “really into artisan bread” for only so long before someone asks to see your loaf. And that’s where reality bites. Finance leaders sitting in 2026 with transformation roadmaps instead of working pilots will face a simple reality: their competitors have been baking bread while they’ve been perfecting their starter. And in the treasury department, nobody cares…
Franklin
What Are FX Liquidity Providers?
This article is written by Bracket When your business executes foreign exchange (FX) transactions, the quality of your rate depends on more than just market conditions. Often it hinges on your FX liquidity provider. These entities supply the market with buy and sell quotes, allowing you to execute trades at competitive prices. Definition and role of liquidity providers the FX market FX liquidity providers are typically large banks, financial institutions, or firms that constantly quote bid and ask prices. Their role is to ensure that counterparties can transact in the FX market without significant delays or price gaps. Primary vs secondary liquidity sources Primary liquidity providers Tier-1 banks with direct access to interbank markets. Secondary liquidity providers Brokers or aggregators that source rates from multiple primary providers. For most corporates, the right choice is often an aggregator that blends multiple feeds, reducing exposure to price spikes. Why choosing the right FX liquidity provider matters Selecting the best FX liquidity provider isn’t just about rates, it’s about long-term cost efficiency, risk management, and operational stability. This can change a lot business-to-business. Impact on transaction costs Even a 5–10 basis point difference in spreads can translate into six-figure annual savings for companies with large FX exposures. Transparent pricing models help CFOs identify, and avoid hidden FX fees and markups. Companies can use tools like an FX Benchmarker to check their rates and understand what costs are being incurred. Risk management benefits A reliable liquidity provider can: Understanding the true cost of FX by benchmarking What is FX benchmark? An FX benchmark is a reference rate used to measure the competitiveness of your FX deals. Examples include the WM/Refinitiv rates or central bank reference rates. How benchmarks can reveal hidden spreads By comparing your trade execution prices to a benchmark, you can identify if you experience consistently wide spreads, and any additional markups beyond agreed fees. This providers CFOs and Treasury leaders opportunities for renegotiation. Recently a European airline discovered their provider was adding a 0.25% spread to EUR/USD trades, costing them £250,000 annually. Benchmarking revealed the gap, and they secured a better deal within a month. How to compare liquidity providers Pricing transparency The best place to start is from asking your provider for: Our tip: Avoid providers unwilling to show how their rates stack against independent FX benchmarks. Technology and execution speed Execution delays can cost money. Leading providers offer: Regulatory compliance Only work with providers regulated in reputable jurisdictions (e.g., FCA in the UK). This reduces counterparty risk and ensures better dispute resolution. Common pitfalls avoid when selecting FX liquidity providers How a CFO Saved €280k in FX costs A leader in live video technology, faced challenges in managing FX operations. Romain Pirenne lacked visibility on pricing applied by banks and brokers, making it difficult to assess and compare FX margins charged on FX Forwards and FX Options with no visibility on provider profits. By using a Benchmarking tool, he was able to: The power of benchmarking tools are undeniable, as Romain Pirenne explains, “We now have full visibility on margins applied by our FX providers and have drastically cut our costs. The transparency and efficiency it provides have been game-changing for our treasury operations.” For CFOs seeking to unlock similar savings, the right benchmarking tools can turn hidden costs into measurable gains. Key questions to ask your FX liquidity provider Also Read Join our Treasury Community Treasury Mastermind is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.
The supply chain process: Step by step
This article is written by our partner, SAP Taulia The supply chain process influences how effectively you manage costs, mitigate risks, and meet customer expectations. Learn how to optimize each stage here. A guide to the supply chain process An effective and efficient supply chain is vital to the success of any business. It contributes significantly to overall financial health, increases resilience against adverse conditions, and plays a vital role in ensuring products are delivered on time to customers. By focusing on improving their supply chain processes, businesses can improve product quality, avoid inventory shortages or oversupply, increase customer satisfaction, protect against supply chain risks, and reduce costs. Stages of the supply chain A supply chain represents the flow of goods, materials, and services that underpin business operations, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished goods. Each business has its own supply chain and is responsible for constructing and managing it to suit its unique objectives. Involving suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers, the supply chain process can be broken down into the following stages: 0. Establishing the supply chain One of the most important steps in the supply chain process comes before it’s up and running. That step is planning and establishing a supply chain that is finely tuned to your specific business needs, the sector you operate in, and the market you serve. During this step, you first need to decide on supply chain objectives and specify the metrics that will be used to monitor progress toward them. Then, move on to build your supply chain to suit those metrics. This includes supplier sourcing – the process of choosing suppliers to fulfil your need for goods and materials while also considering how well they serve your specific aims. At this initial stage, you can also consider how to achieve visibility over inventory flowing through the supply chain, and determine how you’ll integrate other technological processes like cash flow and demand forecasting. 1. Purchasing materials/goods With the sourcing of suppliers complete and the foundation of your supply chain well established, the supply chain process proper begins with purchasing raw materials and components. The purchasing process formalizes the way in which a company buys goods and services, meaning that spending can be carefully managed and tracked. By having guidelines in place for every part of their purchasing process, from negotiating contracts to approving purchase requests, companies can ensure that their purchasing practices match their business objectives while increasing efficiency and minimizing risk. 2. Manufacturing and inventory management The manufacturing process involves taking purchased raw materials and components and developing them into finished products. Although some manufacturing processes can be straightforward, modern manufacturing may include several steps that require products to pass through different facilities at various stages of completion. At this stage, the priority is to make sure that the materials or components supplied meet the required standards. Rigorous measurement of supplier performance, in terms of order fulfillment rates, price accuracy, and quality of goods, act as metrics to assess them against. It’s also increasingly common to track the flow of goods and materials throughout these steps, to facilitate inventory visibility. When complete, the final products must then be stored, so they’re ready for distribution to customers. Different options are available for this, each with their own pros and cons. The balance to be struck is between the cost of holding inventory and the speed with which you can fulfil orders. Using inventory management techniques to oversee both raw materials and finished products, you can take steps to optimize stock levels and improve how well your inventory warehousing and product delivery process serves your business objectives. 3. Delivering products to customers The distribution process involves the movement of finished products from storage to the end customer. Success here revolves around moving the right products, in the right quantity, on time, and to the correct location – all while managing costs. Depending on your business goals and the market in which you operate, you can either deliver products directly to customers or distribute them indirectly through partners or third parties such as agents, wholesalers, or retailers. Choices made at this stage of the supply chain process influence inventory cycle times and costs. Choosing the right distribution partners and tools can both drive efficiency and increase customer satisfaction levels. 4. Processing returns Inevitably, there will be occasions when customers return products. When goods are returned, they need to be checked to see if they meet the criteria for returns and refunds. They are either repackaged for resale or disposed of, with the relevant data entered into an inventory system. Refunds should be issued as quickly as possible, as customer relationships can be severely damaged if this process is mishandled. A smooth process, on the other hand, can strengthen customer relationships. Optimizing your supply chain process The supply chain process is a dynamic part of business operations, each stage of which can be optimized and refined to bring about efficiency. These are some of the most viable methods for improving the way your supply chain operates. Choosing the right supply chain model First and foremost, it’s essential that you adopt a supply chain model that fits both your unique objectives and the sector in which you operate. The main dichotomy in supply chain models is between lean and resilient. Lean supply chains seek to eliminate unnecessary expenditure, turning raw materials into finished goods with minimal waste and loss. Resilient supply chains are designed to adapt quickly to unanticipated events by holding safety stock and having a degree of supplier redundancy built in. The former approach is geared to ‘just-in-time’ inventory practices, and the latter ‘just-in-case’. The lean approach relies on all the supply chain steps functioning almost perfectly. Without safety stock, disruption from a single supplier could cause production to halt almost immediately. On the other hand, a resilient approach will come with greater storage costs and a greater risk of obsolescence while tying up more cash. Refining your approach to supply chain…
On-Chain Settlement: Beyond the Hype and Into the Messy Middle
Written by Sharyn Tan (Views are my own) “Instant settlement” has become treasury’s favorite buzzword. The promise is intoxicating: transactions clearing in seconds, transparency no baked in, settlement risk vanishing into the ether. For treasurers drowning in reconciliation spreadsheets and chasing payment confirmations across time zones, it sounds like salvation. But here’s the part nobody mentions at conferences: most treasury systems still run in a batch-processed, end-of-day world. And honestly? For good reason. The Promise Is Real… So Are the Problems On-chain settlement does offer genuine advantages. Near-instantaneous confirmation. Reduced counterparty risk. A single, immutable record that should eliminate reconciliation nightmares. For treasurers managing global liquidity, the appeal is obvious: why wait T+2 for FX settlement when you could move value in minutes? But let’s be honest about what this actually requires: Your TMS wasn’t built for smart contracts. Your ERP speaks SWIFT, not blockchain. Your bank rec process assumes predictable cut-off times, not 24/7 activity. Your auditors want custody trails, not wallet addresses on an explorer. And your CFO still needs to explain to the board why the company is suddenly “doing crypto.” That’s before we discuss regulatory complexity, tax treatment ambiguity, or the operational reality that most of your team barely tolerates the current treasury platform. Questions the Optimists are not asking Do corporates actually need 24/7 settlement? Let’s be real: most corporate payments don’t require instant settlement. You’re paying suppliers on 30-60 day terms. Your FX hedges follow standard spots and forwards. Your debt service runs on predictable schedules. The treasury operations that genuinely benefit from instant settlement—emergency cross-border payments, just-in-time liquidity moves, rapid repatriation from more restricted jurisdictions—represent maybe 5-10% of daily volume for most corporates. Before rearchitecting your entire stack, ask: what percentage of your payments actually demands real-time settlement? And what’s the cost-benefit versus improving existing rails like instant payment schemes? Is it even possible to carry out without running into regulatory issues? Are we trading settlement risk for operational risk? Traditional settlement is slow but reversible, insured, and backed by tested legal frameworks. On-chain settlement is fast and final—which sounds great until you send payment to the wrong address, or a fraudulent transaction confirms before you can stop it. Smart contracts introduce new risks: code vulnerabilities, oracle failures, governance attacks. We’ve seen enough bridges collapse to know “trustless” doesn’t mean “riskless.” What happens when blockchain speed hits treasury controls? Treasury isn’t just about moving money quickly—it’s about moving it correctly. Your AP team needs three-way matching. Your FP&A team needs data that ties to forecasts. Your tax team needs entity-level tracking. Your compliance team needs sanctions screening before payment execution. Can your on-chain solution handle dual authorization? Enforce payment limits? Generate audit trails your external auditors actually accept? Or are you building an elegant blockchain system that creates a compliance disaster downstream? The Integration Reality: Not Pretty Even if you’re convinced on-chain settlement works for specific use cases, implementation is not straightforward. You need middleware translating blockchain confirmations into formats your TMS can ingest. Real-time reconciliation matching on-chain activity against your chart of accounts. Custody solutions satisfying both your security team (cold storage, multi-sig) and operations (payments before month-end close). And you’re doing all this while maintaining existing banking relationships as this isn’t replacement—it’s addition. More complexity, not less, at least for a period. The “last mile” problem is real: Getting that super-fast blockchain transaction to connect with all the slow, traditional enterprise systems that actually run your business. It’s like upgrading to fiber-optic internet at your house, but still having to print out your emails because your filing system only works with paper. The speed improvement is useless if you can’t integrate it into your actual workflow. In treasury terms: The blockchain moves the money fast, but the value only becomes real when your GL is updated, your cash position is accurate, your working capital forecast reflects it, and your auditors can verify it—and right now, there’s a huge gap between blockchain settlement and making all of that happen seamlessly. That gap? That’s the last mile. And it’s where many blockchain payment projects actually fail. A Treasurer’s Take: The opportunity isn’t replacing everything with blockchain. It’s creating optionality—having on-chain rails available for use cases where instant, transparent settlement genuinely creates value, while maintaining traditional systems for everything else. Think of treasury becoming multi-modal: some payments via instant schemes, some via correspondent banking, some via stablecoin rails—each chosen based on specific transaction requirements. The real question to ask: What Problem Are You Solving? On-chain settlement is a solution. But what’s your problem? Technology should follow the problem, not the other way around. And the honest assessment might be that for your treasury, traditional systems with incremental improvements deliver better risk-adjusted returns than a blockchain overhaul. That’s not failure. That’s good judgment. The Path Forward? On-chain settlement represents a genuine evolution in how value moves. For treasurers, it offers real benefits—when implemented thoughtfully, for appropriate use cases, with proper integration and controls. But we need to get past the hype and into the messy middle: the hard work of integration, honest cost-benefit assessment, realistic timelines for when this becomes mainstream infrastructure rather than experimental edge cases. The practitioners who succeed won’t be true believers or skeptics—they’ll be pragmatists whoidentify where on-chain settlement creates genuine value, build the integration layers that make it operational, and maintain the risk discipline treasury demands. The future isn’t purely on-chain or purely traditional. It’s hybrid, multi-modal, and boringly practical—using the right rails for the right payments at the right time. And that future is being built by treasurers willing to experiment carefully, fail small, learn quickly, and share honestly about what’s actually working. Also Read Join our Treasury Community Treasury Mastermind is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.
How Swap Automation Reduces Risks And Costs
This article is written by Kantox FX swaps are one of the most widely used instruments in currency management. The omnipresence of swaps and forwards in fx-risk-management is best understood by glancing at recent estimates by the Bank for International Settlements: “FX swaps and forwards had reached the $130 trillion mark in late 2024. The rise in the notional value of FX derivatives was driven mainly by greater positions in FX swaps and forwards” — BIS A currency swap is equivalent to a package of forward contracts. On the one hand, an amount of currency is bought or sold against another currency with a given value date. On the other hand, the reverse trade takes place, but with a different value date. FX swaps are used in a variety of companies, asset managers and banks with different hedging-strategies. In 2023, the Riksbank —the Swedish central bank— hedged part of its foreign exchange reserves with swaps, selling USD and EUR against SEK. This blog discusses, in the context of corporate fx-risk-management, the following topics: Using swaps to adjust currency hedging Ensuring a perfect match between the settlement of commercial transactions and the corresponding FX hedges is next to impossible. To bridge the gap between these positions, swapping is necessary. Swaps allow treasury teams to: Consider the following ‘early draw’ example. Company A has an open forward position to buy $1,000,000 against EUR at a forward rate of EUR-USD 1.1100. The position was taken several months before to hedge a forecasted commercial exposure. Company A now faces a payment of $100,000 related to that exposure. Swapping is therefore required to ‘draw’ on that forward position. There are two ‘legs’ this transaction: Thanks to this transaction, the treasury team not only obtains the required amount of dollars on the spot — its forward position at the original value date is also automatically adjusted. Quite naturally, FX gains/losses will be involved, as the exchange rate has shifted. This simple example illustrates the enormous practical value brought by swaps. As companies execute such transactions on many thousands of occasions on any given day, we can understand why total FX forwards and swaps stand at more than $130 trillion. The costs and risks associated with manual swap execution Treasurers know it too well: swapping is complex and resource-intensive. Day in, day out, we encounter situations that show the stress members of corporate-treasury teams find themselves in as they execute the indispensable FX swap transactions: When manually executed, the process of using FX swaps to adjust the firm’s hedging position can be so cumbersome that currency managers may fall victim to the siren song of so-called flexible forwards. Here’s an example. A Canadian importer of vaccines and other medical inputs hedges its CHF-denominated purchases with flexible forward contracts. The treasury team likes the flexibility of fully or partially settling the forward contract during one month for the same rate. But what is not fully transparent to the team is the high costs of the process. This is because, as the company’s liquidity providers protect themselves from FX risk, they set the exchange rate at a date that is more convenient to them in terms of forward points, i.e., the difference between the forward and the spot rate. If the company needs funds before expiry, it pays the desired amount of Swiss francs at the CHF-CAD rate of the value date of the forward contract, instead of the lower rate that would correspond on account of the Canadian dollar’s forward discount to CHF (about 3.34% for 12 months). Swap automation to the rescue Faced with an array of costs and risks, beleaguered members of the treasury teams can turn to API connectivity to solve the many operational and cost-related challenges related to swap execution. Going back to the Canadian firm cited above, we backtested an alternative way of letting the company draw on its currency forwards: swap automation. The savings are material: they represent about 0.20% of the firm’s traded volume, which is equal to a third of the savings from forward points in a layered FX hedging program (not discussed here). And that’s only for one currency pair. Add the other currency pairs, and the proposed connectivity to a multi-dealer corporate FX trading platform, and pretty soon we are talking hundreds of thousands of (Canadian) dollars in savings. As Ignacio Recalt, Treasury SaaS and Payments Product Owner at Kantox says: “Swap automation frees up resources and removes operational and other risks. Whether they need to anticipate or roll over FX forwards linked to payments/collections, treasurers can execute the process in one click.” With complete visibility and control, the finance team obtains: The illustration below shows how PowerBI displays the perfect traceability between swap legs and the underlying FX forwards of a hypothetical user: Conclusion. Treasurers of the world: automate! Although it represents only one of the many tasks that treasury teams execute on a daily basis, the process of swap automation neatly encapsulates the benefits of API-centred Currency Management Automation: Also Read Join our Treasury Community Treasury Masterminds is a community of professionals working in Treasury Management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to Treasury Management, including Cash Management, foreign exchange management, and Payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.
Webinar Recap: De-Dollarisation & How Treasurers Can Build the Right Hedging Strategy
Hosted by Treasury Masterminds and Ebury Resources from Ebury For those wanting to dig deeper into the trends shaping de-dollarisation: Download Ebury’s De-Dollarisation Playbook Free FX Audit from Ebury The final webinar of the year landed with a full house and a topic treasurers clearly can’t get enough of: the shifting role of the US dollar and what it means for hedging strategies in 2026 and beyond. We brought together two complementary perspectives: Below is a breakdown of the key themes and insights for those who couldn’t join live. The Audience Warm-Up: What’s Your Biggest USD Challenge? We opened with a poll. Three choices, one predictable winner: Treasurer everywhere apparently bonded over volatility-induced stress. The Real Story Behind De-Dollarisation Despite dramatic headlines, de-dollarisation is not a sudden-collapse scenario. Both speakers clarified: The shift away from the USD is slow, policy-driven, and structural. Key drivers behind the trend Camille highlighted a major behaviour shift in markets:The old correlation between global volatility and a stronger USD is breaking. Asset managers have started hedging USD exposures they historically left open, and those flows helped push EURUSD higher in 2024. On the Ground: How Treasurers Are Actually Paying Neicy gave an unfiltered view from Angola, where USD scarcity can slow or halt critical operations. Key takeaways: It’s not pretty, but it works. And it shows how far treasurers must stretch when macro conditions refuse to play along. The Blind Spot: “Dollar In, Dollar Out” Isn’t Zero Exposure A common misconception: Using USD on both the buy and sell side equals a natural hedge. Camille explained the trap: If your counterparty’s functional currency is not USD, they carry FX risk too. And they often hide that risk in pricing. One example: Chinese suppliers often increase RMB prices when USD weakens but rarely lower them in the opposite scenario. The result is an invisible premium. Switching to local currency invoicing (RMB, EUR, BRL…) can strip out these markups. Should Treasurers Hedge More in Local Currencies? Often, yes. Benefits: RMB liquidity is now strong, so the old argument of “difficult to hedge” no longer really applies. Clients who switched saw reduced costs and clearer pricing. Yes, renegotiation takes effort. But that effort pays for itself. Hedging Strategies Treasurers Are Turning To 2025 saw a noticeable shift: 1. Layered hedging over simple rolling hedges Spreads timing risk, reduces exposure to single bad entry points. 2. Option-based structures resurface Treasurers want: Options provide that balance. 3. Greater focus on cost of carry Forward points have moved.Hedging long tenors is now cheaper than earlier in the year. 4. Multi-currency optimisation If USD hedging is expensive while BRL or EUR hedging is favourable… adjust the portfolio. Treasurer Reality Check Neicy made one of the session’s most candid points: “When we don’t know, we don’t do.” Many emerging-market treasuries simply lack stable markets or instruments needed to hedge conventionally.Their main levers: Sometimes survival absorbs the full definition of “hedging.” Final Advice for Treasurers Heading Into 2026 From Neicy From Camille Together their message was simple: Treasury is changing. Markets are changing. Hedging strategies must evolve too. Watch the Full Webinar Recording If you want the full conversation, audience Q&A, and all the nuance, the full session is now available on Spotify. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.
The CFO’s Guide to Choosing FX Providers: Banks vs Brokers vs Fintechs
This article is written by HedgeFlows If you’re a CFO managing international payments through your bank, the amount you’re overpaying depends entirely on your size – banks charge SMEs 2-3% while giving large corporates 0.1% for the exact same service. Yet the same SME could get 0.4% from a fintech in minutes. Or you can start with an FX broker with a tight spread and catch them overcharging a few months later. This isn’t about market dynamics; it’s about providers exploiting your inertia. Add the cost of unhedged risk, and the real damage to your bottom line becomes clear. When comparing FX providers, whether banks vs FX brokers or Wise vs traditional FX, the landscape is deliberately opaque. Banks vs FX Brokers vs Fintechs: The Hidden Truth About Your FX Costs This comprehensive FX provider comparison guide reveals what each provider type really offers, their hidden agendas, and most importantly, how to choose an FX provider that matches your company’s specific situation—whether you’re running a £5M startup or a £500M enterprise. FX Provider Comparison: The Five Types of FX Providers (Reality Check) 1. Banks: The Incumbent’s Paradox Best for: Large corporates (£500M+ turnover), companies needing credit facilities, complex structured products The Reality: Even for £100M turnover businesses, banks offer surprisingly basic transactional services. You’ll get access to a platform with competitive spreads, but that’s where the value ends. Despite their resources, banks treat FX as a profit centre, subsidising other services—meaning you’re the product. Pros: Cons: Hidden Truth: “Banks use FX margins to subsidise ‘free’ business accounts—if you’re an SME paying 2-3% spreads, you’re funding your own ‘free’ banking through hidden FX costs. Those free accounts aren’t free; they’re FX-subsidised.” Red Flag: If they can’t show you live rates online or quote you spreads in real-time, you’re overpaying. If they’re pushing structured products as “risk management,” run. 2. FX Brokers: The Wild West Best for: Price-sensitive businesses with simple spot/forward needs, traders comfortable managing their own risk The Reality: The sector contains some legitimate players, but its reputation is deservedly tarnished by cowboys and sharks. While they’ll beat bank pricing, many gladly sneak hidden fees on forwards or when leaving FX orders. Since their commission comes directly from your trading volume, the relationship is always about generating more trades, not managing your risk. Pros: Cons: Hidden Truth: “Commission-driven model means they want you to trade more, not smarter. They’re farming you for volume.” Red Flag: If they call about “market opportunities” weekly or send constant market volatility alerts urging action, they’re treating you as a revenue source, not a client. 3. Fintechs (Wise/Airwallex vs Traditional FX): The Digital Disruptors Best for: Small businesses (<£10M FX annually), payment-focused needs, cost-conscious startups The Reality: When comparing Wise vs traditional FX providers, fintechs sell technology, not expertise. They’ve revolutionised payments with transparency and user experience, but if your growing business needs help managing cash flows or FX risks, their limitations become clear. Great for payments, dangerous for risk management. Pros: Cons: Hidden Truth: “Great for payments, but leaving you exposed on risk management. If FX volatility can impact your margins, you’ve outgrown them.” Red Flag: If you’re starting to notice FX gains & losses appearing in your income statement, you need risk management, which demands expertise—and that means upgrading to other providers. Fintechs can’t help you here. 4. Specialist Treasury Firms: The Consultants Best for: Mid-to-large companies needing expertise, complex hedging strategies, and one-off treasury projects The Reality: These firms may provide genuine expertise but at a steep price—typically starting at £10-50K per engagement, often reaching six figures for comprehensive projects. Their project-based model works for specific initiatives but becomes expensive and impractical for ongoing needs. When your business evolves, you’ll need to re-engage them, creating discontinuity in your risk management. Crucially, if you’re a small business trying to access consultants on the cheap, you’ll get junior analysts delivering boilerplate advice, not the senior expertise you actually need. Pros: Cons: Hidden Truth: “The only model truly aligned with reducing your risk, but the economics don’t work for SMEs. Pay their minimum and get templated advice from juniors; pay properly and spend six figures. There’s no middle ground.” Red Flag: If they don’t start by understanding your business model, cash conversion cycle, and risk tolerance, they’re just expensive brokers. 5. The Hybrid Model (HedgeFlows): Best FX Provider for SMEs Best for: Growing SMEs (£5-100M turnover), businesses needing expertise without enterprise costs The Reality: A new category has emerged as the best FX provider for SMEs, combining fintech efficiency with treasury expertise. Companies like HedgeFlows bring institutional-level risk management tools and knowledge to smaller businesses at accessible price points. This model solves the expertise gap without the £50K consulting fees. Pros: Cons: Hidden Truth: “The only model bringing institutional-level FX risk management to SMEs—what large corporates have had for decades, now accessible to growing businesses.” Red Flag: Make sure they have actual treasury expertise, not just good technology. Ask about their team’s background in risk management. The Comparison Table: 10 Key Factors Factor Banks FX Brokers Fintechs Specialist Treasury Hybrid (HedgeFlows) SME FX Margins 2-3% 0.5-1% 0.4-0.8% n/a 0.2-0.5% Corporate FX Margins 0.1% 0.2-0.5% N/A n/a 0.2-0.5% Minimum Volume None (but poor rates <£10M) £100K None £10M+ £500K Hedging Products Full range Basic forwards None Full range Core hedging suite Risk Advisory None (unless buying products) Limited/Sales-driven None Comprehensive Included Technology/UX Poor Average Excellent Varies Excellent Execution Speed Slow Fast Instant Average Fast Transparency Opaque Semi-transparent Fully transparent Transparent Fully transparent Service Model Transactional Sales-focused Self-service Consultative Tech-enabled advisory Hidden Fees Risk High High Low Low Low Best For Revenue £500M+ £1-50M <£10M £50M+ £5-100M How to Choose an FX Provider: The Decision Matrix FX Provider for SME – Your Situation → Right Provider <£1M FX annually → Wise/Revolut £1-10M FX, stable/predictable → FX Broker £5-100M FX, growing/complex → Hybrid Platform (HedgeFlows) £50M+ FX, complex needs → Specialist Treasury £500M+, multinational → Bank + Specialist The Questions Every CFO Should Ask Providers During Provider Evaluation, Ask: Before Starting Your Search, Ask Yourself: The Uncomfortable Truth About FX Providers Every provider type has a business model that may conflict with your interests: The key is choosing the…
The Anti-Burnout Reporting Playbook for Treasury Teams
This article is written by Treasury4 Reporting Isn’t the Problem. Burnout Reporting Is. Most treasury teams aren’t lacking skill—they’re constrained by process.The real issue isn’t just “too many reports.” It’s the time spent reconciling mismatched data, re-explaining logic, and stitching together tools that were never built for modern cash management. A quick update to the Cash Position Report becomes a multi-tab exercise. A Forecasting revision means chasing down half-updated files. And that monthly Statement of Cash? You’re still manually tracking what moved where—and why. Burnout reporting happens when outdated workflows collide with rising expectations. When leadership wants answers faster, but your tech stack can’t keep up. And when reports designed to show cash trends end up draining the very capacity needed to act on them. This playbook isn’t about cosmetic upgrades or automation for its own sake. It’s about redefining how cash reporting should work—with centralized logic, built-in context, and the kind of data architecture that lets you answer CFO-level questions like: Because when reporting is embedded within a modern cash and treasury platform—not bolted on—it stops being a burden. It becomes a source of information, speed and strategic insight. Let’s break down where the friction lives—and what it takes to eliminate it. The Time Sink Report There’s always one. The weekly report that takes an hour to prep, gets sent to six inboxes, and hasn’t triggered a single reply in months. Still, you send it. Just in case. It’s quiet burnout: polishing something that no one actually uses, just because it’s always been done. This is where modern treasury tools earn their keep. With report usage tracking, dashboard access logs, and automated delivery metrics, you can finally see which reports are being opened, by whom, and how often. No more guessing what’s useful and what’s a waste of time. What You Can Do About It Step 1: Know what’s actually being used.With a modern cash and treasury platform, you don’t have to guess.Usage tracking shows you which reports are being opened, by whom, and how often. Dashboard access logs give you insight into what’s being viewed, filtered, and downloaded—so you know what’s supporting decisions vs. what’s just sitting in inboxes. Step 2: Simplify what you deliver.The right platform doesn’t just distribute reports—it organizes them.With role-based dashboards, stakeholders see only what’s relevant to them—cash by entity, collections trendlines, forecast vs. actuals—and you get to stop managing six report versions for six different audiences. Step 3: Retire what’s no longer useful.If a report hasn’t been opened in 60 days, the data’s saying what no one else is: you can stop sending it.And if someone does need that data later, it’s already available on-demand—with audit trails, saved filters, and consistent logic embedded in the system. The Fire Drill Forecast It’s 4:57 p.m. and leadership wants a new cash forecast—updated assumptions, tighter collections window. You’ve done this before. Manual forecasting turns every “what if” into a scramble.The data’s scattered across five systems. Assumptions change halfway through. And by the time your spreadsheet is ready, the question’s already shifted. When forecasting lives inside your system—not cobbled together around it—you’re ready.You duplicate the 13-week forecast, tweak the inputs, rerun the scenario, and get the answer out before the next request hits your inbox. It’s not just about moving faster. It’s about not falling behind. What You Can Do About It The Spreadsheet That Ate Your Sanity Seventeen tabs. Nested logic. Cross-sheet references no one dares touch.And one person who knows how it all works—you. The Cash Position Report? You built it.The Statement of Cash? Still lives on your desktop.Every formula, every update, every exception—it’s yours to maintain, explain, and defend. You don’t want to be the only one who can fix it. But you also can’t afford for it to break.So you keep managing it. But spreadsheets weren’t built for treasury, version control, audit trails, or cash-critical reporting that supports board-level decisions. What You Can Do About It The Strategic Work You Never Get To You’re here to manage cash—guide decisions, model outcomes, and give leadership the clarity to move. But when your day is spent reconciling mismatched entries, updating broken formulas, and rechecking totals for the third time, the real work slips to the margins. That changes with a platform designed to cut through the noise. When reports like Cash Position, Collections, and Bank Fees live in a system with embedded rules, audit-ready history, and alerts for anomalies, you’re not just compiling data—you’re seeing what changed, why, and what needs attention. You stop reacting to errors and start delivering insight, not by doing more, but by doing what matters—with tools built for the job. What You Can Do About It: Step by Step Step 1: Identify the report that takes the most brainpower—but adds the least value.Pick one that regularly pulls you away from strategic work—like your Cash Position Report, Collections trendline, or bank fee summary. If you’re just formatting, not interpreting, it’s a candidate. Step 2: Document the insights you wish you had—before someone asks.For example: These are the signals you should be spotting—not scrambling to explain. Step 3: Move the report into a system that’s built for interpretation, not just storage.A modern cash and treasury platform helps you: Step 4: Let the system surface what matters.No more scanning rows or rebuilding logic. With built-in rules and centralized data, your time shifts from maintenance to management. Step 5: Use the time you get back to advise, not update.With the noise filtered out, you can focus on delivering insight: That’s the real value of modern treasury tools—not just reporting, but information that helps you lead. What Happens When You Get Your Time Back Most treasury teams don’t struggle because they lack skill or commitment. They struggle because their systems make even the most basic work harder than it needs to be. Reporting, at its best, should be a lever for strategic insight—not a weekly drain on your time and attention. But that’s only possible when the foundation is strong: data that’s structured, logic that’s embedded, and…
Stablecoins on the Balance Sheet: The Counterparty & Credit Risk Debate
Written by Sharyn Tan (Views are my own) Thesis: Stablecoins promise instant, low-cost, 24/7 settlement that traditional correspondent banking cannot match. But there’s a catch—you’re trading the credit risk of regulated banks for a mix of private issuers, offshore entities, and smart contracts. However, we’re not debating whether stablecoins will land on corporate balance sheets – they already have. The real question: Is the risk framework mature enough for this to be permanent? The Optimist Case – Why Treasurers Can Get Increasingly Comfortable The Skeptical Case – Why Treasurers and CFOs stay nervous A Treasurer’s Take: It’s not a binary choice between “all-in on stablecoins” and “never touch them.” Why not define tiered policies – something like: I suspect for most treasurers at large corporates, the “comfort threshold” for mass adoption looks like this: The bottom line Counterparty and credit risk have not disappeared with stablecoins — they’ve been reallocated. The question to ask is not “Is this as safe as a bank?” but “Do I understand this risk well enough to size it, diversify it, and get paid for taking it?” The industry is moving fast: better disclosure, better regulation (MiCA, Singapore, UAE, Hong Kong frameworks), better legal structures, and better on-chain transparency tools. Skeptics are right to demand more. Optimists are right that the tools to manage this risk already exist — and are improving quarter by quarter. The treasurer’s job hasn’t changed since the era of commercial paper and eurodollar deposits: understand the credit, diversify the counterparties, and stay within risk appetite. The medium changed. That discipline has not. So where do you stand? Are you evaluating to put stables on the balance sheet with a 2–5% limit, or still in the “observe only” camp? Also Read Join our Treasury Community Treasury Mastermind is a community of professionals working in treasury management or those interested in learning more about various topics related to treasury management, including cash management, foreign exchange management, and payments. To register and connect with Treasury professionals, click [HERE] or fill out the form below to get more information. Notice: JavaScript is required for this content.