Educational Sessions

The AFP 2024 Task Force is a group of your practitioner peers who build an agenda focused on the issues that matter most to you.

AFP 2024 features 130+ sessions across seven tracks. Check out the tracks that you can expect for this year.

• Capital Markets & Investments
• Career Development
• Executive Institute
• Financial Planning & Analysis
• Payments
• Risk Management
• Treasury Management

Capital Markets & Investments

Potential Pitfalls in Credit Agreement Compliance

When negotiating a credit agreement, several factors, including the borrower’s risk profile and credit ratings, impact the breadth of the affirmative, negative, and financial covenants imposed on the borrower. This is true whether a credit facility is a bilateral or syndicated facility or a cash-flow or asset-based lending (ABL) facility, with an ABL facility often containing the most intense requirements because the borrowing base is tied to eligible assets. This session provides a comprehensive overview of cash-flow and ABL credit facilities and attendees walk away with a tool kit of best practices to help avoid potential defaults.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Navigating the Resilient Portfolio

In today's ever-changing financial landscape, investors face constant shifts and unpredictable events – regional bank collapses, interest rate hikes, geopolitical tensions - continually influence cash investment and portfolio construction.  Given this ongoing uncertainty, investors must rely on a framework that assesses risks, evaluates credit quality, and identifies optimal best practices. Effective portfolio management requires both strategic foresight and tactical actions to align with objectives. It’s crucial for corporate treasury teams to be equipped to thoroughly evaluate the diverse risks to ongoing market dynamics.  This session aims to empower these teams by examining prevailing hazards and share strategies to safeguard portfolio integrity in a volatile environment.

Shifting Liquidity & Investment Management into the Express Lane for Financial Productivity

In the fast-paced world of global ecommerce and technology, Treasury departments are driving organization growth towards innovation and symbiotically managing its pace with an eye on associated risks.  In this dynamic session, panelist discuss their strategies for accelerating the path to optimizing and automating their centralized treasury operations and banking structure, improving data-driven techniques and systems to empower their decision making.  This panel explores how Treasury teams can serve as catalysts for driving growth within their organizations and navigating the evolving landscape with agility and foresight.

Guard Your Growth Through Debt Lifecycle Management

Amidst volatile markets, debt management is imperative for corporate treasury and finance practitioners. By addressing debt obligations organizations can optimize their cost of capital, fostering financial efficiency.  This session delves into the complexities of the debt lifecycle, offering insight on structuring and managing debt as a component of Treasury’s role to optimize cost of capital while aligning debt management with the business goals, enhancing sustainability and mitigating risk.  This nuanced understanding of debt management enables Treasury to navigate challenges, capitalize on opportunities and confidently steer their businesses towards long-term success. 

The Liquidity Lowdown: Powell Mountain Tucked between Macro Clouds

In a market that has endured persistent turbulence over the past 3+ years, cash investors remain vigilant as despite some glimmers of hope, uncertainties linger: The trajectory of interest rates remains uncertain; the impending debt limit poses potential turmoil; market volatility may sway with the election outcome; the fate of institutional prime funds post-MMF reform implementation is unclear; ongoing quantitative tightening could impact market liquidity; the integration of AI into treasury management workflows raises questions; and the sustainability of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) money funds is debated. This session explores these pressing concerns while offering perspectives on liquidity management best practices.

Driving Impact: Aligning Corporate Sustainability into Treasury

Corporate treasury practitioners are increasingly prioritizing sustainability, encompassing ESG investing and DE&I initiatives. Recently, many have shifted to implementing and aligning their treasury practice with their company’s overall sustainability strategy and philosophy.  Some have deployed strategies voluntarily while others have responded to pressure from stakeholders– in both situations, sustainability continues to be a focal point for Treasury teams in the US and beyond.  This discussion examines the various approaches to move from philosophy to implementation.   

Elevating Investments Strategy While Prioritizing Safety and Liquidity

Cash management evolves amidst shifting interest rates and risk assessments, with organizations navigating economic turbulence, geopolitical unrest, and challenges from regional banks. Regulatory changes, notably SEC's MMF rules, have also prompted careful evaluation of cash management tools, leading to recalibrated investment strategies.  In this session, seasoned professionals discuss their strategies for adapting in this everchanging environment. They share their experiences in gaining support to expand investment parameters and offer insights for future considerations like monetary policy shifts and preparing for liquidity crises.  Attendees gain insights from this dynamic and relevant conversation in investment strategies with the goals of preserving capital and maintaining liquidity.

Demystifying Cash Flow Forecasting

Having a robust cash flow forecast is critical for the financial health of a business both from a day to day operational and long-term strategic perspective. It provides valuable insights that enables companies to make more informed decisions, have better liquidity & working capital management, and instill investor confidence.  Discover how Salesforce’s Treasury team harnesses real-time data to gain visibility into cash and forecast future cash flows. By leveraging industry-leading technologies, they streamline and automate tedious tasks of data extraction and manipulation, and free up time for value-added analysis. 

Navigating Sustainability from Financing to Investment Opportunities

As companies increase their sustainability commitments, practitioners can play a crucial role in advancing sustainability goals, securing funding, navigating regulatory frameworks, and reducing potential environmental, social, and governance risks. This session offers insights from the investor, corporate practitioner and sustainable debt issuer presents perspectives on sustainability financing and investment opportunities. Discussion topics include sustainable bond market evolution, how and when green bonds are considered in a portfolio, and best practices for issuing sustainable debt. Real-world challenges are explored, providing actionable perspectives along the value chain of the sustainable debt market.

The Ins and Outs of Notional Pooling: A Practitioner’s Guide

As businesses expand globally, treasury departments face increasing pressure to implement a comprehensive strategy to optimize liquidity while minimizing excess cash. This often involves relying on physical cash pools across different regions. However, ensuring adequate funding in each of these regions presents an additional challenge.  To address this challenge, treasury must consider the criteria for leveraging a notional pooling structure versus a physical pool, and assess which option offers the greatest value under specific circumstances. During the discussion, the panel reviews the utilization of an EMEA structure and APAC regional models, or follow-the-sun pool approaches, tailored to support diverse business models or centralization strategies.

From Strategy to Execution: Best Practices for Corporate Investments

Treasury and financial professionals play a crucial role in managing a company’s financial resources. Understanding how to best deploy excess cash, write an impactful investment policy, and invest strategically are all essential components of their responsibilities. Given the current market volatility and the uncertainty of future economic conditions, treasury professionals must be able to identify and act on opportunities as they arise.  This session explores the essential controls for managing a robust investment program, from investment selection and daily operational management, compliance controls and key performance metrics. Attendees gain valuable insights to elevate their organization’s cash management and investment strategy to the next level.

Career Development

Crystal Clear: Strategies for Communicating Complex Information

Treasury and finance practitioners are frequently challenged to communicate complex information, sometimes to stakeholders who may have minimal knowledge of the topic. Once your audience achieves an understanding, it’s much easier to gain their support and drive them to take action. This session explores practical strategies to break down complex financial concepts into digestible, compelling narratives using a few simple, yet powerful techniques. Through real-world examples, stories, and metaphors, attendees learn how to craft communication that not only informs, but also inspires action to move the organization towards its goals.

Don't Let Digital Transformation Destroy Your Treasury Career

As Treasury's role expands to driving corporate vision, finance skills alone are insufficient for leadership. Successful digital treasury transformation is now essential for career advancement. This presents an opportunity for Treasury professionals to adapt, excel, and redefine their career trajectories. This session’s expert panel outlines the necessary elements for project success, including cross-functional teams equipped with the right skills, tools, and technology and demonstrates how to flex skills at all levels to meet Treasury's evolving needs, share insights, experiences, and real-world examples.

The ROI of DEI: Harnessing Data Analytics to Create Inclusion

Utilizing data analytics to foster inclusivity offers many benefits, including enhancing decision-making by providing insights into diversity and inclusion metrics such as representation, employee engagement, and leadership effectiveness. It enables organizations to identify gaps in talent management, improve retention, and promotion practices, and address biases in hiring, promoting fairness and equity. Inclusive workplaces are also better attuned to diverse customer needs, as data analytics provides insights for tailored products and services. This session emphasizes the impact of leveraging data analytics and industry-best practices to cultivate inclusive leadership and a positive workplace culture.

Unlocking Creativity: Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills for Financial Professionals

Creativity, a skill often seen as exclusive to the arts, is essential to problem-solving in financial roles.  In today's fast-paced world, financial professionals need to think innovatively to create solutions that embrace business practices without sacrificing quality or exposing the organization to unnecessary risk. Despite being labeled a 'soft skill', creativity is what sets individuals apart. From fostering a culture of innovation within teams to integrating creative problem-solving methodologies into decision-making processes, this session equips attendees with practical tools and insights to thrive in an ever-changing environment.

How to Maximize Your Networking Opportunities at AFP 2024

Attending a conference offers a wealth of opportunities beyond attendance. It's an invaluable resource for continuous learning, staying updated on industry trends, networking with diverse professionals, and gaining insights into the industry. This session is dedicated to enhancing your AFP 2024 experience by equipping you with the essential tools to maximize your time and capitalize on every offering. Identify your objectives for the conference and embark on a strategic journey to achieve them. 

Executive Institute

What Does Today’s Treasurer Need to Know About Generative AI?

With the introduction of ChatGPT are harnessing its capabilities to automate processes, resulting in an accelerated adoption. immediately started identifying how to leverage it to automate processes, and adoption has continued to accelerate. For finance professionals, it begs the question: what does it all mean for the way you work? The reality is generative AI is not a concept but a reality that’s adapting and learning. Likewise, finance and treasury professionals who embrace this change position themselves as future leaders in their organization. This session unlocks the key steps for developing generative AI fluency, enhance relevant skills to optimize financial operations.

Activate Your Workforce for Amazing Results

In today's fast-paced world, both talent and leaders seek lighter, yet more impactful ways of operating amidst workforce overwhelm, burnout, and perpetual change. They crave environments that prioritize holistic well-being while fostering productivity and innovation. An activated workforce epitomizes peak performance, marked by deep connection, engagement, and empowerment. This session equips executives with a straightforward framework to unlock workforce activation swiftly and effectively. By implementing tailored practices, organizations can transform the employee experience, drive heightened performance, and maximize talent investment returns.

Action Over Hype: AI Goals for Finance

As AI gains prominence in everyday discourse, the key question across industries is: how can we effectively employ AI in our businesses? This session guides finance leaders beyond the hype, emphasizing the crucial first step: setting clear and appropriate goals. Without these goals, leaders may encounter challenges such as misalignment with stakeholders, organizational confusion, risk exposure, technology debt, and lagging competitiveness. Panelists also share their practical experiences by diving beyond definitions to actionable examples of the following types of appropriate AI finance goals: governance, risk management, security and privacy, cost reduction, decision making.

Financial Planning & Analysis

Best Practices for Long-Term Maintenance of Budgeting Software

Ensuring your software remains aligned with evolving company needs is crucial for sustained success. Factors such as rapid growth, organizational restructuring, team dynamics, and software updates can all impact the effectiveness of the tool. Through a case study and firsthand account, this session explores strategies to navigate these challenges and maintain optimal performance and relevance of your budgeting software over time.

Lessons Learned in AI, Automation and Transformation

To stay ahead in today's volatile business environment, where challenges like inflation, supply chain disruptions, and labor complexities are the norm, organizations need a modern planning and analytics solution to collectively think and act fast. In this session, a transformation leader shares the false starts and successes along the route to establishing a single, trusted data model across the enterprise for forecasting, analysis and reporting. The discussion also details how the latest innovations in AI and automation have increased speed, productivity, and impact of finance and business operations across the entire IBM organization, integrating finance and operations across the organization.

Transforming FP&A’s Role, Influence, & Impact with the Leadership Team

University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC)’s online course market expansion, from 30% to 80% pre to post-COVID in the US, led UMGC leadership to enact drastic changes that addressed their financial and operational challenges to achieve long-term sustainability. The CFO established a new FP&A group to provide insightful financial analytics supporting business stewardship and decision-making. Through focused investment in leadership training, upskilling, and financial literacy, the FP&A team now collaborates proactively across departments to support product portfolio prioritization, initiative stage gating, multidimensional profitability analysis, and dynamic resource allocation. Discover how UMGC is enhancing business performance through collaboration, innovation, and financial stewardship.

CFOs' Guide to Data Mastery and Digital Leadership

Are you ready to lead your organization into the AI-driven future? Data is the key to harnessing analytics and AI, increasing efficiencies, and broadening finance’s influence. This dynamic session explores harnessing the power of digital finance to make smarter, data-driven decisions as a finance leader. We'll dive deep into the foundations of data analytics and AI, providing a comprehensive understanding of essential technologies such as ETL processes, data lakes, data warehousing, and real-world data architectures, demystifying how each component integrates and operates within successful businesses. Practitioner-based case studies showcase how effective data modeling and integration strategies pave the way for a clear roadmap to navigate your organization's digital finance transformation.

Dynamic Driver-Based Forecasting in Excel

Despite the evolving landscape of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) tools, Microsoft Excel continues to be the top choice for most practitioners. With Microsoft's ongoing improvements, and the ability to seamlessly integrate with Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Systems, Excel empowers FP&A professionals to conduct robust forecasting and planning without the need for newer, more expensive solutions. Attend this session for a deep dive into Excel’s untapped potential, advanced concepts such as dynamic driver-based forecasts and explore best practices

From Automation to Intelligence: A DIY Adventure in RPA 

Systematic data collection, transformation and analysis are at the root of the success of Treasury and FP&A. While many technologies provide automation and standard reporting, most professionals are presented with gaps in technology that must be addressed. This session spotlights how one pioneering team successfully eradicated the need for extensive staffing by leveraging cutting-edge robotic process automation (RPA) and data transformation technologies, leading to a profound improvement in accuracy, timeliness, and the seamless distribution of business-critical information. Break free from the shackles of repetitive daily tasks, fostering a future where efficiency, precision, and scalability go hand in hand.

Unlocking RAG Potential: Straightforward Strategies for AI Implementation

Large Language Models (LLMs) aren’t just brainy repositories of knowledge; they're also adept at absorbing new, specific information on the fly. This session aims to demystify these tools by simplifying technical language and explaining how LLMs and RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) function. Broaden the horizon of your AI by integrating agent capabilities, enabling it to retrieve and analyze data from diverse sources. This expansion not only boosts the AI’s versatility but also enhances its ability to offer comprehensive insights across a wider range of queries. Elevate your finance and treasury tasks with a fresh playbook to tackle next-gen challenges.

Bridging Finance and Non-Finance: Enhancing Communication, Trust, and Strategic Alignment

Collaboration is essential to organizational success, and this session helps you communicate financial insights, foster a culture of trust, and align strategically with non-finance counterparts. By exploring practical examples in areas like budgeting, cost management, and capital investments, speakers present actionable strategies to enhance mutual understanding, collaboration, and cross-team effectiveness. Learn how to elevate your role from gatekeepers of financial data to collaborative leaders in strategic decision-making settings that drive organizational success. 

AI, Complexity, and the Irony of Automation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized many financial roles, primarily through automation, replacing many traditional tasks. However, AI has limitations, particularly in handling complex tasks.  While AI has an advantage in completing complicated tasks, humans excel in complex tasks that are more value added. As AI displaces more of the human element in complicated finance tasks, understanding and mastering complex tasks become imperative for financial managers. This is the irony of automation. This presentation elucidates the distinction between complicated and complex tasks, illustrates and explains situations where the human adds the greatest value and highlights where human-AI collaboration can be most effective.

How We Broke Up with a Broken Planning Process

Is your pending 2025 planning and budgeting process looming over you like a monstrous shadow spawned from the mistakes of planning season’s past? A combination of legacy systems and manual spreadsheets left Rocket Software chained to outmoded processes, unforced errors, and unreliable forecasts. Instead, they recognized their “why now” moment and finally modernized their year-end planning process with a little help from AI. Join this session as speakers discuss the reasons behind Rocket Software's delay to change and how their new approach enabled them to redraft their financial processes and boosted planning speed, accuracy, and morale.

How a Global Brand Changed its Approach to Capital Planning

In today’s business climate, competitive challenges, and pressures from activist investors, companies must firmly grasp their capital investment strategies, processes, and performance. Capital planning for a large enterprise in the food and beverage industry poses ongoing challenges: multiple product lines, shifting consumer demands, supply chain obstacles, changes in the cost of capital, and other variables require finance leaders to maintain a consistent, clear, and insight-rich perspective on strategic priorities and project statuses. This session explores Schreiber Foods' journey, from evaluating systems to implementing a new process for project prioritization and gaining critical insights. Industry trends in capital investments are also discussed, highlighting proactive approaches by leading companies.

Payments

Request for Payments (RFP) a Year Later

The U.S. receivables and payments landscape are undergoing a significant transformation, largely driven by the advent and adoption of Request for Payment (RfP) solutions facilitated by instant payment networks such as the RTP® Network and FedNow. These solutions promise to redefine bill payment and Point of Sale (POS) experiences for businesses and consumers alike. This session not only reflects on the year’s advancements but also charts the course for future developments in RfP solutions and provides attendees with actionable insights for optimized financial operations and customer engagement.

Smart Safe Solutions to Solving Common Cash Management Challenges

The practices and technologies behind processing and safeguarding cash payments continues to evolve along with retail and consumer trends. These cross-functional projects present a unique challenge for finance professionals given their size, scale, and timeline – it’s the responsibility of finance teams to make cash acceptance as efficient and cost-effective as possible. Join this timely and insightful discussion as speakers unpack the innovative strategies and models that finance teams are employing to implement and enhance cash automation solutions. Three unique case studies offer practitioners new ideas for building innovative models, developing strategies to overcome challenges, and provide the leadership required to achieve organizational objectives.

Strategies for Driving Customer Payment Efficiency

As payment options increase, treasurers and finance teams are challenged to accommodate customers’ payment preferences, while managing the related costs of the receivables pipeline. With the adoption of autopay, its reliability, speed, and convenience help to achieve greater receivables automation and lower costs. The key to driving payment behavior to the most efficient payment option is to create a plan to include setting goals for the receivables mix, segmenting customers, leveraging communications, and creating metrics. In this informative discussion panelists share best practices and lessons learned from their journey to streamlining payment processes, achieving their customer payment goals, and improving company revenue.

Scale and Control: Why AP Teams Should Automate Now

Amid a digital revolution, middle-market and corporate banking sectors acknowledge the urgent need for tailored solutions. Companies are seeking to enhance their payables processes to minimize manual efforts and boost automation. This shift enables them to redirect resources towards more value-driven activities within their operational framework. Through examples of leading companies that have successfully minimized manual intervention in their AP processes, this session aims to equip attendees with actionable insights and practical strategies to drive operational growth. 

Using Cross-functional Teams to Establish a Holistic Payment Strategy

As the digital economy expands, businesses are adopting new payment methods to keep up with market demand. However, treasury and finance teams are often not the primary decision-makers in these initiatives. In this session panelists share their experiences around deploying multiple digital payment methods, including cross-border transactions, and creating a cross-functional team to collaborate on establishing a holistic payments strategy across business lines. While the practitioners are from the healthcare and medical industries, this discussion around treasury and payments is universally relevant across different industries.  

Hello API Payments, Goodbye Batch Processing Pains

As organizations face an increasing demand for seamless efficient payment processing, the complexities of traditional batch payment methods such as the necessity to reprocess an entire batch due to a single payment failure or the complex process of reconciliation has ignited the integration of innovative API solutions.  Join this enlightening session as speakers delve into the transformative potential of API payments to mitigate pain points linked with batch payment processing. Explore how embracing this technology can reshape the landscape of payment management for businesses, mitigate errors, minimize manual intervention, and enhance overall efficiency. 

Check Washing and Check Fraud: Strategies to Mitigate Losses

The use of checks and as a result, check fraud remain persistent with traditional methods such as check washing are resurging as fraudsters cycle through myriad fraud strategies. While Check 21's Warranties and Indemnity provision offer powerful protections against some check fraud liability few, including bankers, know little about them, and their extensive reach. These protections, combined with Holder In Due Course, can mitigate the losses caused by the onslaught of check fraud attempts.  This session visits real-life examples of various payment fraud attempts and examines how they happened, and how the losses were or could have been prevented or ameliorated and provides effective strategies for preventing check fraud.

The Details are in the Authorization

The authorization process is a crucial step for completing a transaction. Ensuring a high authorization rate is paramount not only for the customer experience, but also for increasing revenue.  Many merchants lose out on income due to a lack of metric understanding or overspending on ineffective services. Understanding authorization data analysis safeguards revenue and unlocks potential, optimizing every transaction. Explore the role of authorization metrics in driving revenue growth and operational efficiency in this session.

The Goldilocks Dilemma: Striking Just the Right Balance in Payables

The rapid evolution of treasury processes and technology poses a significant challenge for organizations: how to effectively integrate innovation and automation and ensure the payables ecosystem still works for all parties. The key to navigating this transition is to foster a culture of innovation and change management by balancing automation with manual oversight when appropriate. Even organizations with a clear vision for enhancing operational efficiencies and reducing costs may struggle initiating a culture of innovation. This session facilitates an open dialogue between the audience and panelists to address prevalent challenges and uncertainties. 

Transforming Customer Collections Using Real-Time Payments 

With real-time payments now available in the industry for over five years, most corporations, small businesses, and individuals are reasonably aware of the concept of sending or receiving funds immediately. What's not as well understood is how businesses of all kinds can leverage the technology's groundbreaking capabilities to transform their business and customer experience. Presenters in this session showcase a real-life case study from a corporate practitioner that successfully differentiates their services with real-time payments, along with an industry provider of the technology. They delve into the central themes around successfully implementing—and offering—real-time payments that apply to any industry segment.

Pre-Validation: Paving the Path to Payment Finality

The upward trend of payment fraud and subsequent losses prompts a critical question: What measures can be taken to mitigate, or better yet, prevent these issues? Pre-validation emerges as a promising solution that is developing in a positive direction offering companies the ability to remit payments securely and with certainty. Implementing advanced technology and stricter verification protocols will enable the financial industry to significantly reduce fraud and operational inefficiencies, thereby creating a more secure and efficient environment for digital transactions. Join this session to hear about the pre-validation tools available in the market and those being developed to enhance the degree of payment finality. 

Fortifying AP Against Ever-Evolving B2B Payment Fraud

B2B payments fraud: B2B payments fraud is a growing concern, with 84% of businesses with revenues over $1 billion encountering attempted or actual fraud in the previous year.  In this enlightening session, speakers draw on real-world examples that demonstrate the growing prevalence of cybercrime, account takeover, and business email compromise (BEC) schemes. From adopting embedded payments for accounts payable to implementing robust fraud prevention policies and procedures, explore effective ways to safeguard critical systems against payment fraud. This session empowers attendees to proactively mitigate the risk of payments fraud and safeguard their organizations in an increasingly dangerous digital landscape.

Risk Management

The Intersection of Geopolitics, Macroeconomics & Markets

Companies and asset management firms have identified Geopolitical Risk as their paramount concern - from selecting factory locations to navigating commodity price fluctuations, and understanding how geopolitical events can significantly impact interest rates, FX, and credit spreads. While geopolitical risk has always been a factor, it is moving markets more than ever. With an unprecedented array of issues at hand, this session promises to equip participants with actionable insights to navigate and capitalize on geopolitical shifts effectively.

FX Netting: Untangling Global Intercompany Currency Flows

Approaching a treasurer to discuss their top FX priorities inevitably brings up the elephant in the room: simplifying the intercompany settlement process. This aspect is widely recognized as a significant opportunity for enhancing process efficiency and achieving cost savings, yet it often lingers low on the priority list. But is it as daunting as it seems? Join this session for firsthand details of a successful IC netting program roadmap, and a journey in optimizing an established program amidst decentralized ERP systems. Attendees leave armed with practical tips, innovative tools, and fresh ideas, regardless of where their organization stands on its journey to navigating the global intercompany FX flows.

Cyber Fraud: Anatomy of AI and Deepfakes

Emerging AI technologies bring new opportunities for treasury – from ensuring compliance with payment policies to detecting suspicious payments. But, when used for nefarious purposes, AI becomes a powerful new tool when used by malicious actors. Deepfake technology has made headlines over the past several years due to its ability to alter photos, videos, and audio – often to commit financial crimes. Through an AI simulation, this session explores the good and the bad within the AI space. Fraud experts outline the measures you can take to protect yourself and your company and also address U.S. government concerns regarding AI-generated scam robocalls.

It's Not Gambling, It's Risk Management: A Primer on FX Options

Once foreign exchange (FX) risk managers have assessed their outstanding exposures, the next step is to design and execute an effective risk management program.  Optimal solutions involve devising an action plan tailored to each specific exposure. Successful hedge programs typically combine the flexibility and asymmetric risk profiles of FX options alongside forward contracts and FX swaps. However, leveraging FX options effectively necessitates understanding how options work, and how to use them effectively.  Join this session for an FX options primer, providing reliable methods to enhance value consistently. Whether purchasing options or using zero-premium collars, improve your company’s hedge program.

Cyber Attack Simulation: Game On!

Finance and treasury teams are prime targets for Business Email Compromise (BEC) and other social engineering attacks. By preemptively identifying critical payment priorities, organizations can maintain operations even amidst potential disruptions while their security teams work to restore IT systems. Establishing collaboration with banks in advance is a vital component of readiness for a cyber "bad day." This session immerses participants in an interactive cyber war game and a panel discussion illuminates effective collaboration strategies with stakeholders, ensuring organizations are well-prepared to navigate cyber threats seamlessly.

Rethinking Treasury's Global and Geopolitical Approach to Counterparty Risk Management

Recent market and geopolitical events have made counterparty risk management a top concern for treasury, the C-suite, and corporate boards. But Treasury and finance practitioners are looking forward: re-examining their approach to counterparty risk management – from processes and policies to data access and visibility to applications of new technologies – to avoid being caught flat-footed when a crisis hits.  This session answers pressing questions as practitioners work to change their approach to managing counterparty risk, ensuring they are prepared for any event that may come their way. 

Treasury's Use Case for AI in Portfolio Analytics

Monitoring various types of risks to treasury’s full investment portfolio is a continuous process for most practitioners.  However, when market crises require on-demand exposure analysis and reporting, treasury’s manual approach may fall short. With the implementation of AI in portfolio analytics and investment reporting a comprehensive view of your investment portfolio is not only possible but is pivotal in accurately evaluating the true investment exposures of your treasury.  This panel discussion takes you through case studies of how treasury teams are applying AI technology to overcome challenges in collecting and aggregating all your organization's investment positions from different source systems.

Audit Knocks at Treasury's Door: Are you Ready?

It is surprising how many treasury departments do not know with certainty how many or what bank accounts they have and lack an understanding of vendor policies. Factoring in bank counterparty exposures there is greater need for a mind shift to increase controls to identify and mitigate risk, ensure compliance and enhance operational efficiency. Through an interactive 'mock audit' this session explores how the audience would fair if they had to comply with an Internal Audit tomorrow and provides insights on what internal auditors typically seek and how to prepare your team.

Workwear Outfitters' Journey in Implementing a Cash Flow Hedging Program

A well-designed cash flow hedging program enhances the overall value of a firm through the reduction of impacts caused by the uncertainty of currency markets.  In this session, members of the Treasury and Accounting teams at Workwear Outfitters bring you on their journey through the discovery, strategy, and implementation phases of their cash flow hedging program.  Attendees hear about the importance of successful collaboration among Treasury in managing the risk, the Controller's group in accounting for the hedge instruments, and their financial partner in executing the strategy.

Fraud (Still) Never Sleeps

As Treasury and Finance professionals, you are challenged to manage all aspects of your organization's financial health including protecting against the impact of financial or reputational loss due to fraud. This challenge is compounded by treasury teams often operating several steps removed from the epicenter of fraud activity. This panel explores the evolving trends in social engineering, vendor impersonation fraud schemes and improving approach to vendor onboarding and change management, to take treasury from a risk center to a value-add center.

Treasury Management

First 48: Moving Fast in a Crisis

Organizations are vulnerable to cyber-attacks, fraud, ransomware, a compromised vendor or supplier or an insider threat. Financial losses are the most predicted impacts, but cyber-crimes can also lead to business disruption, lost business, employee turnover, regulatory impact, and negative impact on brand and customer loyalty. Technology can be a big part of the solution, but it cannot replace a strong resiliency plan and critical thinking skills in the event of an attack. Stress testing your plan and practicing responses in a pressured situation improves outcomes. In this interactive workshop attendees collaborate in groups to formulate initial action plans for hypothetical scenarios, receive feedback and best practices from expert panels.

Target Acquired: Now What?

Completing merger activities is all-hands-on-deck for treasury and finance teams in the months leading up to the closing of the transaction, but the real work starts in the post-merger integration phase. M&A integrations present many challenges ranging from standardizing and establishing new processes and platforms, to learning and supporting new businesses and jurisdictions. While there isn’t a universal approach to integration, embracing best practices is essential for success. In this session, leading treasury practitioners share how their companies approached the challenges and complexities of M&A integration, discuss key steps and considerations in the integration process to reduce challenges and increase opportunities to improve treasury efficiency.

Implementing a Treasury Policy in a Newly-Created Treasury Department

In a time of market unpredictability, companies and stakeholders are prioritizing Risk Management. More important than its size, a robust treasury policy is essential for identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks, managing cash flow, and navigating business volatility, including changes in interest rates. Teranet addressed these challenges by establishing a dedicated treasury department and creating a new, tailored treasury policy that governs its operations. This session stresses the importance of an effective treasury policy that strikes a balance—being concise, yet comprehensive - that encompasses all treasury functions, promotes accountability and is regularly reviewed at the highest levels.

The ISO 2022 Paradigm Shift

The landscape of payment standards and technology evolves constantly, demanding adaptability from corporations. ISO 20022, a pioneering global open standard, promises enriched payment data worldwide, enabling streamlined treasury processes, risk mitigation, cost reduction, and innovation. However, adoption poses challenges, especially for those with outdated systems. In this session, experts discuss hurdles to overcome and strategies for successful migration, unveiling tangible payment benefits. Join us to explore ISO 20022's transformative potential.

Treasury Transformation in an Increasingly Complex World

Treasury departments grapple with the misalignment of management’s expectations to improve access to the companies’ global liquidity and what is deemed feasible. Though it may appear seamless on paper, navigating the complexities of international operations—including diverse regulatory landscapes, currency variations, and the delicate balance between local cash requirements and surplus liquidity reserves—poses significant challenges. Attend this session as panelists share how they enhanced treasury processes to bolster day-to-day liquidity management and offers a compelling business case for developing robust cash management structures and elucidating how the returns from such implementations can outweigh the initial costs involved.

Cash Forecasting: Taking it to the Next Level!

To enhance treasury’s role as strategic partners, treasurers rely on scalable and efficient technology solutions to increase automation and enhance reporting. With advanced technology capabilities such as data transformation, visualization, and RPA, improvements in process efficiency, control, and reduction of transaction costs can be realized. This session presents perspectives on automating and consolidating cash data from diverse sources and demonstrates how to turn it into meaningful analysis, increasing cash flow, reducing working capital requirements with improved cash forecasting accuracy and realized benefits.