Awards: Citi

Historically, global multinationals tended to have regional or even domestic foreign exchange operations, which handled flows more or less independently.

In the last few years, this has changed and corporates have moved towards centralised treasury functions, with some even holding currency risk in a number of units, rather than converting all FX into their home currency.

“There’s a general trend across large multinational clients shifting from multiple treasuries and multiple people handling FX towards centralising a lot of their FX risk management activities,” says Yi Hahn Chin, head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa e-FX solutions for corporates at Citi.

CitiFX Pulse, the bank’s electronic venue for corporates, has been voted the winner in the Best e-FX Platform for Corporates category at the 2018 FX Week e-FX Awards. Citi also snagged a highly commended mention for Best FX Prime Broker Bank.

We wanted to give [clients] the ability to set the right rules that conform to their risk-management policies, which directly interacts with their treasury management systems and ERPs

Yi Hahn Chin, Citi

“These centralised treasuries naturally shifted from a situation where they had hundreds of people globally to consolidating their FX activities on a single venue, from which they can manage FX across multiple subsidiaries,” adds Chin.

Automation and shifts in technology patterns, such as the increased use of treasury management systems, has giventreasurers more flexibility and efficiency, not just in terms of execution but also in workflow.

Strategic rules

Some of the hedging activities can be transformed into a rules-based process, allowing for a more strategic risk-management approach. Certain transactions can be automated on CitiFX Pulse’s Gateway function, enabling treasurers to have transactions executed automatically, based on a number of pre-set rules. These rules can be set around currency pairs, size and the venues they want to choose. 

“We wanted to give clients a plethora of options that they can decide for their own business. We wanted to give them the ability to set the right rules that conform to their risk-management policies, which directly interacts with their treasury management systems and ERPs (enterprise resource planning),” Chin says.

Future-proofing

A lot of clients are already looking to the future, and at whether risk management and treasury functions could be digitalised in the same way as product distribution. Blockchain and distributed technologies come up in every meeting, says Chin, and clients also want to know about digital treasuries.

“There’s this theme of treasury transformation leading up to a potential construct called a smart treasury, where the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning will likely play a major role,” says Chin.

“This is a critical long-term development, about which we are speaking to our clients, as they start embracing the digital age within the treasury space,” he adds.

VIEW THE LIST OF WINNERS