Banks, Fintechs and other organisations need to ensure their teams are prepared for a more technology-focused future, as innovation is gaining momentum in treasury management, Managing Director of Remita Payment Services Limited (RPSL), ‘Deremi Atanda has said.
He made this call while speaking as a panelist at the 2023 Treasury Leadership Forum organised by Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited, held recently in Lagos.
He said that advancements in automation and artificial intelligence are radically altering how work gets done and who does it, technology’s larger impact will be in complementing and augmenting human capabilities, not replacing them.
He proposed that organisations will benefit more from communicating their technology decisions to mitigate conflict.
“There are unintended consequences of automation”, Deremi says. “In a situation where workers don’t know what to expect conflict can arise”. He advised therefore that “people along the value chain must know how automation will impact them and this also has to do with internal and external processes”.
He further emphasised the need for collaboration among financial service providers and technology service providers, which he described as the new reality and future of the industry.
The panel session themed: ‘Harnessing Technology for More Efficient Treasury Management’ brought together treasury professionals, financial experts, regulators, and technology providers to discuss the latest trends and best practices in treasury management.
The move towards new technologies such as APIs, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning or advanced analytics, big data, blockchain, and cloud computing to drive innovation is enabling rapid experimentation and new product development. However, the key challenge is knowing where to start.
Atanda said organisations must have a clear idea of their objectives to ensure that every project sets out to bring value to treasury management, and ultimately improve other areas of the business.
“Not all businesses will be on the same technology maturity level, hence your treasury requirements should be need-specific. Where there is a disparity in your internal capacity versus the supplier capacity, the automation will likely fail. Systems exist everywhere but they are not meant to be used the same way everywhere”.
“In today’s fast-paced business environment, there is the need to deal with the challenges of automating treasury management. Having a grand clarity of what the objectives are will help analyse the financial environment and manage conflicts,” he said.
According to ‘Deremi, the focus should be to implement technology into specific projects with targeted goals such as risk management, cost alleviation, or improved efficiency, and then integrate processes and platforms into a Treasury Management System (TMS).
