Shifts in regulatory, social, and competitive expectations have disrupted how treasury departments conduct banking business. The turmoil is more than a passing trend: this year will introduce another new wave of challenges for treasury management services and products. What are the three must-have technology trends driving the most opportunity for treasury leaders in 2021?
Investing in Regulation-as-a-Service technologies
For treasury, regulatory compliance is a constantly moving carrot. To keep pace with changing guidelines, treasury management teams employ a legion of staff. In many banks, 15% of a finance team focuses exclusively on regulatory reporting. Smaller banks are even more overburdened by governance, shouldering 70-80% more reporting risk than larger banks, but with far fewer resources. With Anti-Money Laundering (AML) reforms, cryptocurrency scrutiny, and the burgeoning demand for real-time settlements, regulations are on an exponential upswing with little respite in sight. In fact, global regulatory spending will skyrocket from $80 billion to $120 billion over the next five years alone. With so many non-standardized, bespoke practices in place, resolving just one change in the rules can swallow weeks of valuable resources. Treasury units are turning to Regulation-as-a-Service (RaaS) technology to alleviate the burden but still provide iron-clad compliance records. These services standardize reporting, automate document processing, and deploy artificial intelligence tech to find patterns and build reusable blocks and templates. Investing in this new technology frees up valuable resources and reduces time-draining paperwork.
