Last week, in Singapore, over 40 people attended an ACT member event held in conjunction with Deloitte. It was a very successful evening with member and non-members from a wide range of industries and sectors hearing from a host of speakers on topics of interest to treasurers and the wider finance community. It was followed by some fantastic food and drinks organised by our hosts.
We covered a range of topics from practical insights on how technology can assist treasury teams fulfil their potential, recent successes with the tokenisation of bond issuance and some insights on how the local financial infrastructure is being reimagined. I shared some of the results of the recent Business of Treasury global survey of over 200 companies including topics such as what were the main areas of concern for treasurers and what the board was most interested in.
Key insights
HSBC – The potential of tokenisation
Hashir Abdul Rahim, Head of Digital Products, Markets & Securities Services, HSBC spoke to the broader impact of technology in today’s world and the pace-change of the impact as a technology matures – slow at first and massive impact after attaining a certain level of maturity. He explained that we see this happening with AI now, which has been around for 50 years, but is suddenly in the mainstream with everyone now being an AI user. With the advent of such technologies including quantum computing, every organisation, every individual must be at the forefront, educating themselves and their organisations at the very least on how a new technology can impact their respective businesses.
On tokenisation, he described how assets evolved from paper certificates to dematerialised assets in the past and are now being transformed into programmable assets and what that can bring to global markets. Asset tokenisation is the process of transforming an underlying asset into another unit of a digitised or physical asset called tokens. Tokenisation helps to convert an asset into a digital unit that can be managed with potentially less intermediaries through blockchain technology, provided regulations evolve as well. Potential benefits of tokenised assets include:
Hashir then shared an actual use case: HSBC Orion, the bank’s digital assets platform. The platform was launched as part of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Project Evergreen 2 to complete a HKD6 billion-equivalent digitally native green bond issuance for the Hong Kong government. It is a good example of what is becoming available to corporate treasurers.
Partior – Transforming financial market infrastructure
Stella Lim, Chief Commercial Officer, introduced her company, a blockchain-based fintech for clearing and settlement, backed by institutions including DBS, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered and Temasek. She described how the business addresses the operating inefficiencies experienced by industry players, including settlement delays, limited transaction transparency and high operating costs. Partior facilitates the movement of liquidity for financial institutions and their customers by streamlining the settlement process through atomic settlement. It also supports a diverse range of tokenised instruments using a unified ledger, eliminating disunified messaging, intermediaries and the need for extensive reconciliation procedures that often lead to market inconsistencies. The benefits offered by Partior will extend through to the real economy as more financial intermediaries come on board and as corporates gain access to the platform.
More details of the work of Partior can be found at www.partior.com.
Technology developments
Francois-Dominique Doll, Executive Director, Global Treasury Advisory Services, Deloitte shared some examples of the various technology projects that his team had been involved in 2024:
More information on the services that Deloitte offer can be found at Global Treasury Advisory Services | Deloitte SEA | Risk Advisory
ACT update
Naresh Aggarwal, Associate Director, Policy & Technical talked about the recent strategy update of the ACT and shared how this would affect:
We had a lively debate with a number of questions from the audience on topics such as the importance of Gen AI for Treasury and the use of treasury systems.
I really enjoy this event – a mix of networking with old and new acquaintances, discussing topics of interest (both work and personal) as well as learning new things. From the feedback I’ve received – it sounds like everyone else found it a valuable event.
The ACT plans to back in Singapore next year and we hope to run a similar event. If you’d like to get involved, share ideas on possible content or just register, do drop a note to membership@treasurers.org
