According to Anish Kapoor, CEO of AccessPay: “In contrast to our personal lives, where highly automated digital banking and payments are now the norm, banking processes for businesses and institutions are full of manual processes. In our annual survey of finance and treasury professionals, we wanted to understand the state of finance transformation in corporates and financial institutions and determine how and where they are focusing their digitisation efforts as we start 2025.”
1. Account name verification tops firms’ technology priorities
For most companies, finance transformation is a work in progress. Just 13% had fully digitised, while 69% stated they were in the midst of digital transformation with a combination of manual and digital processes. Financial services firms were the most advanced with their finance transformation efforts, and legal firms the least.
The top three technology priorities for finance teams are implementing confirmation of payee (CoP) or account name verification (ANV) technology (50%), payment automation (47%) and cloud technology adoption (39%). Despite the headlines, GenAI was cited as a high priority by just 15% of respondents, though 46% considered it a medium priority.
2. Minimal action taken for new ISO 20022 mandatory data requirements
Corporate preparations for the new ISO 20022 mandatory data requirements for CHAPS transactions have been limited. Twenty-six per cent of respondents were unaware of ISO 20022, while 50% said they were aware of the format but had not made any preparations.
The new data requirements start to come into play in May 2025, when the Bank of England will require financial institutions to include purpose of payment (PoP) codes and legal entity identifier (LEI) in all transactions. They will eventually affect all corporates, who will need to plug data gaps and update finance systems.
3. Invoice scams rank as top fraud concern
The top three fraud concerns of companies were invoice fraud (60%), fraudulent online payments (53%) and impersonation fraud (47%). To combat fraud, firms were most likely to rely on staff training on spotting fraud (72%), followed by CoP/ANV technology (58%). However, there was a significant divergence between sectors in the approach to fraud prevention, with financial services firms most likely to adopt a multi-layered approach.
4. Treasury “vital role”
“Finance and treasury teams play a vital role in helping companies perform at their optimum, but there is still a lot of progress to be made in terms of digital transformation,” comments Kapoor. “Many are focused on day-to-day operations and regulatory compliance but struggle to understand the extent to which technological advances can transform the finance function."
The full report can be downloaded here.
Click here to view the new ACT ISO 20022 hub, powered by AccessPay.
Philip Smith is editor of The Treasurer
