The day begins in Dublin with a large pot of tea and dealing with anything urgent that came in from APAC or late US time. Mostly, the time before US opening hours involves project work, business-as-usual tasks and meetings with the EMEA/India teams.
Once the US opens, the US team starts with their cash management tasks including commercial paper (CP) issuance, etc. Most cash forecast, tax, team and project meetings take place in the US morning/EMEA afternoon.
Gabe Bonfield, the treasurer, and I are in regular contact during the week as we’re both involved in multiple work streams. We have a formal one-to-one meeting on Tuesdays where we coordinate and set goals for the week. There’s a wider team meeting fixed on Wednesday where we catch up on what the whole team is up to and where we can support each other.
The team is made up of the treasurer, the assistant treasurer and a treasury analyst, all based in Atlanta. As the international treasury manager, I report to the treasurer and sit in Dublin. The team in this form has been together for about 18 months. Kinley Stubbs, the treasury analyst, was on a graduate rotational programme within the company and we were all delighted when she accepted to stay in treasury.
The assistant treasurer and treasury analyst focus on North American cash management, debt management and our US CP programme. They’re also very much involved in a number of ongoing projects we have there. They also support the international treasury manager in administering the international cash pool and support international liquidity movements.
I focus on managing the company’s intercompany loan portfolio, coordinating monthly cash forecasting calls between corporate and regional stakeholders, international liquidity movements, managing the cash pool and supporting our international businesses in their treasury needs. I also work on projects ranging from ensuring compliance to the treasury policy, to implementing the TMS, M&A due diligence and integration among others.
We expect to derive huge value from Kyriba in terms of centralising cash management, improved controls, reporting, cash visibility, automation, as well as host of other KPIs
The treasury team works hand in glove with the tax team, controllership and finance organisations. We meet quite regularly and always try to keep each other in the loop with anything relevant on the horizon. One consequence of such a lean treasury team is that we prioritise our relationships across the business as it’s absolutely key to getting things done. This also creates a feedback loop where we’re very clued up on where the business is going, its priorities and how we can support that.
We rely on local finance and controllership teams to do a lot of the day-to-day work of local treasury and we keep close to them and meet regularly to support them.
Huge credit has to go to Gabe Bonfield on this who, as part of the key global leadership team, is very clued in to the business strategy, priorities and whose expertise is very valued by the executive team. He sought to establish treasury as a key facilitator of growth within the organisation through a number of key steps, big and small, that have been compounding over the last few years and continue to gain momentum and drive efficiency. This, coupled with our close relationship to the local business leadership gives us a global and local insight into the business.
At the beginning of 2024, we signed contracts with Kyriba to supply our treasury management system (TMS). This is Equifax’s first TMS, so we are all excited to get it implemented and see what we can do with it. We’re using our newest business in Brazil as our proof of concept before rolling it out to the rest of LATAM and then globally. We expect to derive huge value from Kyriba in terms of centralising cash management, improved controls, reporting, cash visibility, automation, as well as host of other KPIs.
A TMS is key to our treasury and business strategy of becoming a cloud native, scalable and growth-orientated organisation. Security is our primary consideration in everything we do across the business and the treasury team has to be and is a leader in this within the organisation. I don’t think Kyriba realised what that entailed until we got into the nitty-gritty with them. But we got it over the line. We have a number of security KPIs that we will be monitoring closely and the TMS is key to closing ‘windows and doors’ for potential security threats for the business.
After the TMS, we will look to expand the cash pool a bit further and we hope to centralise the treasury function some more and build on the potential of the TMS in terms of automation and AI.
Our key priority for 2024 is bringing our net debt levels back in line after a number of acquisitions in previous years. We have one bond rollover coming due in December, which we’re actively looking at, and we’re ensuring that we finish integrating our new Brazil business and setting it up for success with a number of capital investments there.
The day usually ends with a last scramble through my inbox to ensure nothing was missed, handing over anything that needs to be with my US colleagues and making a plan for the next day.
Paul Fannon is the international treasury manager at Equifax
This article was taken from Issue 2, 2024 of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, members can log in to view the full issue.