Agenda

Welcome and opening address 

Caroline Stockmann, Chief Executive, ACT 

Keynote address - Zoom’s transformational story: how technology is reshaping the economy and the future of work

• How Zoom handled the pandemic
• Working from home: a surprise that it worked so well?
• The hybrid future: it is being invented now?

Magnus Falk, CIO Advisor, Zoom Video Communications  
Interviewed by: Caroline Stockmann, Chief Executive, ACT 

Payments

Announcing a new era for payments

• Four pain points in payments that just won’t go away
• The potential impact of decentralised technologies on payments systems
• The need for a new financial markets infrastructure to ensure resilience, sustainability, security, and stability
• The role of UK authorities in adapting to these developments
• What this might mean for treasury functions and liquidity

Tony Craddock, Director General, The Payments Association 
Robert Courtneidge, Payment Industry Expert, The Payments Association

Payment risk: anomaly detection and sanction screening

Ongoing research in artificial intelligence underpins product development to make payments less vulnerable to interference and falling afoul of sanctions and anti-money laundering regulations. This session highlights ION’s latest work in these areas.

Nick Parfitt, Head of Market Planning, Acuris Risk & Compliance, ION Group
Peter Pippan, Lead Analyst, Product Strategy, ION Treasury

Digital currency

Digital assets in 2021 and beyond

This session led by Arca and Copper will provide a summary of the areas explored in the previous three webinars in this series, followed by a discussion of what the future could hold. As more treasurers seek to understand digital assets, what preparations can they undertake to make sure they are ready to respond to market developments, as well as requests from the board?

Panellists:

Rayne Steinberg, Chief Executive Officer, Arca
Peter Hans, Chief Strategy Officer, Arca
Ralph Payne, Chief Financial Officer, Copper  
Asen Kostadinov, Head of Strategy, Copper

Moderator:

Naresh Aggarwal, Associate Director, Policy & Technical, ACT 

Industry debate: is it time to take central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) seriously? 

Central banks all around the world are all considering digital currencies.

• What are the latest developments in the CBDC space and what do these mean to financial professionals?
• How will CBDCs have an impact on the global payment landscape?
• Will CBDCs facilitate more real-time, cross-border payment capabilities for corporates? 

Panellists:

Philipp Sandner, Head of Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Diego Ballon Ossio, Senior Associate, Clifford Chance
Chris Ostrowski, Global Head, Public Sector Engagement, cLabs

Moderator:

James Winterton, Associate Director, Policy & Technical, ACT 

Welcome and opening address

Caroline Stockmann, Chief Executive, ACT 

Data and reporting

Improving sustainability through ESG transparency 

Major regulatory advancements regarding sustainability-related disclosures are taking place across the globe. To facilitate the link between treasury and ESG activities, corporate treasurers need to access and collect a large amount of ESG data.

• What are the key challenges in the process of accessing an adequate quantity of data and verifying the reliability and comparability of this data?
• What is the role of technology in ESG data collection and reporting?
• How can corporates build an ESG data-framework? 

Panellists:

Miguel Silva Gonzalez, Senior Vice President & Treasurer, Ahold Delhaize
Tom Bindloss, Head of Treasury, Senior plc 
Pascal Lauffer, CEO and Co-founder, Onbrane 

Moderator:

Adrian Sargent, Founder and Managing Director, ESG Treasury 

Thinking differently with technology: driving real-time treasury transformation

New technology is continually being promoted to CFOs and Treasurers as the path to digital transformation, hyperautomation, and real-time business intelligence. Artificial intelligence, RPA, and APIs are potentially groundbreaking but without a data-driven strategy these are apps in search of a problem.In this session, we are going to think differently – about data, technology, and treasury transformation. We will explore how APIs unlock a matrix of new technology that can meaningfully improve treasury automation, intelligence, and real-time decisions. Using bank reporting and payments as a backdrop, we will share multiple viewpoints on technology transformation for real-time bank reporting, instant payments, fraud protection, governance and cost reduction.If you’re curious about what AI and machine learning should accomplish, if your treasury needs RPA bots, or wonder how technology is going to protect your team against payments fraud – this is the session for you.

Bob Stark, Global Head of Market Strategy, Kyriba

Risk management

The changing shape of FX risk management

The management of foreign exchange (FX) risk is core to the role of the treasurer but, whilst execution has altered beyond recognition in the last few years, to what extent has this fed through to FX risk management and corporate strategy more generally?

This session will discuss some of the key trends in the FX markets that may impact the treasurer’s approach to FX risk management:

• Market outlook – a view of the key FX markets for 2022
• Developments in market structure
  • FX Global Code & Automation
• Developments in market operations
  • The use of technology in FX markets
• Digitalisation & outsourcing
• The growth of algorithmic trading
• Best execution – lessons learned from asset management
• The relevance for corporates (and the ESG Agenda)

Panellists:

Lisa Dukes, Director of Corporate Finance & Derivatives, Drax
Eric Huttman, CEO, MillTechFX 

Moderator:

Sarah Boyce, Associate Director, Policy & Technical, ACT

Building a digital FX function for 2022

In this session, we will analyse the case for an automated FX risk management function, as Antonio Rami, Kantox Chief Growth Officer and co-founder, discusses why traditional treasury tools are not enough for modern FX needs. 
 
The speaker will walk through the pitfalls and challenges of using TMS, ERPs and spreadsheets, and review the best-of-breed solution that will give treasurers a complete view of their FX risk. 
 
You’ll come away from this session with an insight into the software setups of top companies and a roadmap on how you can drive efficiencies in your business by doing more with less.

Antonio Rami, Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder, Kantox 

Reframing risk management for the 2020s and beyond

Since the start of the global pandemic, many more treasurers are taking leading roles as the authority on enterprise risk management (ERM). In addition to the core mandate of risk management in treasury (namely FX risk, interest-rate risk, operational risk, and counterparty risk, etc):

• what other areas should treasurers consider when creating a view of total ERM across an organisation?
• what tools do treasurers need to effectively mitigate those risks?
• will risk management take centre stage for treasury in 2030? 

Panellists:

Andrea Sottoriva, Group Treasury Director, SITA  
Latha Visvendran, Group Treasurer, Chemring
Kevin Cook, Founder & CEO, TreasurySpring 

Moderator:

Charlotte Morgan, Non-executive director, SMBC Bank

Business and behavioural skills

Shaping the next generation of treasury teams

As treasurers’ roles continue to evolve, the demand for talent with cross-functional skills, including technological, operational and ‘soft' skills, has increased. Given technological transformation:

• what technical skills do treasury professionals need?
• what advice is the younger generation looking for when coming up through their treasury career?
• how will technology affect the treasury role and what changes are expected because of it?

Panellists: 

Alison Stevens, Group Treasurer, Thames Water
Huy Nguyen Trieu, Co-founder, Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) 
James Westerby-Jones, Assistant Treasurer, Chalhoub Group

Moderator:

Caroline-Aurélie Corthouts, Associate, Corporate Banking, MUFG

Closing remarks

Caroline Stockmann, Chief Executive, ACT