Although the author of this posting in CrowdFund Insider limits her comments to just a couple of the findings in a recent survey of treasury professionals across the U.S. and Europe, there are a few other things to read as well. The full survey can be found here if one wishes to review it. Topics like the impact of the tax cuts, trade issues, outlook, etc. are included as well:
‘According to TD Bank, 42% of respondents cited organizations’ struggles to improve legacy systems as the greatest challenge facing payments professionals. Last year, 36% of survey respondents expressed that their companies need to update legacy infrastructure. The bank reported that this growing frustration demonstrates slow and minimal efforts to improve payments and processing systems over the past year.’
Members of our commercial and enterprise payments service clients will have seen the points we have made supporting such results in recent reports, including Fintech in Commercial Banking: Digitize or Miss the Boat, as well as Fighting Payments Fraud: No Rest for the Weary. The point is that many treasury folks are concerned about not being prepared for the challenges presented by modern technology. This can be a reflection of bank technology adaptation as well, since they are often direct providers of the solutions used by treasury.
“Treasury professionals named cybersecurity as their second greatest challenge this year, coming in at 30%, which is in line with 2018, when 32% reported this as a top obstacle. Few respondents expressed concerns about other challenges such as cross-border transactions (11%), potential for fintech regulations (7%) and data regulations like GDPR or PSD2 (6%).”
But there’s perhaps some light at the end of the tunnel now that various initiatives are starting to gain momentum. It’s worth a quick look at the survey.
“The U.S. has been behind several other countries in implementing faster and real-time payments but is gaining momentum. Dialogue about payments is increasing among banks, lawmakers, policymakers and practitioners, and this is likely to drive faster change. It will be interesting to see how faster payments evolve over the next few years, especially with the Federal Reserve’s announcement that they will develop a new real-time service called FedNow.”
Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
