Global Treasury intelligence
Post Covid Treasury Relationships
In the light of COVID – what lessons have been learned and how do treasurers plan to approach: priority setting and planning, managing remote treasury teams, issues arising from organisational silos external relationship management e.g. banks.
Call date: 17th Dec 2020
The call was expert chaired by Damian Glendinning, whose commentary appears below.
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Chair’s commentary
Now that everyone has settled into some kind of COVID routine, the purpose of the call was to check in on how participants see the future – the famous “new normal”.
Most participants agree that we will not go back to the old world, with 100% presence in a fixed location. The future will hold a mixture of remote working with on-site presence, possibly two to three days a week. A common thought was that there would be a requirement for the whole team to be present at least one day a week, to preserve the social aspect of working. It has not escaped notice that this will bring benefits in terms of reduced requirements for expensive inner city real estate, and less time spent commuting – not to mention a substantial reduction in T&E expenditure.
All participants felt that they had managed well through the crisis, and the business continuity plans had worked. We did not discuss whether the crisis has changed attitudes towards risk management, e.g., in terms of the amount of liquidity held (possibly a future call topic).
The past few months have been rich in lessons learned:
A couple of participants from the US reported some issues with banks still insisting on wet signatures, but this problem was generally considered to be manageable.
Bottom line: we have all learned a lot about remote working – it is definitely possible. However, while it will continue, it does require an effort to communicate, and most people still see value in getting together physically. No-one sees work ceasing to be a social activity
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