Last week Sofia and I went to the EuroFinance conference in Barcelona.
Three days of talking treasury. I love that. Literally. Sofia did video interviews, so expect more content coming your way in the next few months.
For me, EuroFinance is truly the big treasury event of the year. All the banks, vendors, and many treasurers from all around the world gather at one place. That means you can do everything at once: meet your banking partners, speak with your tech partners, learn about new solutions, discover new vendors and, most importantly, meet fellow treasurers.
And that last part is what makes the treasury community special.
Treasury people like to share knowledge. Not because they are trying to sell something, show status, or seem bigger. No, treasurers like to share knowledge because we recognize the same challenges. Cash visibility, liquidity, FX, funding, banking, systems, controls, fraud, regulations, reporting, forecasting. Different company, same headaches.
What I also like about EuroFinance is that the conference looks different for everybody.
If you are more senior, your agenda is probably full of bank meetings, vendor meetings, and strategic conversations. If you are more junior, it is a great place to attend sessions and learn from experienced treasurers sharing real stories and use cases. If you are looking for new technology, you can spend your days walking the booths and learning about new vendors, tools and solutions.
You create your own conference.
I was on the main stage myself five times, moderating sessions on liquidity optimisation, stablecoins, investments, APIs, virtual accounts and other innovative treasury solutions. A lot of interesting content, but also a clear reminder: treasury is changing fast.
From a Pecunia perspective, we got to speak with lots of treasurers. Some of them we already knew and finally met in person; others we did not know yet.
And honestly, the stories were very similar.
Treasury has a lot of responsibilities: the workload is high, the teams are small… That means in many companies, treasury simply lacks capacity.
Too much workload for too small of a team.
On top of that, technology and TMS implementations remain a struggle. Treasurers understand the great value, but doing a TMS implementation next to an already demanding job is difficult. And if you have not done many implementations before, it is hard to know where the real pitfalls are.
A TMS implementation is not something you just “do on the side.”
If you want to do it right, you need focus, experience, and last but not least, you need time. And in many treasury teams, those three are exactly the scarce resources.
The same goes for Treasury Transformations, which are on some of your agendas. Treasury needs to keep changing with the companies’ needs as well as the changing banking, payments, and information requirements. More data means more information means more potential Treasury attention and action needed.
We did not meet everybody we wanted to meet. Apparently, 2.5 days is not enough. But we will surely follow up.
And if you also want to brainstorm about your treasury setup, workload, team capacity, or technology plans, let’s meet and talk treasury.
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