Breaking Boundaries: Smart and Sustainable Supply Chain Finance

Technologies such as artificial intelligence have the potential to make it easier for treasurers to gain visibility and control over their cash. But simply investing in these technologies is not enough to achieve working capital efficiencies.

Working capital conversations between banks and corporates have typically focused on individual bank products, rather than the specific needs and challenges of the corporate – leaving opportunities and efficiencies on the table. But that’s all changing now, as Adeline de Metz, UniCredit, explains.

Treasury and supply chain disruption caused by external factors is nothing new, but recent developments may be making it the new normal. Therefore, the ability to switch technology and supply chains to new locations/suppliers with the minimum of upheaval is becoming a business imperative. This applies not just to the physical supply chain but also the financial one that underpins it, which presents corporate treasuries with significant additional challenges.

There's never been a more exciting time to be in global trade. While the headlines continue to be dominated by geopolitical challenges, positive forces are setting the scene for a promising 2019 and beyond.

Meliá Hotels' treasury team was looking to access faster and more flexible liquidity as means of speeding up the cash conversion cycle. They decided to implement a receivables finance programme with HSBC that would respond to the company's current and future needs.

With solutions such as we.trade revolutionising supply-chain interactions, while others, such as Project Wilson, connect correspondent banks to facilitate working capital financing, Simone Del Guerra of UniCredit discusses the shifting landscape of correspondent banking.