Fast moving treasury
Adam Smith Awards Winner – Best Cash Management Solution
In the fast moving and ever evolving consumer goods (FMCG) sector corporates need to be ready for both now and the future. Hear how Hindustan Unilever (HUL) embarked on an ambitious journey to transform its transaction banking capabilities, which involved rewiring a range of internal processes and deploying best in class solutions, with a strong emphasis on technology and simplification. The aim to make transaction banking capabilities future ready.
The project, which was delivered alongside business as usual operations, saw HUL become early-adopters of SWIFT’s ISO-based XML payment with SAP integration. To leverage this further the company initiated SWIFT based invoice discounting and a first-of-its-kind payment of statutory taxes and levies over SWIFT. Furthermore, HUL has exploited its early-adopter mind-set to develop a strong e-collections set-up, using the new ACH Debit module of the National Payments Corporation (NPCI).
The benefits include HUL being able to reduce its bank accounts across eight legal entities by more than 75% in a short space of time. Moreover, 99% of payments and collections are now electronic and there has been a significant improvement in banking process efficiency and controls across the board.
In this webinar hear how General Manager & Head of Treasury, Investor Relations and M&A at HUL, Dinesh Thapar and his team were able to complete this project.
This webinar was held on Thursday 21st April 2016.
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Questions asked throughout the webinar
- Do you operate an independent treasury operation? (03:52)
- Could you give us a feel for the scale of your international treasury operation? (04:41)
- But you yourself have exports and international currencies that you’re handling? (05:17)
- To what degree is your parent flexible in terms of policies compliance and independent functioning in India when compared to the group policies? (10:06)
- You went through this selection process to get to the stage where you’d actually shortlisted partners and then you eventually chose a bank to work with, were they involved in providing new solutions to you as well or did you know exactly what you wanted to do? How did that process work? (20:51)
- How did you manage the project management piece – was it through an external consultant or was the blueprint designed internally itself? (28:49)
- Do you have a Treasury Management System in place? If you don’t mind, could you please disclose the name of it and a brief on how you’ll utilise it? (30:03)
- Is your SAP a single instance globally, typically technology enabled from a base of standardisation and process? (30:59)
- How does the reconciliation actually happen for AP transactions. Can you please elaborate? (31:46)
- Can you please explain further how you reduced bank accounts from 200 to 35? Did you move to virtual accounts? (32:33)
- Did reducing the number of accounts, reduce any of your pain points, costs? In simple terms was it one of your pain points? (35:13)
- How do you manage idle treasury funds? (36:20)
- What is the average cost on the typical SWIFT payment? Is it costlier than the other modes of payments options? (38:25)
- How are you using the SWIFTNet for collections? (39:17)
- How are foreign remittances being managed using SWIFTnet as they need physical documentation as per regulations? (39:49)
- Did you cover any FX hedging related pieces in this project? Do you execute any FX trades in India or does that happen overseas? (40:40)
