Ball Asia Pacific wanted to optimise its liquidity management and sought solutions to reduce physical bank accounts, achieve full visibility of accounts on a global basis, make reconciliation of payments and receivables more efficient and reduce overall operational and transaction costs. The company worked with a regional and local bank to deliver the solution, where host-to-host connectivity with the local bank is key.

Complete cash management solution for Ball

The challenge

To optimise its liquidity management, Ball sought solutions to reduce physical bank accounts, achieve full visibility of accounts on a global basis, make reconciliation of payments and receivables more efficient and reduce overall operational and transaction costs.

The solution

The solution provided by Deutsche Bank offers a full package to meet all the company’s requirements, including comprehensive account structures, cash pool structure, ERP integration with host-to-host connectivity and liquidity consolidation via third-party bank connectivity. The key features of the solution are outlined below:

1. Account structure

   In China, RMB general accounts are maintained with Deutsche Bank whilst retaining the basic accounts with Bank of China (BOC). In Hong Kong, one account each for HKD, USD and RMB, potentially eliminates the need for non-resident accounts in Singapore.

2. Cash pool

   Deutsche Bank’s solution was to set up a cash pool for Ball in China with a horizontal, without-master structure, along with multi-bank sweeping which supports liquidity centralisation and delivers tax benefits for all the liquidity, supplemented by intra-day and overnight overdraft facility to accommodate any ad-hoc funding needs.

3. ERP Integration

   Deutsche Bank completed the ERP integration with Ball’s existing system setting and with minimum development resource by leveraging the bank’s multi-bank solution.

The solution will incorporate host-to-host connectivity between Deutsche Bank and BOC in due course.

Best practice and innovation

The comprehensive cash management solution has greatly enhanced the company’s liquidity management by reducing the physical bank accounts, achieving system automated concentration of cash, minimising the financial cost and increasing the efficiency of payment processing as well as reconciliation.

Nicole Zheng, Senior Finance Manager at Ball Business Service Centre explains, “Once implemented, the host-to-host connectivity with BOC will be an important part of the comprehensive cash management solution as it highly concentrates the company’s full liquidity and realises full visibility of all our accounts.”

Zheng recalls, “It’s a truly innovative, market-leading and comprehensive solution which realises our expected cash management objectives of reduced banks, full visibility of accounts, more efficient payments and reduced operational and transactional costs – with host-to-host connectivity being an important component.”