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Should Treasury Lead ERM? Practitioners Weigh Pros and Cons Last week at the CTC Corporate Treasurers Forum a question arose: Should treasurers lead the enterprise risk management function instead of the internal audit group? Not surprisingly, a spirited debate followed.
May 20, 2013
AFP Fraudwatch: Essential Controls for Treasury, Finance With payments fraud running rampant, a recent AFP webinar held by a treasury executive provided especially timely advice. Effective internal controls include exception processing, activity specific accounts and more.
May 14, 2013
6 Tips Treasurers Can Use to Reduce Payment Vendor Risk Payments vendors will claim they are PCI compliant. But smart treasury and finance professionals shouldn't take their word for it.
May 14, 2013
Murky Outlook: Treasurers Not Taking on Risk Although the recent AFP Corporate Cash Indicators™ suggests that corporate treasurers have become more willing to spend some of their excess cash, many do not anticipate a large uptick in spending on capital investments for some time. Treasurers at a recent roundtable in New York co-hosted by BlackRock and the AFP Corporate Treasurers Council indicated they are still very hesitant to take on more risk and spend more money.
May 13, 2013
AFP Fraudwatch: New Payment Channels Threaten Corporate Cash This week, the recent decrease in fraud incidents might be an indication that fraud is evolving, and moving to a new payments channel. Also, what do recent cybersecurity initiatives by the government mean for corporates?
May 02, 2013
How Treasurers Manage Insurance Risk: The Newest Trend Treasury risk managers are taking a new approach to the way they identify, aggregate and manage insurance risk. The growing sophistication of insurance markets is giving a boost to the captives market.
May 02, 2013
SWIFT: France Becoming a Major Player in RMB Payments France is leading European countries in making renminbi payments to China following a 249 percent growth in payments value since March 2012, according to SWIFT. France is now ranked fourth in the world for RMB payments value, behind the UK, Singapore and Taiwan.
Apr 30, 2013
AFP Fraudwatch: Fraud a Top Concern for Payments Pros SAN DIEGO-Charles Bretz, director, payment risk, Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), provided insights on the most prevalent cyberthreats to corporates and said account takeovers remain one of the most frequent methods that cybercriminals use.
Apr 23, 2013
April 2013 Payments Newsletter This month, we speak with treasurers and fraud experts and get their reactions to the 2013 Payments Fraud & Control Survey, underwritten by J.P. Morgan. Also this month, a follow-up to the CAPP Exercise, financial professionals get a big win in an appeals court ruling, the UK payments industry appears to be headed for stricter regulation, and more.
Apr 18, 2013
Finance Pros Win Big in Appeals Court Ruling The Third Circuit Court of Appeals hit a home run empowering financial professionals in a recent ruling, by sending a clear signal that middle and senior level managers can legitimately question whether the invoices and payments, which they are charged to oversee and execute, are fraudulent and run afoul of federal law and corporate policies without fear of retaliation by their employers.
Apr 17, 2013
Fraudsters Find Myriad Reasons to Target Large Corporates On the whole, fraudsters appear to be going after the companies with the most money and eschewing smaller targets. Even though these organizations have the resources to afford top-notch security, criminals believe they are more susceptible to being defrauded.
Apr 15, 2013
Five Ways to Protect Your Company from Mis-sold Swaps In June 2012, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) revealed that banks may have been mis-selling interest-rate hedging products (IRHPs) to businesses. Almost a year later, after assessing eight large UK banks, the FSA has released a pilot report announcing that an estimated 90 percent, or about 40,000 IRHPs, were mis-sold to unsophisticated users from 2001 to present.
Apr 12, 2013
April 2013 Risk Newsletter Craig Martin, AFP Treasury Practice Lead and Executive Director of the Corporate Treasurers Council, discusses FX volatility and why treasurers need to re-evaluate their hedging strategy. Also, Wolfgang Koester explains why China should follow Chile on currency liberalization, plus research on payments fraud, advice on cyber risk and a recent cyberattack exercise that included 67 treasurers.
Apr 11, 2013
CFTC Extends Swap Reporting Enforcement for Businesses The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Wednesday issued an enforcement delay on reporting requirements for end-user counterparties to swap transactions. The scheduled reporting compliance date had been April 10 for counterparties that were neither "swap dealers" nor "major swap participants."
Apr 10, 2013
More Options for Hedging Can the currency markets—and any others for that matter—get any more volatile? The continued volatility calls for treasurers to look at new—or at least underutilized—hedging strategies, such as the use of options.
Apr 10, 2013
AFP Fraudwatch: A Cautionary Tale for Corporates Corporates should think twice before refusing their banks' security recommendations. Otherwise they could be held liable when a fraud loss occurs, if a March 18 court decision is any indicator.
Apr 09, 2013
AFP EconWatch: U.S. Economy Stumbles The U.S. economy created fewer jobs in March than it had in any previous month since last summer. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that non-farm payrolls expanded by a seasonally adjusted 88,000 workers last month, the first time the economy failed to create at least 100,000 jobs since it added 87,000 workers last June.
Apr 08, 2013
This Week in Corporate Finance: U.S. Payrolls Weaker than Expected The see-saw which is the U.S. economy continued again last week as a weaker-than-expected payrolls report put a bit of a damper on the recent positive narrative we had been witnessing. Concerns about the economy not being as robust as previously thought caused money to move in a classic “risk-off” trade and U.S. Treasury securities were the beneficiaries at the expense of the equity market.
Apr 08, 2013
Survey: Canadian CFOs Less Optimistic than American Peers In a stark contrast to previous quarters, Canadian CFOs’ optimism in first quarter 2013 was fairly modest compared to that of their U.S. counterparts. According to a new survey, Canadian CFOs’ net optimism recovered only slightly, going from -6 in Q4 2012 to +7 in Q1 2013, while U.S. CFOs' optimism went from -11 to +32.
Apr 04, 2013
Cyberattack Exercise Tests Treasurers’ Disaster Preparedness The Financial Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) conducted the latest Cyber Attack against Payment Processes (CAPP) Exercise on March 12-13 and 19-20, putting 67 corporate participants’ cybersecurity preparedness to the test.
Apr 02, 2013
Former NCTC Director Discusses Geopolitical Risk Treasurers attending the CTC Corporate Treasurers Forum in New York, May 15-17, won’t want to miss closing keynote speaker Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). In a recent interview, Leiter stressed the risks and opportunities that come with international expansion.
Mar 28, 2013
China Should Follow Chile on Currency Liberalization In an open letter, FiREapps CEO Wolfgang Koester asks newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to re-focus the U.S. strategy on China’s currency manipulation. Koester believes it is in the best interest of the U.S. and the rest of the world that China move forward with yuan liberalization.
Mar 28, 2013
AFP Releases New Insurance Risk Resource Corporate insurance managers are facing new challenges; the market is hardening in some sectors, while new and hard to quantify risks are emerging. Just in time to assist treasurers in managing this new environment is the new CTC Guide on Insurance from AFP, a publication designed to help navigate the new world of corporate insurance.
Mar 28, 2013
Cote Discusses Financial Market Infrastructure at AFPC Montreal Agathe Côté, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, spoke at Association for Financial Professionals of Canada-Montreal on Tuesday. She discussed the critical role of the Canadian financial market infrastructure, and the steps that the central bank, regulators and the industry are taking to strengthen that system.
Mar 26, 2013
AFP Fraudwatch: Cybersecurity Best Practices for Corporates This week, we look at a new report from J.P. Morgan that discusses cybersecurity best practices and trends. Also this week, banks in Canada and South Korea are hit with DDoS attacks, and FinCEN applies money laundering rules to Bitcoins.
Mar 26, 2013

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