EuroFinance Treasury Excellence Awards 2020

The annual EuroFinance Awards are the benchmark for treasury excellence, backed by the strict editorial independence standards of The Economist Group, and the winners are invited to provide their detailed case studies at our annual flagship conference.

In 2020, we benefited from a strong and crowded field of candidates. Some corporate companies entered themselves for the awards, and others were nominated by their banking or software partners.

This year’s decisions were extremely tough, and we would like to thank all those who participated.

Stay tuned to find out details of our 2021 awards, and start preparing your entries now!

Winner: Nokia

With a home-grown TMS and a dedicated treasury IT team, Finnish company Nokia has long taken a proactive approach to treasury technology. In one of the strategic reviews carried out regularly by the corporate finance and tax team, the decision was taken to focus on improving visibility and optimising treasury processes across cash balances, receivables financing and local FX dealing.

The result: a constellation of projects including the adoption of APIs for real-time balance enquiry and statements, the digitisation of receivables financing and factoring processes, and real-time market access to information on FX trades. Alongside these considerable achievements, Nokia’s role as an early adopter of solutions like SWIFT gpi has enabled the company to influence development and collaborate effectively with its partners.

Winner: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

Previously, global carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group (FCA) had a fragmented banking structure in Europe, with funds coming from 15 different banks across 20 countries. This resulted in multiple challenges, from difficulties in maintaining documentation to the inability to leverage economies of scale.

To address these challenges, FCA consolidated most of its European cash management activities onto a single bank, in a project that also included adopting automated multicurrency cash pooling and setting up a new payments factory. This initiative has enabled the company to slash bank fees, free up cash and harmonise documentation across the relevant countries.