The Future of Corporate Treasury

14 Treasury and Trade Solutions Opportunities Presented by Exponential Technology Historically technological changes were relatively moderate and gradual, allowing organizations to take their time to make the necessary adjustments. Figure 7: The ongoing evolution of treasury technology Electronic Banking 1980 1990 2020 +2030 ERP TMS Robotics, RPA API Machine Learning Distributed Ledgers (DLT) Artificial Intelligence In contrast, future developments in technology are expected to be exponential with emerging technologies like RPA, APIs, ML, DLT and AI 3 ready to disrupt every aspect of our daily jobs, and they come with tremendous challenges and opportunities. To translate the potential impact of exponential technology in practical solutions that can solve real client problems, most of our clients are typically asking us two key questions: • When is this treasury technology solution available for me? • How should I respond to this change? To answer those questions, we look at the impact of fintech or exponential technology on treasury. The impact is all about the size and timing of mass adoption of a new technology. And we use the word exponential, because it’s all about the speed of change at which this is currently happening. “…we are currently at a decisive moment as the industry is moving forward after a long period of keeping the situation ‘as-is’.” – Marc Delbaere, Global Head of Corporates and Supply Chain, SWIFT 3 See the glossary at the end of this whitepaper for a more detailed explanation of these exponential technologies.