How to be a Future-Proof Treasurer

The Association of Corporate Treasurers in Belgium (ATEB) held its bi-annual treasury summit, sponsored by ING and hosted at its offices at Rue de Trone, Brussels, on June 20.

The theme of the conference was Future Proof Treasurer – focusing on how to build on the traditional core competencies of a treasurer and develop new skills to be agile, strategic, digital, innovative, regulatory compliant and an adviser to the business. These are all skills that are vital for today’s treasurers if they want their function to be perceived as integral to their companies’ continued success.

The summit was open to members and non-members of ATEB – 135 participants attended with the breakdown between corporates and non-corporates being 44% versus 56%, providing a good opportunity for networking across all areas of the industry. 

After the welcoming from ATEB President, Karen Van den Driessche, the summit’s keynote address entitled The Future of Banking was delivered by Mark Buitenhek, ING Global Head of Transaction Services.

The summit then split into two streams with three sessions in each covering the six chosen themes: agile, strategic, digital, innovative, regulatory compliance and advisory. All the presentations have now been posted on the ATEB website. Information on each speaker is also included and ATEB thanks each speaker for their valuable input. The below poll evidences the audience’s appreciation of the content and quality of the presentations.

A new dimension to the event was provided by artists. They captured the essence of each session in a single drawing, focusing on the topics discussed. These pictures were later presented to the speakers as a memento of the day.

ATEB is always interested to hear what our audience has to say. This year we used an interactive tool to ask questions and gather the responses, which were displayed in real time. We asked people to state which of the six skills being discussed they believed they should focus on developing.  The clear answer was to become more digital.

The digital theme was continued in the next session with application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) being viewed as areas that will become increasingly important overthe next five years.

However, treasurers can’t get away from their core competencies. When asked which area concerned them most, cash flow forecasting came out top, with people also believing this area will benefit most developments in technology.

Real-time polling such as this gives our members the opportunity to be directly involved, stimulates discussion and provides direct feedback, as well as being fun and easy to do!

To round off the summit, a buffet was held in ING’s executive suite on the eighth floor, with magnificent views of the Royal Palace. Humanoid robots, called Pepper, were also on hand to interact with the guests. ATEB would like to thank our hosts ING for the excellent hospitality.

The next summit will be in November and we hope to welcome you all again. Please explore the ATEB events page for information about our events and activities.