Bob Stark, vice president of strategy
Bob has 18 years’ experience in treasury technology, working for many of the best known technology providers in the industry. As VP of Strategy at Kyriba, Bob is responsible for global product strategy and market development, and works with clients, partners, and industry influencers to ensure Kyriba is at the forefront of treasury technology. Bob has provided treasury management strategy to some of the world’s largest companies, and is a frequent speaker and author on treasury, risk management, and the cloud. If it’s worth knowing about in the treasury, you can assume he knows it.
With global trade volumes continuing to rise, cross-border payments are increasing too. Indeed, research by Accenture forecast that the overall value of cross-border payments would rise by 5.6 percent per year between 2016 and 2022.
Treasury professionals who manage cash are faced with many challenges, especially if they have not invested in a modern solution to help centralize their payments operations. These challenges are amplified when considering the recent escalation in payments fraud.
AFP released its 2018 Payments Fraud Survey this week and it reports that payments fraud attempts have risen, again. Fraud attempts were found at 78 percent of organizations, up from 74 percent the year before.
Fact. Your CFO is losing sleep at night because he or she is worried about your organization’s financial reporting processes. According to the Future of Financial Reporting 2017 survey, conducted by the FSN Modern Finance Forum on LinkedIn, 97 percent of CFOs are being kept awake by a host of reporting-related concerns, from inadequate controls, to the prospect of having to face “unanswerable questions” in the boardroom and finding that serious errors have cropped up on critical spreadsheets.
Apple announced plans to invest $350 Billion in the United States economy over the next five years, largely driven by its decision to repatriate the bulk of its $250 Billion in overseas cash reserves. Although they didn’t explicitly state the amount of cash on their balance sheet that will be brought back to the U.S., they did claim that the repatriation would incur approximately $38 Billion in taxes, which corresponds to most of the $250 Billion they hold overseas.
Yes, bitcoin is real and it is a legitimate financial asset, much like any commodity. I use the word “commodity” because that’s what this particular cryptocurrency behaves like. Many comparisons have been made to gold, which is reasonable because the value of bitcoin is not derived from any functional use. Its price is completely driven by supply and demand combined with a good measure of euphoria.
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