Best in Class Treasury Solution in the PRC Aihuishou International Company Ltd

Technology platform is key to support rapid growth in the PRC

The Challenge
Statements of more than 130 bank accounts required manual download from excel. The cash account types
had to be manually marked on bank transactions details. It took 15 days to convert a cash flow report and the accuracy of the reports varied based on human coding errors. Cash management was fragmented and there was no cash planning with a lack of visibility on the global cash position.

The Solution
The company determined it needed to invest in its treasury team, improve its processes and implement a modern treasury solution. Initial requirements included the ability to centralise all bank accounts onto a single platform to reduce manual errors, gain time and efficiency, and the ability to improve cash management with real-time visibility of cash positions and balances and support expanding business overseas.

Best Practice and Innovation
The team required real-time, accurate data reporting for cash forecasting and positioning. Partnering with Kyriba empowered the team with a centralised cash management solution that delivered a daily cash report with regional and group level analyses.

ESG is crucial to Aihuishou as it has two main businesses – mobile phone recycling and recycling of recyclable waste of residential life, which have made great contributions to environmental protection in China and around the world. Faced with the challenge from investors of financing ESG programmes with heavy fixed assets investment (CNY1bn), the treasury team solved this problem with lease financing. It reduced the big investment on fixed assets and strengthened their business and financial structure at the same time.

Aihuishou has taken giant steps in the PRC with its technology platform partner. Its next step is to connect network payments (eg Alipay, WeChat payments and other third-party payments) to the platform to enable a large amount of transaction funds out of bank accounts into the payments hub to gain more financial control, advanced fraud protection and intelligent management of payments.

While bottom line value is clearly a priority for Aihuishou, evidenced by the valuation the market placed on its initial public offering (IPO), the treasury team also prioritises ESG as a function of their treasury culture and ambition to build value across the enterprise.