Businesses are battling a host ofchallenges in 2017: namely, the uncertain global economy, volatilefinancial markets, escalating geopolitical tensions, and theconstantly evolving regulatory environment. This is the resoundingmessage I heard from corporate treasury executives across a diversegroup of businesses whom I met to discuss the key trends and topicsfacing their organizations.

Against this backdrop of challenges, many treasury leaders arefocusing on three major themes in evaluating their bankingrelationships. They're considering the safety and security of theirbanking operations, they're monitoring technology innovations thatmay be relevant to their operations, and they're improving theefficiency of interactions with their banks.

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1. Safety and Security

The Association for Financial Professionals' (AFP's) 2016“Payments Fraud and Control Survey” found that 64 percent offinance executives—from businesses of all sizes—experienced atleast one incident of businessemail compromise in 2015. Wire transfers were the payment method most likely to beimpacted. Many treasurers I spoke with said they knew of businessesthat had been attacked in the past 12 months.

The growth in both corporate fraud and the hacking of corporatesystems makes clear that treasurers must prepare for a cyberattack. At the same time, the increasing popularity of mobilepayments and approvals can make it difficult to balance thecompeting pressures of security versus convenience. In light ofthis tradeoff, companies should continuously evaluate the stable offraud-mitigation tools they're using. When they consider a newtool, they should do their due diligence to ensure the solutionwould integrate well with their existing systems and would beversatile enough to offer multiple lines of defense, especiallywhen executing payments.

We have already seen two-factor authentications become the norm.This year, we may see more developments that harness advancedbiometric technologies such as iris recognition. These technologiesare not entirely new, but they are new to many banking servicesproviders. I expect them to gain some traction, especially sincemore than half of respondents to the AFP survey expect transactionsthat do not involve cards to be exposed to greater fraudactivity.

However, now that technology is deeply embedded in nearly everypart of an organization, cybercrime has become a fundamentalbusiness concern that cannot be solved solely by implementingtechnology. Humans are frequently the weakest link in the battleagainst fraud. In my meeting with corporate treasurers, manyexplained that their colleagues in non-treasury divisions such aspurchasing often require education on topics like fraud,compliance, and updated payment methods.

Organizations need to establish companywide fraud policies, train personnel thoroughly, andkeep open lines of communication on these critical topics. Whilethe battle against fraud will always be a systems arms race, everyemployee—not just finance staff—has a vital role to play.

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2. Technology Innovations

In the realm of financial technology, or “fintech,” theproliferation of innovation has been dizzying over the past fewyears. But it is also encouraging. New products and systems canmake work easier, more productive, and safer. Banks continue topartner with fintech companies on advances including fastercross-border payments, corporate cash flow management, and theautomation of direct-debit processes.

Specifically, I expect two important financial technology trendsto have an increasing impact on corporate treasurers this year: bigdata and the blockchain. In the world of corporate treasury, bigdata applications can extend to cash flow forecasting, payments,and liquidity planning, as well as fraud prevention.

Big data has the potential to help treasury teams move beyondthe manual aggregation of hundreds of Excel-like templates to viewpotential cash flows centrally. But we are still in the earlystages of harnessing ways to apply these technologies to cash flowforecasting. Some of the solutions associated with big data enablesoftware programs to learn and update continuously and to developtheir own logic. Effectively using them requires a treasurer andrelevant staff to be nearby, to guide and educate the tools toaccurate and meaningful conclusions.

Some of our clients are alreadyrealizing the value that big data can bring to the analysis offlows in payment processing and to help with liquidity planning. Atone of these early adopters, a leading online fashion platform, adedicated team of mathematicians and physicists develops dataanalysis models to help with decision-making and to boost learningon variables such as the impact of weather on sales.

The blockchain is another relatively new technology, and it isreceiving a lot of attention in the financial services sector, butits current usage is limited. For corporate treasurers, theblockchain may have attractive financial use cases. For example, itmay help with foreign exchange and remittances, real-time payments,documentary trade letters, bond issuance, and share certificates.Other benefits may include 24×7 processing, instead of aseveral-times-per-day processing cycle, and collateral savings as aresult of the shortened settlement cycle.

While these developments and their potential applications holdexciting possibilities for treasurers, there is still a “Wild West”element to the blockchain that gives many pause. The risks andpotential security issues raise justifiable concerns. Businessesshould work closely with a trusted banking partner to evaluatewhich solutions could meet their needs most effectively.

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3. Business Efficiencies

Corporate treasurers today, if they work with multiple bankingpartners, are looking to reduce the silos between those partners,in order to more efficiently capture and share data, and toencourage holistic thinking that will ultimately improve businessefficiency. Very large corporates increasingly dictate to theirbanking partners critical communication methods, formats, andtiming to minimize the need for translation or timing differences,and standards such as ISO 20022 are being more readily adopted intonew products and markets, making it easier for domestic andinternational markets to seamlessly communicate.

Many corporations want their banks to simplify administrativetasks, especially those related to compliance procedures, and makethe entire user experience faster, simpler, and more convenient. Itis frustrating, for example, for corporate treasurers who work withdifferent banks in different region to have to complete multipleand differing KYC and KYA questionnaires and documents.

In addition to improving efficiency in their systems, banks needto work to standardize formats in order to improve the userexperience of treasury staff who work with multiple institutions.Currently, standards are often implemented differently among banks.For example, the NACHA format for originating ACH transactions isaccepted as an industry standard. Still, when companies originateACH payments to a specific bank, they must adhere to the NACHA filespecifications published by that bank, and these specificationsdiffer among financial institutions. Corporates that deal withmultiple banks want to simplify these processes and make them moreintuitive.

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Critical Collaboration

Treasurers who need to stay on top of these and other trends inbank relationship management can draw from an incredible ecosystemof available resources to tackle the challenges of today'slandscape. Participating in industry conferences and forums andjoining in on critical conversations highlighting treasury trendsis one key area of involvement for corporate treasurers.

Also, understanding time pressures of their daily job, corporatetreasurers may turn to their banking partners to help keep themabreast of new technologies and solutions that could improve theirprocesses. In doing so they can help their businesses improveproductivity, drive positive organizational change, and createcloser alignment with their banking partners, whose support iscrucial in ensuring efficiency and data security.

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Eileen Dignen is head of cash management inBank of the West's Commercial Banking Group. Dignen is aseasoned executive and senior leader, with a strong background inproduct management, strategy and development, and sales.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are thoseof the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy orposition of Bank of the West.