COVID-19FunctionalRisk ManagementSenior Executive
April 2, 2020

Closing a Quarter for SOX Can be Difficult in New, Remote World

An internal auditor describes what his company has done to successfully close a quarter when some physical tasks can’t be done. Part of Sarbanes-Oxley, the internal controls act released in 2002, requires a corporate’s chief executive and financial officers to certify financial and other information contained in the issuer’s quarterly and annual reports. But what happens in a crisis? What if some of that info requires someone in place to record inventory or in-person meetings when employee movement is heavily…
COVID-19Treasury Management
March 17, 2020

A Coronavirus Crisis Treasury Playbook

Treasurers probably haven’t seen crises like this before. Here’s what they can learn from past events. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the modern world with an almost unprecedented crisis. And the daily onslaught of worrying headlines—cancelled sports seasons and parades, Tom Hanks and wife infected, travel bans—seems to be triggering, mystifying actions by panicked consumers, like the run on toilet paper. But despite COVID-19’s unprecedented nature, for treasurers there actually is precedent, so there should be no mystery about what needs to be done (and…
BankingCapital Markets
March 17, 2020

Not All Bank Fees Are Created Equal

In good times and bad, treasury teams benefit from knowing how their banks look at the world. That's one reason this chart, created by NeuGroup's Scott Flieger, is compelling. It shows which products are especially important to banks by measuring both their relative profitability and how much balance sheet impact they have. A third dimension shows which products result in predictable revenue and which are more episodic in nature. Most members found the slide "directionally accurate" and helpful in explaining why…
Zoom Screen
NeuGroup News
March 12, 2020

Zoom in to NeuGroup Meetings

This week’s 2020 FX Managers’ Peer Group Summit was transformational. Due to COVID-19 and the health and safety concerns we have for our members, our team, our sponsor partners and our respective stakeholders, we decided last week to make all NeuGroup meetings virtual until further notice. As such, we just this week executed our first virtual meeting with NeuGroup’s FX Managers’ Peer Group 2020 Summit. The decision was made in consultation with our long-standing partner, Chatham Financial, which was to…
Capital MarketsNGIPension and Benefits
March 5, 2020

Actuarial Agony: Falling Interest Rates and the Plight of Pension Fund Managers

Private equity helps matters, but track records of outperformance don’t sway actuaries. Falling interest rates are pushing down the expected return on assets (EROA) at pension funds, an unwanted development for all managers and especially aggravating, perhaps, for those who have historically been able to outperform expectations. That was among the takeaways from a recent NeuGroup pension roundtable. Blame it on the actuaries. The pension fund manager at a major media company maintained an EROA of 7.5% over the last…
COVID-19Treasury Management
March 5, 2020

What Should Treasury and Finance Functions Be Doing About the Coronavirus?

Something that warrants a rare FOMC inter-meeting rate cut calls for broader finance engagement. There is a lot of information, advice and checklists coming out on how businesses should respond to the coronavirus, or COVID-19. This one from McKinsey is a good example.  Health and safety first. A majority of companies, rightly, start with the most important steps to ensure the health and safety of employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Tabletop crisis response and planning. The next most important item tends to be the crisis…
Risk Management
March 3, 2020

How to Convince Business Units That ERM Has Real Value

Integrating it with strategic planning shifts perceptions that ERM is a bureaucratic exercise. Enterprise risk management (ERM) is often viewed by business leaders as a check-the-box exercise that interferes with the profit engines they’re seeking to run. A treasurer at a recent NeuGroup meeting who also chairs his company’s risk committee sought advice on how to convince the leaders of business units and other corporate entities that the ERM process adds value. Ed Scott, senior executive advisor at NeuGroup and…
Capital AllocationCash & Working Capital
February 27, 2020

A Look Back at Our Enterprise Reconciliation Insight

Founder’s Edition, by Joseph Neu A 20-year-old best practice guide says a lot about the state of working capital management today. There seems to be a lot of renewed interest in working capital management lately, with a focus on automating processes, capturing data and deploying technology. The goal: to improve analysis and predictability of the quote-to-cash, order-to-delivery and purchase-to-pay cycles. This stands to vastly improve working capital management, but especially cash and liquidity management. I kept thinking, all of this…
BankingCash & Working CapitalNGI
February 27, 2020

A Treasurer Grows Frustrated with a Top US Lender and Takes It down a Notch

Seeking a bigger return on its capital as rules tighten, the bank wanted a larger share of wallet. One of the largest US commercial lenders is aggressively seeking more return—share of wallet—for the credit it provides corporates, prompting at least one borrower to say “enough” and downgrade the bank’s rank in its loan syndicate. That takeaway emerged at a recent NeuGroup meeting where members exchanged insights about syndicated loan market trends and discussed which banks are eager to extend credit…
NeuGroup News
February 24, 2020

NeuGroup for Healthcare Services Treasury Launching in June

Healthcare is one of the most dominant issues of our time and ripe for disruption, so what are treasurers in the sector doing about it? The NeuGroup for Healthcare Services Treasury is looking for treasury and finance leaders at established healthcare services companies, as well as new entrants looking to change the space, who are seeking to finance and support their businesses through the coming transformation of the sector. Ultimately, we want to help you share and learn for mutual…