Craig Jeffery Takes the Pulse of Treasury Professionals
Landing Rock serves many corporations, large and small, via its high yield account for savings, known as the Insured Deposit Account. The Landing Rock IDA offers daily liquidity with federal insurance coverage up to $50 million per tax ID. We also strive to offer valuable insights to our customers, and the markets in which they operate. Recently we spoke with Craig Jeffery, Managing Partner of Strategic Treasurer.
LR: For those who may not be familiar with Strategic Treasurer, can you tell us about the organization?
CJ: Strategic Treasurer has existed for over 20 years, since 2004, and can be described as covering three areas: consulting, research, and content.
As a consultancy, we advise companies and governments about all things treasury, payments, and the cash conversion cycle. The core focus is on the treasurer role.
As a research firm, we run a number of surveys and research programs every year. Topics include treasury fraud and controls, liquidity risk management, global payments, compliance, technology, and transaction banking. This informs the industry at large and provides our consulting clients with highly calibrated information.
As a content firm, we publish analyst reports covering technology and payment security, host a long-running podcast called The Treasury Update Podcast, run webinars and workshops, and provide other written and video material for the profession.
We help handle some of the most bothersome compliance tasks for large companies, including bank fees, FBAR filing, and bank account and signer management. We also provide online and in-person training on securing payments.
LR: You’ve spent many years working with treasury teams. What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen?
CJ: At the top of the list are technology, the sophistication of criminal attack methods, and compliance requirement growth. The amount of change means that what was a leading practice a decade ago may not even be commercially reasonable today.
Technology has shifted from SaaS to SaaS/PaaS – a cloud-native environment that allows new systems to develop capabilities four to eight times faster than earlier technology. APIs are being used more heavily and, where available, streamline connection challenges.
Meanwhile, criminals are leveraging more technology in a more sophisticated manner. This increases the threat to larger organizations, but it also means business banking and commercial-sized organizations are now included in the attacks that were once focused on the largest companies. Everyone has to be prepared and active in their defense.
On the compliance side, I’ll try to be brief: compliance requirements are heavy but are becoming annualized. Take the ACH requirements for example. Originators, companies that make direct deposit of payroll transaction or who push or pull payments, had minimal requirements for using the ACH network. Now, any non-consumer originator of ACH items (which is nearly every company, no matter the size) has to have a risk-based framework for protecting payments. This must be relevant for their organization and must include an annual assessment of risk with a feedback loop to their risk-based policy. This move from minimal involvement to regular monitoring, assessment, and knowledgeable review represents one of several sea-change events for monitoring and action.
LR: What challenges are treasury and finance leaders most focused on today?
CJ: Recently what our clients have told us is on their minds is:
- Access to Capital and Safety of Principle. Smaller companies tend to have a harder time accessing all the capital they would like. This is notably different from larger companies.
- Safety Principles Plus. For investments, the emphasis on safety, liquidity, and yield has included elements of diversification, insurance coverage, and underlying issuer or counterparty strength. The “plus” refers to an emphasis on what is changing to improve safety, liquidity, and yield. This includes options for eliminating the impact of actions by others on one’s own liquidity or yield for example. Improving the speed and reducing the complexity of managing corporate cash are driving treasury teams to adapt.
- Visibility and Cash Forecasting. During financial crises, every board wants multiple projections of cash flow. Some organizations struggle to get full visibility into their cash position during the same day with bank and investment accounts across the globe. The requirement is full daily visibility and a reasonably accurate forecast out at least thirteen weeks. This is a top area of focus for time and spend and has been for about a decade.
Protection of Payments and Efficiency. Since payments are threatened with fraud on so many fronts, finance keeps working to lock them down and validate payee change information. Efficiency is also needed, but efficiency and security goals can work against each other if not looked at together. Balancing both is a challenge.
LR: Why do you believe sharing knowledge across the treasury community is important?
CJ: Ignorance may be bliss, and anecdotal information can prove to be of some use. However, knowing how behaviors, practices, policies, and investments are changing is of great value. This information can be calibrated so that a $25mm company understands their complexity and the practices of their peers, and this can be differentiated from a $75B global multi-national firm.
Given the accelerating rate of change in multiple areas, it is harder for treasury and finance teams to keep up. Sharing the latest information and insights and interviewing smart specialists helps professionals understand what is occurring, why it matters, and what can and should be done. This is an area where we receive tremendous feedback about how we helped treasury staff be aware or allowed them to focus on what mattered by separating hype from the requirements.
LR: What should treasury professionals be paying closest attention to over the next few years?
CJ: I could list many: technology changes, digital assets, AI, compliance requirements, payment formats, ISO 20022 readiness, working capital management, supply chain finance shifts, and eight other things that are valid. However, if I need to keep the list to a few items, I would include the following:
- Monitoring. With so many changes, what is your plan to monitor the universe of changes? Evaluate and improve your ability to prioritize what needs attention and what needs action. This is the imperative of the new environment.
- Payments and Payment Security. For payment security, we know that people are usually the weakest link. Training those involved in payment security is an essential, ongoing requirement. Start doing that because you need to, not just because that is a requirement from Nacha. For payments, the underlying ISO 20022 changes are at least moderately impacting the majority of companies. Most are not currently aware of what is changing before the end of 2026. If a company is doing wire transfers in the US, among other things, this back-end change has an impact on your organization. Understanding how impactful that is and what you need to do is essential.
Disclosure: Insights content is not financial advice. Please be sure to do your own due diligence and speak to your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.