Downturns are corporate fraudsters’ worst enemy

Booms help fraudsters paper over cracks in their accounts, from fictitious investment returns to exaggerated sales. Slowdowns rip the covering off.

As Warren Buffett once put it: “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” This time, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, the water has whooshed away at record speed.

Read the full Economist article HERE.

Risk and the corporate treasurer: Which risks matter?

From GT News –
“Corporate treasurers are usually concerned about risk, and often have a mandate from their companies to measure and mitigate it. The importance of this mandate is evidenced by the amount of material published every month, encouraging treasurers to adopt different approaches and use different instruments.

The main problem with risk mitigation is that there are many different kinds of risk. Any attempt to remove all risks is likely to be prohibitively expensive, and so it is useful to look in detail at how to classify and view these risks. At a basic level, there are two different measures of any risk.”

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2015 prediction: Expect massive spikes in global information security threats

From Tech Republic

“Global security threats will continue to increase next year and are as certain as death and taxes, according to a recent report.

Increases of global information security threats remain as much a certainty as death and taxes, at least according to the latest Information Security Survey from PWC. That report, which was published in October, highlights several troublesome trends and provides valuable information for those concerned with enterprise IT security. Nonetheless, interpreting the information delivered into applicable best practices remains a challenge for many IT security professionals. Especially those who will be assigned the task of keep their organizations from becoming one of the latest statistics in the battle against cybercrime.

PWC rightly points out that cyber security has become a persistent business risk and that threats (both to the economy and intellectual property) are on the rise.”

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NACHA’s Payments Innovation Alliance Announces Release of White Paper: “The Future of Corporate Payments”

Virtual-Strategy Magazine

“The Electronic Payments Association’s Payments Innovation Alliance announced the release of its first white paper. The paper, entitled The Future of Corporate Payments, takes an in-depth look at the evolving landscape of corporate payments, providing an overview of corporate payment developments and the challenges and opportunities these developments present to financial institutions.

The white paper explores advances such as mobile B2B transactions, real-time payments and data standards, and the ways in which corporates are utilizing these products and services. The paper also outlines the challenges and opportunities financial institutions are now facing in meeting the needs of corporate customers as they relate to small to medium enterprise (SME) banking, straight-through processing, utilization of ACH payments, international payments and standards, and electronic invoicing. Additionally, the paper raises a number of strategic questions around corporate payments that financial institutions should evaluate to help ensure they are prepared for the current and future needs of corporate customers.”

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From

Banks target larger companies for mobile services

From Mobile Payments Today

“Many U.S. banks have been quicker to offer mobile banking services to their consumer and small-business clients than to larger middle-market and corporate customers. But with customer demand rising significantly, the race is now on among the top 50 U.S. banks to roll out corporate mobile banking, according to a recent Aite Group report.

For the company's "Corporate Mobile: Gaining Momentum" study, Christine Barry, Aite Group's wholesale banking research director, surveyed 32 U.S. banks with more than $14 billion in assets, representing approximately the top 50 U.S. banks ranked by total assets. The survey, conducted in June, excluded small-business mobile banking and focused solely on middle-market and corporate mobile banking.”

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