4 TMI | THE SOUTHAFRICANTREASURER NEXT GENERATIONTREASURY With cash flow constraints, operating challenges and the tough economy, a corporate treasurer’s world is complicated enough as it is. Now add the complexity of dealing withmultiple banks, each using multiple systems, and it’s a wonder those treasurers get anything done at all. APIs aim to change that, solving common pain points, removing barriers to automation and delivering undreamed-of levels of flexibility, agility and scalability. “There’s a big drive to simplify the treasurer’s world,” says Paul Fenwick, Head of Foreign Exchange Business Bank Sales at Absa CIB. “APIs offer them a lot more efficiency through end-to-end visibility on their liquidity, FX conversions, hedging policies, hedge ratios and so on.” The key to it, though, is integration. APIs sit between various parties’ cloud applications, enabling them to interact and share data with one another without the Applicationprogramming interfaces (APIs) provide a costeffective, frictionless experience that delivers real-time connectivity betweenbank andbusiness.What’s driving demand for the technology, and howcould it transformthe global treasury landscape? By Paul Fenwick, Head: Foreign Exchange Business Bank Sales, Absa CIB need for repetitive (and potentially errorprone) human commands. Seeking standardisation APIs themselves are not new. “The technology has been on the global banking radar for some time,” Fenwick says. “In South Africa, we’ve started investing heavily in APIs since Covid-19. The pandemic accelerated the need for tighter controls and better management within treasurers’ system structures, and it’s going to be a focus area going forward. APIs are certainly replacing your internally built or singledealer platforms.” Previously, costs and cost-effectiveness were a major hurdle to companies implementing API systems. Now, as the technology has matured, costs have come down, but challenges still remain. “We’re still very far fromhaving a standardised API ApplicationProgramming Interfaces’TreasuryReboot
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