CT Awards 2023 – winner announcement! Marquee Awards and Best Treasury & Finance Strategies

About: Founded in 1949, COFCO Corporation is a Chinese agri-business with a global footprint and fully integrated value chain. Its core business spans grain to dairy products, while it has three complementary business segments comprising food, finance and real estate.

Winner: Dabur India Ltd

About: Founded in 1885, Dabur has earned its name as the world’s largest provider of ayurvedic products. With a business focussed on fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), its portfolio of 250 products spans food and beverages (F&B) to hair care.

Comments on strategy: Before enlisting the assistance of IBSFINtech, Dabur relied on an entirely manual treasury operation that saw significant time and effort be invested into manual transaction activities, that proved exhaustive and inefficient given the size of the firm’s portfolio. Its pivot, through support from IBSFINtech into a new treasury management system (TMS) – the Innovative Treasury 7i Investment Module – has enabled the company to conduct investment planning; execute accurate data recording; and integrate successfully with banks using application programming interfaces (APIs). As a result, the firm has transitioned to be able to accurately and efficiently make investment decisions; consolidate, validate and review numerous forms of data; and ultimately rely on a “single point of truth” across its treasury operations, enabling a higher degree of strategic function. The quantitative and qualitative benefits include: an overall increase in investment returns; a consolidated, 360-degree view of viable investment opportunities; improved policy, compliance and governance activities, among other forms of standardisation and integration.

Winner: Flash Payment

About: Flash Payment is the Malaysian subsidiary of Thailand-headquartered logistics unicorn, Flash Group, which is backed by Alibaba and Red Bull, among others. The firm started its Malaysian operations in Q4 2021 and has grown to a fleet of 10,000 riders receiving 600,000 orders daily. It is the courier partner to one of the largest e-commerce operators in Southeast Asia. 

Comments on strategy: The firm sought the support of United Overseas Bank (UOB) Malaysia to help with setting up end-to-end operations in a new market, including its backend and financial management platforms, based on the relationship it had with the bank at the headquarters level. As a new entrant in the delivery service sector in Malaysia, the firm required robust cash management solutions that could deal with a high volume of daily transactions and would execute efficient reconciliation. To support its Malaysian expansion strategy, UOB helped the firm rollout its DuitNow QR digital payments capability; establish a centralised platform via the UOB Infinity treasury management system; and implemented a sufficient receivables capability. This resulted in an enhanced customer experience via mobile banking scan and pay; replaced higher-risk costly and cumbersome cash handling for goods receipt; and improved operating efficiencies with more immediate access to funds via a streamlined reconciliation process.

Winner: Ginmit Trading

About: Ginmit is a furniture manufacturer and fitter that has been operating since 1982, specialising in over 8,000 types of furniture fittings for wholesale distribution and projects, as well as retail sales. What started as a three-person operation has grown to being 200-people strong.

Comments on strategy: As Ginmit worked to expand its operations at speed, it sought the support of United Overseas Bank (UOB) Malaysia to address three key challenges: high cash collection volumes; hefty merchant discount rates; and incremental cash handling costs via cash deposit machines. To do so, UOB rolled out its digital receivables management capability, DuitNow QR Codes at each of the firm’s six outlets. The bank also transitioned the firm to UOB Infinity, its single online portal to enable seamless payables management and data review, and offered an overnight deposit interest rate structure as a liquidity solution to better mobilise operating funds and optimise yields. As a result of this, Ginmit was able to reduce its cash collection volumes from over 50% to just 20%, enabling the firm to receive over 80% of its income through digital means. Together, UOB worked with Ginmit to reduce technical inefficiencies by providing a unified solution that eliminated need for complex technical integration.

Winner: Guangdong Guangxin Holdings Group Ltd - Guangxin Treasury Centres (HK) Limited

About: Guangdong Guangxin Holdings is an investment firm wholly-owned by the Guangdong Provincial Government, that supports a variety of industries and services, from construction to logistics and food supply.

Winner: Klook

About: Founded in 2014, Klook is a travel and leisure e-commerce platform that curates experiences and services for its customers. It provides its user base with access to 490,000 activities in over 1,000 destinations.

Comments on strategy: With positive repercussions for global travel following the reopening of borders post-pandemic, Klook sought to scale its treasury capabilities in line with its soaring sales volumes. To do so, it mandated the capabilities of JP Morgan’s multicurrency pricing (MCP) solution to overhaul its end-to-end infrastructure. With the aim of enabling consumers to book unique travel experiences at competitive prices, in preferred currencies and payment methods, the team worked hard to fully automate processes across FX hedging; liquidity management; as well as payment disbursements and reconciliation to merchants across 120 currencies. The automation process has offered Klook a 180-degree transformation, enabling the firm to move away from manual consolidation processes to hedge at a transaction level, where rates can be held for up to seven days until final settlement. This has helped the firm improve its overall FX management; the transfer to a single US dollar-denominated funding account; enhanced yields on liquidity through optimising multiple foreign currency balances and improved internal cash balances to reduce borrowing costs.

Winner: Maxi-Cash

About: Maxi-Cash is a subsidiary of Aspial Lifestyle Limited, Singapore’s largest and first publicly listed pawnbroker. It has more than 50 outlets operating in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. As well as pawnbroking services, the firm offers the retail sale and trading of jewellery, bags and watches.

Comments on strategy: Following the firm’s decision to launch a mobile application to facilitate alternative digital payment options for its consumers, Maxi-Cash mandated United Overseas Bank (UOB) Malaysia to help the firm work towards a reduction in cash transactions; ensure an efficient, seamless user experience; enable access to a single treasury platform offering greater account visibility; and streamline its payments processes. The firm required a flexible liquidity platform to help its treasury team oversee and consolidate its liquidity positions centrally and transition from a decentralised account management setup. To do so, Maxi-Cash implemented UOB’s mCollect POS, which offered a cost-effective alternative to cash and credit card payments; as well as other features to facilitate domestic cash sweep structures, regional file transfer services (RFTS) and straight-through payables management. The company has been able to achieve improved visibility and operations management through the bank’s holistic platform, UOB Infinity.

Winner: Midea Group - Midea International Corporation Company Limited

About: Midea Group is a Chinese electronic appliance manufacturer, headquartered in Beijiao, Guangdong. It is committed to innovation and aspires to “humanise” technology.

Comments on strategy: Bolstered by collaboration with Bank of China Hong Kong (BOCHK), Midea sought to establish an international treasury centre in Hong Kong, to embed greater control and governance across its overseas activities. By doing so, the firm has rationalised its liquidity structure and consolidated multiple banking relationships across different markets. The result of this is set to reduce transaction costs for the full year of 2023 by 50%, and reduce manual processing hours by 60%. The direct and interactive connection between the firm BOCHK successfully led to the development of a real-time global treasury management platform that is able to draw upon a secured digital data exchange channel using a single interface. Since implementation, the company’s treasury team has been able to monitor information arbitrarily at a glance, with payment instructions processed in real-time. This has had positive consequences for the cross-border use of funds, while minimising the overall financial burden of international activities and better allocating surplus cash. A day-end overdraft limit provided by BOCHK offers the ability to freeze fixed deposits as collateral for the group’s headquarters account in BOC, mainland China. Overall, the solutions provided by BOCHK offer a comprehensive and sophisticated cash management framework, that harnesses best industry practices with regard to cash concentration, real-time processing and reporting, cross-border pooling and global funding. 

Winner: Sinotrans Limited

About: Part of China Merchants Group (CMG), Sinotrans is a logistics firm that was founded in 2002 and is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It has three main business segments; agency and related; supply chain logistics; e-commerce.