DBS introduces online tool for CFOs to cut through tedium

DBS Bank has launched a tool for busy CFOs (chief financial officers) and corporate treasurers.

Users are able to simulate various bank and corporate solutions on DBS Treasury Prism (treasuryprism.dbs.com) at no cost, and review potential opportunities for their business, the bank said on Wednesday.

CFOs and corporate treasurers often manage several accounts with different currencies and transaction flows across multiple countries. As a result, they often engage a few banks to help create an optimal treasury and cash management solution. The process in doing so, called a Request for Proposal, is often time-consuming, unproductive and tedious.

DBS said interviews with over 50 CFOs, corporate treasurers and finance professionals uncovered five critical bug bears. There are too much preparatory work to achieve an optimal solution, difficulty in monetising or quantifying the benefits and costs of solutions proposed by different banks, no time to keep up with the latest regulatory, tax and market changes, too much effort to work with stakeholders on a new cash management solution, and difficulty in implementing new and complex solutions.

DBS Treasury Prism will help CFOs experiment with cash and liquidity management structures and analyse the relative benefits and costs. The bank-agnostic platform takes into account the regulatory and tax environment in the markets where the company operates in, and offers immediate and contextual insights to help them understand the implications that each solution has on the business.

Keeping up-to-date with the latest changes in regulations and tax is time-consuming and challenging, said DBS.

"The platform solves this problem by pulling current tax and regulation updates in over 20 markets globally, providing users with contextual insights in real time as they create simulations."