Corporate treasuries are in danger of losing the Sepa momentum

Anne Coghlan, head of group treasury at Dyson, discusses how her organisation is redirecting attention towards complying with the single euro payments area as the industry prepares for the 2014 end dates.

Speaking exclusively to Finextra at the Swift Business Forum in London, Coghlan discussed the challenges corporates are facing in achieving Sepa compliance.

The process has been long and arduous, and for Coghlan the biggest danger facing corporates is that they lose momentum with the end-dates in sight.

"We aim over the course of the next couple of months to do a rebagging of what does Sepa mean for Dyson and make sure we've got everything caught," she says.

While chiding banks about the poor quality of treasury data during her formal presentation, Dyson is nonetheless positive about the input of the banking community in preparing for Sepa: "In terms of the advice they have given in how to set yourself up for success and not failure...I couldn't really criticise them."

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Comments: (1)

A Finextra member 03 May, 2013, 10:47

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We are seeing real momentum building up in the market as corporates start to wake up to the implications of non-compliance with SEPA. Multi-nationals are generally well on track with their compliance programmes and are in a position to look at the potential for strategic business benefits for and after February 2014. The much bigger challenge for the industry is with other corporate segments, such as SMEs, where it is clear that not everyone will be compliant in time: 1/3 of all businesses have not started to migrate.

Many corporates assume that their banks will fix the problem. However many banks simply do not have the capacity in terms of consultants, on-boarding resources and scalable solutions to service them. Instead, companies should look at strategies that will de-risk their SEPA programmes, such as using a service provider, to buy themselves additional time.