Following this announcement, the report explores finance and treasury teams’ digital transformation status, ISO 20022 preparations, and approach to fraud management. It also presents a deep dive into the financial services, legal, and retail sectors.
The company also focused on understanding the state of finance transformations in corporates and FIs, while also determining how and where they are focusing on digitalisation efforts at the beginning of 2025.
Included in the key findings from the report are account name verification topping firms’ technology prioritises, minimal action taken for new ISO 20022 mandatory data requirements, as well as invoice scams ranking as a top fraud concern.
For multiple companies, finance transformation is a work in progress. According to the official press release, just 13% had fully digitised, while 69% stated they were in the midst of digital transformation with a combination of manual and digital processes. Financial services firms also accelerated their finance transformation efforts, with legal firms focusing on this process the least.
The top three technology priorities for finance teams are implementing CoP1 or ANV2 technology (50%), payment automation (47%), and cloud technology adoption (39%). At the same time, GenAI3 was cited as a high priority by just 15% of respondents, though 46% considered it a medium priority.
Furthermore, the corporate preparations for the new ISO 20022 mandatory data requirements for CHAPS transactions4 have been limited, with 26% of respondents unaware of ISO 20022, while 50% said they were aware of the format but had not made any preparations.
The new data requirements start to come into play in May 2025, when the Bank of England is set to require financial institutions to include PoP5 codes and LEIs6 in all transactions. They will eventually affect all corporates, who will need to plug data gaps and update finance systems.
According to the report, the top three fraud concerns of companies were invoice fraud (60%), fraudulent online payments (53%), and impersonation fraud (47%). In order to combat fraud, firms were most likely to rely on staff training on spotting fraud (72%), followed by CoP/ANV technology (58%). However, there was a significant divergence between sectors in the approach to fraud prevention, with financial solutions firms most likely to adopt a multi-layered approach.
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