HSBC is trying to help business clients of all sizes manage cash better, including large corporate customers who don't fully have a robust cash-forecasting solution embedded within the organisation.
Early last year, the bank launched a liquidity management portal that gives treasurers better access to and information about their cash, to help them make investment and cash management decisions.
The portal includes a dashboard that provides an analysis and summary of all of a company’s bank statements, both from HSBC and from any other bank accounts the customer has authorised HSBC to access. The data is presented in graphs and charts that visualize patterns and trends around how historically the company’s cash balances have behaved.
The new cash flow forecasting tool is embedded within this portal, and it gives customers a new view.
HSBC’s liquidity management portal and cash flow forecasting component are meant to make that process more efficient.
For instance, clients may be trying to figure out if they should borrow money, aggregate cash or invest it, Kalati said. Customers can use the portal to invest excess cash into on-balance-sheet deposits or off-balance-sheet money market funds, or change their sweep or pooling parameters straight from the portal.
The portal and forecasting tools can also conduct scenario analyses. A company could stress-test its financial situation against worst-case economic conditions to brace itself for darker times, see how cash balances throughout the business would respond, and predict where they can expect to see payment delays.
A couple of multinational HSBC customers are using the new cash-flow forecasting tools in pilot mode. Many more have begun implementing them.
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