J.P. Morgan Treasury Services Sees Opportunity in Clients’ Need for Transparency, Ease of Doing Business

Far from being a commodity business, the treasury services space is seeing a flurry of innovation focused on providing corporate customers of all sizes the ability to manage financial transactions in a faster, more transparent and secure fashion. That was the message at J.P Morgan Treasury Services 9th Treasury Services Expo, a two-day event that kicked off today at the bank’s offices in New York City created to showcase new and updated offerings in areas such as cash management, cards, fraud prevention, global trade and liquidity.

Treasury Services is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar technology investment initiative that was launched in 2008 with the goals of “making it easier for our clients to do business with us ... and enabling them to go global,” said Susan J. Webb, executive vice president and product executive, Global Core Cash Management, J.P. Morgan Treasury Services, at today’s press briefing. According to Webb, Treasury Services clients report that they spend some 80 percent of their time on administrative tasks. So her unit is focused on “how do we move cash faster for them?”

It’s not just speed – an increasing number of J.P. Morgan’s corporate customers (and not just the largest companies) are focusing on transparency, Webb noted. This could include transparency into potentially fraudulent transactions, transparency into the deliverables of a global trade contract, or transparency into how liquidity is managed. The best way for corporate clients to achieve this kind of visibility, the bank believes, is through electronification. Accordingly, reports Webb, there is an increasing focus on encouraging business customers to “go green” – not just for the environmental benefits, but also to cut costs, improve accuracy and achieve process transparency. Treasury Services has a dedicated unit, Green Treasury, under the direction of managing director Iggy Khan, focused on educating and transitioning customers to a more paperless way of conducting business.

In terms of helping corporate customers go global – whether they are selling, sourcing, hiring or investing in non-local markets – Treasury Services is basing its strategy on what Webb called “The Global Highway” – an enhanced infrastructure “that unifies our client experience around the world,” whether it’s a single DDA system or “state-of-the-art payments capabilities” linked to SEPA compliance.

Also featured at the Expo was a new Single-Use Accounts solution to enhance its commercial card offerings, particularly for the mid-market corporate client segment. The Single-Use Accounts or “virtual card” solution enables mid-market clients to automatically generate one-time-use-only credit card numbers to pay for larger, single purchases.

Another new offering is a Fraud Diagnostic Tool that will rate clients’ vulnerability to fraud and recommend solutions to tighten security. J.P. Morgan also now offers its patent-pending Positive Pay and Reverse Positive Pay solution through Case Commercial Online for the first time and has enhanced its Payables Web Services offering to immediately make available tools to help clients impacted by fraudulent activity against their accounts.

Editor’s Note: For additional insights into trends in the treasury management space, tune in on Wednesday, May 12, at 1:00 pm ET to “Treasury Management: Keeping the Payments Momentum Going,” a high-level discussion featuring executives from Wells Fargo, Fifth Third Bank and Deutsche Bank that is part of Bank Systems & Technology’s inaugural Virtual Event – “The New Payments Landscape: Securing Competitive Advantage.” Other sessions on the Virtual Event program will address P2P payments and the future of cards.

Katherine Burger is Editorial Director of Bank Systems & Technology and Insurance & Technology, members of UBM TechWeb's InformationWeek Financial Services. She assumed leadership of Bank Systems & Technology in 2003 and of Insurance & Technology in 1991. In addition to ... View Full Bio