Educational Sessions
AFP 2025 features 130+ unbiased sessions across seven tracks. A practitioner task force reviews every session and selects the final lineup, ensuring relevant, practical, and impactful content.
With every session designed for learning, not selling — you're guaranteed unbiased, actionable insights. Check out the sessions currently released:
- Capital Markets & Investments
- Career Development
- Executive Institute
- Financial Planning & Analysis
- Payments
- Risk Management
- Treasury Management
Look for the entire session line-up in July.
Capital Markets & Investments
Future-Proofing Your Capital: The Evolving Role of Banks and Private Lenders
Amid supply chain uncertainties, the rise of M&A opportunities, and broader economic shifts, Treasurers and CFOs must ensure their capital structure allows for the flexibility needed to respond with agility. Missteps in this area can be costly, underscoring the importance of careful planning and strategic decision-making in building the right debt and capital structure. In this interactive session attendees analyze several mock offers drawn from real-world scenarios, each presenting its own risks and rewards, and identify common fine print caveats, and select the most optimal proposal.
Is Your Working Capital Working as Hard as You Do? Innovative Strategies for Improvement
Effective working capital management and optimizing the cash conversion cycle are critical for a well-run company. In this panel discussion, industry experts share the latest strategies for addressing short-term financial needs, improving cash flow, and unlocking funding options. The session also explores advancements in supply chain finance, dynamic discounting, receivables finance, and inventory management—demonstrating how these solutions can enhance the cash conversion cycle by extending payables, accelerating receivables, and optimizing inventory.
Treasury’s Role in Driving Working Capital Optimization Leveraging Supply Chain Finance
Supply chain disruptions during Covid emphasized the direct impact on a company’s financial health spurring companies to explore alternative strategies to free up liquidity and seek out working capital solution in Supply Chain Finance (SCF). SCF differs from typical financing arrangements as it involves multiple stakeholders, including treasury, procurement, finance, accounting, IT, and suppliers. From a treasurer's perspective, these perceived complexities could potentially hinder implementation and stall progress toward improving working capital metrics. This session explores the diverse aspects of SCF, recent developments, such as Sustainable SCF, to help treasurers make informed decisions about SCF adoption.
Career Development
Message Received: Mastering Effective Communication
Communicating effectively can be challenging when differing personality traits unintentionally undermine our message. This engaging and interactive session explores the art and science of impactful communication, providing participants with tools to ensure their messages resonate and inspire action. Through hands-on exercises, attendees uncover their own core personality types, understand how others may perceive them, and develop the skills to bridge communication gaps. The session dives into the power of word choice, verbal and non-verbal cues, and the importance of both substance and structure. Participants gain practical techniques to strengthen connections and communicate more effectively in any setting.
Storytelling Moves Finance from Data to Decision-Making
Everyone loves a good story, but at work, we struggle to apply storytelling to our everyday business communications. For finance professionals, it’s critical to be able to share recommendations and complex data with clarity and impact. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to transform financial presentations into compelling business narratives. Discover a simple and practical storytelling framework that you can immediately apply to any business communication – from presentations to one-pagers, to emails! You’ll learn how having a common language and framework to communicate can help accelerate decision-making, improve productivity, and help you demonstrate value to the business.
Using Neuroscience to Lead Through Change
Organizations often struggle to adapt to rapid change, leaving leaders, teams, and individuals feeling overwhelmed and stalling progress. Understanding why change feels threatening—and how to reframe it as an opportunity—is key to thriving in today’s dynamic environment. This looks at the neuroscience behind change to illustrate how the brain perceives change and offers strategies to reframe responses. By examining change from both organizational and individual perspectives, attendees gain practical tools to build resilience, adaptability, and a growth mindset.
Executive Institute
Exclusively for executive corporate practitioners.
Shoring Up Reshored Supply Chains
Geopolitical uncertainty has accelerated the global shift towards near-shoring and re-shoring, driving companies to strengthen their supply chains. However, enhancing supply chain resilience often means entering unfamiliar jurisdictions, exposing businesses to new country and counterparty risks. This discussion examines the evolving treasury landscape across multiple regions, offering actionable strategies to manage payment risks when engaging with new counterparties. Experts in international trade will share valuable insights on navigating the complexities of the global trade environment, including both the traditional use of letters of credit and emerging payment trends worldwide.
“You should never stop learning. If you come here, you're going to be learning. It's the perfect area and atmosphere to learn.”
Mario Vasquez, FPAC - Director of Finance, EW Smiths Company
Financial Planning & Analysis
From Budgets to Rolling Forecasts: How Finance Can Influence EBITDA, Cash Flow, and Enterprise Value
Traditional, static budgeting restrict flexibility by locking organizations into rigid targets. In contrast, rolling forecasts provide a dynamic framework that enables finance teams to realign the company’s financial plans in response to evolving conditions. By integrating financial planning, strategy, and leadership communication, rolling forecasts empower finance teams to improve capital allocation, enhance financial stability, and maximize long-term enterprise value. This session emphasizes finance’s proactive role in shaping outcomes, not just reporting performance and gives attendees a framework for adopting rolling forecasts and a model that links forecasting with key valuation drivers for immediate application.
Using Generative AI Day to Day in FP&A
Generative AI is bringing new capabilities to Finance teams and with it the opportunity to drive more impact across the organization. However, identifying the most valuable applications and equipping teams with the knowledge and skills needed to use Generative AI effectively and productively poses many challenges. This session demonstrates how finance teams can integrate Generative AI into their operations to unlock new value, Through real cases, presenters share specific examples of successful implementation that enhance decision-making, uncover innovative solutions and accelerate business outcomes. They also uncover the conditions that encouraged them to experiment and create these use cases.
Driving Action Through Data: A Playbook for Finance Leaders
Data is abundant, yet transforming insights into actionable outcomes remains a major challenge for finance leaders. Too often, valuable analysis fails to drive meaningful change because it doesn't connect with decision-makers effectively. In this session, finance leaders share practical strategies and a proven playbook for leveraging data to influence decisions, drive strategic action, and foster alignment across executive teams. Grounded in behavioral insights and real-world finance experience, this framework provides attendees with a structured approach to presenting data that bridges the gap between finance, strategy, and execution, making decision-making more effective and impactful.
"There's a great educational component. It’s broken down to different tracks where you can really find whatever is important to you, but more importantly, there are so many people you can learn from.”
James Dillard - Treasury Product Manager, Texas Capital Bank
Payments
Harnessing the Power of Instant Payments: Transforming Corporate Finance
As instant payments become the standard in financial transactions, businesses are rapidly integrating real-time payment solutions to enhance cash flow, streamline operations, and address evolving customer and vendor expectations. This session highlights how organizations across industries are leveraging instant payments for payroll, supplier transactions, treasury management, and customer payments to remain competitive in an era of real-time financial transactions.
The Final Leg…You’ve Arrived at Your Destination: ISO 20022
In November 2025, ISO 20022 will become the standard for intrabank payment messaging, reshaping the global treasury space. Although the current scope of the ISO 20022 change is focused on financial institutions, corporates will likely have to adapt their systems to process richer, structured transactions within the next year. This session looks at how technology is harmonizing global payment messaging, to enable faster, more transparent international transactions, and driving innovation through real-time payments and APIs. It provides actionable strategies for deploying ISO 20022 to support business growth and enhance operational effectiveness.
Dark Web, AI, and Data Breaches: A Treasury & Finance Fraud Survival Guide
Fraud is evolving rapidly, driven by data breaches, dark web activity, and AI-powered attacks that allow cybercriminals to scale their operations. Treasury and finance environments are prime targets for advanced schemes such as phishing, smishing, account takeovers, social engineering, and synthetic identity fraud. AI-driven tactics escalate financial exposure, making it vital for treasury and finance teams to implement proactive measures. This session offers forward-looking insights and practical tools to help organizations mitigate risk, improve efficiency, and stay ahead in the fight against fraud.
Risk Management
FX and Commodity Hedging During Uncertain and Volatile Markets
Recent geopolitical shifts, tariffs, export bans on key commodities combined with economic challenges in Europe and the UK, have pushed markets to the brink of unprecedented volatility, pressuring Treasurers to adjust their strategies and re-evaluate the effectiveness of existing hedging programs. In response to this complex environment, this session provides a comprehensive approach to establishing a resilient exposure risk management framework, outlines strategies for managing market volatility, reduces the costs associated with hedging, and explores the cost-benefit trade-offs of proxy hedging.
Are You Ready for a Crisis? Business Continuity Planning in Uncertain Times
Business disruptions and crises are becoming more frequent due to the growing risks posed by cyber-attacks, natural disasters, critical service provider failures, and the increasing demand for swift responses without compromising seamless service delivery. As a result, operational resilience, business continuity planning (BCP), and crisis response have become strategic priorities across all industries. Join this session for an in-depth exploration of how to develop a comprehensive understanding of your unique risk landscape, bolster your resilience strategy with effective crisis management plans and playbooks, and implement regular testing and exercises to ensure preparedness.
War Room: Treasury Leadership in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Spin-Offs
In the dynamic environment of mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs, Treasury teams are at the forefront, balancing the critical task of managing ongoing processes while preparing for the significant transitions across investments, hedging, financing, and banking relationships. This discussion brings together experienced treasurers, each sharing invaluable firsthand insights into how they effectively strategized, prioritized, and steered their organizations through the complexities of M&A. Attendees leave with a practical checklist for seamlessly bridging current and integrating processes along with key lessons learned from an "almost" acquisition that ultimately reverted to business as usual.
"There's just so much to gain here. You have your FX products, you have your domestic banking products, you have your supply chain financing, there's smart safes here. It's a one stop shop for all things finance.”
Tanya O'Neill – Treasury Manager, Bath and Body Works
Treasury Management
Raising the Bar: Insights into ERP Success and Optimizing Data for a Competitive Edge in Cash Management
As treasury organizations modernize, the focus shifts to upgrading ERP systems and optimizing their data to drive critical working capital improvements. Working capital, as the lifeblood of any organization, is a key indicator of operational efficiency and short-term financial health. By leveraging ERP data, treasury teams can drive strategic outcomes – enhancing cash flow, reducing costs, and strengthening liquidity. In this session speakers explore the pros and cons of current solutions, highlighting the critical role of ERP data in optimizing working capital management, refining accounts payable and receivable processes, improving cash forecasting accuracy, and maximizing liquidity.
Converging Cash Forecasting: Bridging the Gap Between FP&A and Treasury
Is perfect cash forecasting a realistic goal or an idealistic pursuit? Many organizations struggle with fragmented forecasting processes—Treasury often bases forecasts on actual cash positions, while FP&A relies on balance sheet data and future business plans. This disconnect can result in conflicting and incomplete views of the organization’s cash position, leading to missed opportunities for cash optimization. This session provides practical strategies to unify Treasury and FP&A forecasts, leveraging advanced technologies, improving data accuracy, and managing external uncertainties.
AI for Treasury: Contest or Collaboration?
Over 80% of CFOs have made AI a priority for their finance teams, yet fewer than 50% of treasurers report successful AI implementation, and less than 10% rely on AI for critical processes like cash forecasting. Many treasury teams face uncertainty about where to start, whom to collaborate with, what to trust, and how AI might impact their careers. This session takes a practical look at implementing Agentic AI, GenAI, and machine learning in treasury, covering how to work effectively with cross-functional teams, balance competing finance priorities, and set realistic expectations for productivity and ROI.