Educational Sessions for Global Audience

AFP 2023 features 130+ sessions* across 7 tracks. Check out the sessions we've curated for global organizations.

• Capital Markets & Investments Track
• Career Development
• Executive Institute
• Financial Planning & Analysis Track
  
• Payments Track
• Risk Management Track
• Treasury Management Track

Capital Markets & Investments

ESG in the Foreground: 3 Perspectives on Risk, Reporting, Regulators, and the Road Ahead

The Environmental, social and governance (ESG) wave has swept ashore, bringing with it new challenges for treasury and finance practitioners. Increasingly charged with ESG reporting, which differs from financial reporting, minimal subject matter guidance or training keeping up with requirements, data requests, changing definitions and stakeholder demands threaten to swamp finance and treasury teams.  This interactive moderated discussion highlights: the success earned from embedding ESG in the culture while building Board engagement and support; data challenges and finding solutions in the existing ERP, with guidance on tools to close the gap; and focuses on emerging reporting requirements, regulatory oversight, and capital access.

Michigan State's Blockchain Project: A Success Story!

Financial services, including bond issuance, is being transformed by blockchain technology but most financial practitioners are not certain how and where to begin the process or determine which collaborators and providers are trustworthy and capable. At Michigan State University (MSU) the treasury team worked collaboratively with a Blockchain Bond Advisory Group comprised of students, faculty, staff, alumni and external advisers to develop a new paradigm for raising capital using blockchain distributed ledger technology. Attend this session to hear how MSU, with a proven success model, realized the potential of blockchain to create new nodes of opportunity for treasury functions to meet financial goals.

Other Capital Markets & Investments Track Topics Include:

• Balancing Liquidity, Risk and Investment Returns
• A Ride (Share) with Uber Through Economic Uncertainty
• Investing with Social Purpose
• Navigating a High Interest Rate Environment

Career Development

Achieving Career Success in the New Hybrid World of Remote & In-Person Teams

The shift to remote and hybrid work has become the norm for many organizations and has presented several challenges for corporate treasury and finance professionals, including technology issues, unequal participation in meetings, and difficulty maintaining social connections and company culture. This requires new approaches to communication, collaboration, and leadership, as well as the ability to balance the demands of both personal and professional life. Treasury and finance practitioners share the methods they have employed to address these challenges. Discussion includes the efforts leaders have made to level the playing field for remote workers and hybrid / in-person teams and strategies for maintaining social connections and fostering creativity.

It’s ALL Visual: A New/Old Look at Data Presentation

Every year, data visualization becomes a hotter and hotter topic, as graphing software becomes more powerful and ever-increasing volumes of data need to be summarized. Sadly, this has led many treasury and finance professionals into making false choices. Graphs and other visualizations are NOT always the most effective way to present information or to make a point. Today’s Excel and other table software offer presenters plenty of often-overlooked opportunities to present concise and visually effective tables; put another way, all numbers presentations are visual. This session reviews the five critical questions that need to be asked before presenting a visualization to an audience.

Other Topics in the Career Development Track Include:

• Boosting Team and Individual Resilience
• Supporting Diverse Rock Star Talent in Treasury & Finance
• Prioritizing Well-Being: Strategies for Communicating with More Empathy in ANY Situation

Financial Planning & Analysis Track

Achieving Automation and Agility Using Low Code/No Code Technologies

Technology that can easily handle, combine, and merge various large data sets and connections will empower FP&A professionals to build and iterate through models, creating more value for the business and giving analysts back valuable time to analyze the data rather than compiling it. The emergence of low-code/no-code technologies for planning, data manipulation and dashboarding has opened new possibilities for FP&A teams. This reduces the dependency on IT and allows Finance to flex with the variability of the business cycle to achieve a more nimble, agile, and powerful Finance function. Attend this session to better understand the role of low-code/no-code technologies in the FP&A functions.

Other Topics in the FP&A Track Include:

• Building a World Class FP&A Team
• Turning Data & Analysis into Actionable Insights

Payments Track

It seems the corporate treasury industry is well-versed on real-time technology and treasury API concepts, but only 7% have implemented APIs. To understand why APIs are always discussed but are rarely implemented, this panel explores scenarios on how to implement successful treasury APIs in an environment where lack of aggregation and regulation limit broader adoption. This session walks through the architecture of how integration is accomplished, backed by diagrams and graphics, and shares perspectives on API integration from a multinational conglomerate with decentralized technology and an organization that built proprietary payment technology to accelerate API integration and crypto-linked payments.

• Payment Perplexity: What's The Best Way to Pay?
  

Cyber Readiness for Treasury: Practical Step by Step Solutions

Corporate Treasury departments are in the direct line of fire for cyber criminals using Business Email Compromise, ransomware, social engineering, and other methods to infiltrate the company’s defense systems. Join this session as speakers discuss strategies for blending hi-tech and low-tech approaches to become effective in cyber defenses, performing routine data hygiene exercises such as data purges for enhanced PCI and PII security and erecting proprietary rails for payment requests or payment-instruction modifications.

Understanding the Impact of a Cybersecurity Attack: Safeguarding Your Organization

As digital transformation continues to shape organizations, cyber theft and fraud has also evolved. This has created an urgent need for tighter data-security controls and related compliance measures, particularly in the fields of company and customer data. Corporate Treasury is the nerve center of any organization’s finance operations and its reliance on IT for risk operations, real-time cash visibility and analytics is critical for timely business decisions. While IT certainly works to safeguard data and mitigate risks, they can’t do it alone. In this session financial crimes experts stage a simulation that gives attendees an inside view of a cyber-crime in action. 

• Fraud Never Sleeps
• "In Medias Res": Solving Treasury's FX Problems from the Inside Out
• Disruption 101:  Perspectives, Lessons and Strategic Shifts to Overcome Supply Chain Challenges

Inter-company settlement can be quite tedious, prone to error and is far more complex for businesses transacting across dozens of legal entities, many currencies and bank accounts.  However, for businesses that know how to effectively use inter-company and multi-lateral netting, the process can be nearly fully automated, simplified and more accurate. Imagine simplifying your payables and receivables so that all cash flows are netted at the end of each day, leading to a SINGLE payment between entities. Join us to learn how companies can successfully introduce global inter-company netting to automatically settle invoices between AP/AR, while reducing manual processes by 80% and reducing errors.

• Transfer Pricing and Treasury Management in a Global Organization 
• ChatGPTreasury: How AI and Automation are Changing the Treasury Talent Game 
• I Want an In-House Bank - What to Consider 

*Some attendance restrictions may apply for select sessions.