Romy Tognon Ribeiro is a seasoned professional in the finance space, boasting a 15-year career in Rexel as the head of group treasury and credit management. Her primary responsibilities are ensuring that Rexel has enough liquidity to honour its commitments to stakeholders and keep customers’ money safe. She manages the credit risk decision and supports her subsidiaries with innovative tools, processes, credit insurance, and people in the internal community.

In an interview with Financial Services Review Europe, Ribeiro discusses her responsibilities as the liquidity supervisor. She also talks about using technology like the credit management tool and the active server pages (ASP) supplier database to solve the challenges of high inflation and the energy crisis.

Tell us more about your responsibilities in your current organisation.

I prioritise my responsibilities according to the current events and challenges in the industry to provide the most advanced solutions.

We have centralised audit activity, conducted various optimisation processes, and managed tools, supervising our subsidiaries in credit management and customer relationships. By managing the liquidity and maintaining a good relationship with banks, we find a win-win solution for subsidiaries. Understanding their needs to propose efficient equity and liquidity solutions like cash pooling and intercompany loans, we also follow up with the budgets in line with our treasury activity. After the credit risk assessment, we answer customers’ questions and send them a letter of credit, ensuring that they are creditworthy.

Customer satisfaction is key to our business, so we have a strong relationship with them and are fully involved in omnichannel digital activities to support innovative payment methods.

What are some prevailing challenges in the European financial sector, and how do you tackle these challenges?

Some pain points in the market are high inflation and an energy crisis, leading to financial conditions and insolvency for customers struggling to meet their commitments to the banks without the government’s financial support. They must commit payments to suppliers in the treasury activity to ensure clients will pay. We have the support of our private insurer and are constantly monitoring the construction market.

Another challenge is the consolidation in the banking sector, leading to fewer banking partners. Despite the issues with Credit Suisse after the chaos of its collapse, and small business banking (SBB), we realised that we have the financial validity of our bank. We need to constantly evaluate our banking partners to make sure they will continue to follow us in operations that are detailed for the company, like cash management, financing, and securitisation. The key is also understanding the emerging financial technology and how it could affect the banking landscape.

What are some emerging technologies or methodologies that might change the financial space?

Talking about things that have already been around for a few years, two important innovations have helped my current roadmap. Application programming interface (API) has helped us put fast and centralised data in a single tool to enable operations staff and make consistent and effective decisions because the suppliers expect quick answers. Accessing and consuming the services from many independent sources is essential for our organisation as the API allows us to counter fraud attempts in real time.

An example is a credit management tool that lets our financial department assess customer safety by receiving real time data from financial information providers, insurance companies, and our internal enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM). Another example is our application service provider (ASP) supplier database connected to our anti-fraud provider, which constantly checks the consistency between the international bank account numbers (IBANs) and the third-party identity.

“Application programming interface (API) has helped us put fast and centralised data in a single tool to enable operations staff and make consistent and effective decisions because the suppliers expect quick answers.”

The second innovation is e-payments, which is the best way to pay a bill from the web because it is cheaper for the B2B market and more secure for the seller. These faster payments supported by open banking technology make phones available to the recipient immediately, which is a good option for cash flow management where the payment response is linked to the initial request. This account reconciliation can be automated to improve the customer experience and make the digital environment an efficient part of daily activity.

What are some milestones of your career as the head of group treasury and credit management that have greatly impacted your organisation?

My career as a treasurer started in 2008, when many processes were handled manually. One of my first milestones was the discovery of fax from where transfer orders were sent to the bank, and foreign exchange transactions were confirmed.

I also implemented the treasury management system (TMS) and set up our global and overlay cash pooling system. This allowed authorities to centralise all the subsidiaries' cash and secure their money. We focused on improving our working capital management as automating the processes was key at the time.

After that, in 2015, we integrated the French subsidiaries cash management activity into office processes, with my team overseeing the group cash activity and the operational activity of a larger subsidiary. Today, the sale of the subsidiary is 3.5 billion euros, and I realise the importance of understanding the operational issues and how to generate cash flow.

Following the success of our subsidiary cash, we added to the treasury scope as I took over the responsibility for the credit management department. This activity has given meaning to my work as a treasurer, as I can see the chain from the customer order to the payment. Through this, I have concise data and can choose the customer and onboard them, giving them the benefits they need

Do you have any advice you would like to give someone who has started pursuing a career in the financial space?

My first advice is to be passionate about finance and love the sector you want to work in. The financial sector is wide and a beautiful playground. Within each sector, there are various divisions that control audit, treasury, consolidation, and accounting, and it is not uncommon to experience different specialities within the same division. You need to have patience and not hesitate to explore other business areas once you have enough experience.

A person must also be curious from the very beginning of their career and broaden their horizons by not hesitating to ask the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’ I’m deeply convinced that the field of treasury is one of the best, and there is excellent quality and skill in the community.