AFP Blogs

AFP staff will present a complimentary Webinar on the recertification process for all CTPs and CCMs—Everything You Need to Know About Maintaining your Credential—on March 23 at 3:30pm Eastern. Topics to be discussed include:

• The recertification cycle
• Requirements for renewal
• How to calculate and submit credits earned, and
• How to identify qualifying continuing education activities.

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A segment to answer your questions. Participants also receive a guided tour of the newly re-formatted online credit reporting tool. Register here.

Brad Larson, CTP, VP, Global Treasurer for Claire’s Stores, is profiled in Wall Street Journal’s Financial and Accounting Jobs Now site. Using Industry Associations to Build Your Professional Network features Larson talking about how he leveraged his membership with AFP to build his career. You can visit AFP’s career center here.

How often do you leave your office and check in with your treasury and finance staff? How often do you break bread with them?

John J. Tus, vice president and treasurer with Honeywell, says he spends 90 percent of his time meeting with staff. But he insists he isn’t micro-managing.

“I’m finding out what they’re doing, their problems, checking the data as it calls up,” he says. “I think it helps people make decisions because the decisions aren’t being made in a vacuum. Fostering that collaborative culture not only helps with getting to the right answer, it also provides people with a developmental opportunity because they can see how the decision is made.”

If, for example, the data shows s an unexpected cash flow shortage, Tus visits the staff member with oversight of this area to discuss the implications for treasury and the company bottom line. Note the tone of the visit — it’s collaborative, not accusatory. Tus wants to work with the staffer to figure out a solution, not assign blame.

Because Tus is constantly visiting with staff, larger group meetings aren’t necessary, so he says he still has time to return to his office and focus on big-picture items like acquistion funding.

As for lunch, Tus eats with roughly five to 10 treasury staff at Honeywell headquarters every day (Honeywell has 29 treasury staff globally). Lunch topics aren’t necessarily business-related. “It’s a partnership,” Tus explains. “The ideal model is a partnership between the corporation and the person, and I want to maximize that relationship.”

Tus and Craig Jeffery, managing partner with Strategic Treasury, will host “Seven Keys to Building a Resilient Treasury,” October 29, 3:30 ET. Their 60-minute webinar will tackle risk, transparency, visibility, automation, staff, and more. This webinar has been approved for CTP/CCM and CPE credits. For more information on obtaining CE credits by participating in AFP webinars, please view the re-certifictation requirements.

AFP is offering a treasury management workshop, November 5-6, for those who are new to the treasury profession or support customers who use treasury services, or for corporate staff that interact with treasury want to better understand its role. The course is approved for 4.0 to 16.0 CPE credits based on half-day, full-day, or two-day attendance. Click here for more information.

Attendees will:
• Learn the key components of working capital management from a client perspective
• Understand the daily roles, responsibilities, and challenges of individuals who work in the finance function of a company
• Gain fluency in the operating cycle of a business and its relationship to the cash cycle

Register here.

Seminar leader Jacquel Clark, CTP, currently is Vice President and Treasurer for The JRC Group, Inc., a financial services consulting firm. Clark formerly was VP, treasurer and assistant secretary at Hughes Supply, Inc. Clark says, “To be successful, the treasury professional must be able to maintain both a long-term and short-term perspective with respect to cash flows and liquidity management.”

Corporate treasury professionals and financial institution executives alike will learn critical forecasting techniques at AFP’s Cash Flow Forecasting seminar, October 27-28, in Tampa. Attendees can receive up to 11 CTP/CCM credits and up to 11 CPE credits.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Identify cash drivers in their organization
• Forecast individual cash flow line items
• Cope with cash flow uncertainties—both on-going and one-time events
• Predict year-end cash balance, and reconcile it to the short-term cash forecast
• Perform and interpret cash forecast variance analyses.

Take-aways include:

• A reference guide to selected cash flow forecasting techniques
• Selected exercises with additional practice examples
• Excel templates.

Seminar leader George Schilling, CTP, is principal of Schilling & Associates, a treasury management training/consulting and a former assistant treasurer of Chevron USA. Schilling offered this cash flow forecasting tip:

To ensure the effectiveness of your cash forecasting effort, create a cash forecasting policy that answer three questions:

• What are the financial benefits of cash forecasting to our company?
• How do we evaluate what constitutes successful cash forecasting?
• Who is responsible for the cash forecasting activity?

To optimize your variance analysis activity, define what constitutes an accurate forecast by establishing an acceptable error tolerance bandwidth (e.g. plus or minus 10 percent). Once this benchmark is established, only variances that exceed it are investigated thus reducing the administrative cost of the cash forecasting effort.

Register for the seminar here.

Firms that require cash management training for new treasury employees or experienced colleagues outside the treasury department have the perfect resource: The AFP Learning System™: Cash Management Seminar. The online course is set for October 19 and 20, 1-5pm ET each day. Attendees earn up to nine CPE credits. Register here.

Objectives include:
• Recognize key concepts, terminology, goals and tools used in the management of corporate cash
• Examine the cash conversion and operating cycles, and methods used to forecast cash flows
• Identify basic borrowing and investment techniques used to ensure adequate liquidity.

Who should attend:
• Anyone interested in learning the fundamentals of cash management
• Practitioners who have joined the treasury profession within the past two years
• Financial professionals who require a refresher on cash management
• Individuals responsible for cash management in their organization
• Bankers and other providers who make referrals to the product sales team or provide customer service
• Operations and technical staff who support cash management systems and processes
• Accountants and other finance staff who interact with treasury staff.

Feedback from graduates
Here’s what Key National Bank employees said after attending:
• 90 percent said the course enhanced their cash management knowledge and skills
• 100 percent recommended the course to colleagues.

Dear AFP Members:

As the certifying body for the Certified Treasury Professional (CTP) designation, this is certainly a year for celebration at AFP.

Our 2009 Compensation Survey found that CTP holders now earn up to 30 percent more than their non-certified colleagues do. So it is no wonder that now more than 20,000 have earned the CTP/CCM designation, located everywhere from North America to the Middle East, Japan and Australia. These people have demonstrated a mastery of broad treasury knowledge, and are spreading this expertise around the world.

And this year, for the first time, AFP is pleased to offer a Chinese-translated version of the CTP exam in China. The CTP exam was administered in Beijing and Shanghai. We have over a hundred new CTPs in China as a result.

As part of a pilot program, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the largest bank in the world, hired Kaplan Coinage to provide training that will culminate in taking the CTP exam. Right now, this Chinese-translated version of the exam is available only to ICBC employees, but there are plans to offer it to all candidates in China. Meanwhile, Kaplan Coinage will expand the program with ICBC with plans to work with the Bank of Communications and eventually take it to the remaining two of the Big Four banks in China.

This year we are also updating the Body of Knowledge for the profession, beginning with job analysis research. The resulting Essentials of Treasury Management, 3rd edition, will reflect the international perspective and the global nature of treasury and finance functions. It will be released exactly a year from now at the 2010 AFP Annual Conference in San Antonio. See you there!

Jim A. Kaitz
President and CEO

Copyright © 2009 | Association for Financial Professionals, Inc. | All rights reserved.

Covenant compliance has never been more important than it is today, yet a recent survey of corporate treasury professionals found that only nine percent considered their debt-compliance process “efficient.” And nearly two-thirds (66 percent) told The Financial Executives Consulting Group, which conducted the survey of 150 corporate treasury professionals, that their debt-compliance processes were either “time consuming” or “manual.”

AFP’s webinar, The Importance of Covenant Compliance in Today’s Colder, Crueler Credit Markets, October 15, 3:30 p.m. ET, will focus on the best practices in debt compliance management.

Speakers:

Al Gever
EVP & Chief Financial Officer
Smart Balance, Inc.

Jim Cockey
SVP, Asset Based Lending
Bank of America

Jim Simpson
Co-Founder
Debt Compliance Services LLC

“With fewer financial alternatives, small- to mid-sized companies may be jeopardizing their access to additional liquidity by poorly managing their outstanding debt,” said Simpson. “In today’s environment, banks are less inclined to lend or waive covenants or issue amendments. In fact, the apparent lack of attention by many of their customers on managing their loans that could lead to some very bitter discussions at some time in the future.”

Added Bruce Lynn, managing partner with the FECG and an organizer of the webinar: “By including a corporate and a banker on this webinar we will be able to offer listeners a more well-rounded perspective on the importance of this topic, and some suggestions on how to avoid the risks associated with poor debt management such as loss of bank credit and additional costs under defaults.”

This webinar has been approved for CTP/CCM and CPE credits. For more information on obtaining CE credits by participating in AFP webinars, please view the Re-certification Requirements.