Nordea Cash Management and Nordea Markets announce the launch of AutoFX, the new autopilot for corporates seeking to automatically balance cash pools and manage foreign currency risk. Nordea is the first bank in the Nordics to offer this type of solution. AutoFX was developed in collaboration with a large Nordic customer in the media industry, in an effort to help modern treasury functions automate their daily routines and risk management. After an 18-month pilot phase run together with a handful of customers, AutoFX will now be made available to all Nordea customers.
AutoFX enables customers to enter instructions on how their foreign currency exposures should be managed. The actual monitoring of accounts and execution of orders is handled by AutoFX in autopilot mode. As a result, accounts can be swept to reduce excess balances or, alternatively, topped up to eliminate negative balances. In addition, AutoFX can facilitate automated hedging strategies or provide solutions for optimising interest costs in a cash pool.
“AutoFX means less manual work and more time for the treasury to focus on other priorities and to support the business strategy. The AutoFX solution is part of our focus on creating an effective, digital treasury that directly addresses customer pain points and traditional inefficiencies,” says Erik Zingmark, co-Head of Transaction Banking at Nordea.
AutoFX received some impressive attention during the last EuroFinance conference in front of an international audience in Vienna, Austria. One of the pilot customers gave credit to Nordea and AutoFX as one of three reasons it won the 2016 EuroFinance award for Treasury Excellence.
At the award ceremony, EuroFinance recognised AutoFX, saying: “Together with its bank partner, Nordea, [this year’s winner] built a cloud-based FX solution. It has created a new hedging programme that uses advanced data insights to accurately forecast exposures and has also re-engineered many processes using the twinned themes of best of breed technology and a recognition of the importance of financial data.”
“New technology is changing the face of banking and the payment area. Collaboration and co-creation are increasingly important in terms of delivering future banking to our customers. AutoFX was developed together with our customers as a direct response to their need for a more efficient treasury in terms of both time and costs,” says Nils Waldmann, Digital Markets at Nordea.
