Firms of a reasonable size are likely to have a Treasury department to help them determine their financial policies and strategies by advising them what businesses they should invest in, helping to arrange the funding for the investments and controlling the financial risk to the company.
The treasury department will be responsible for ensuring that the company has the cash to meet its obligations, taking in the funding from equity or debt capital markets, bank borrowings, day-to-day cash management and investments.
If you are looking for a career in this area, then it is a good idea to look for a professional course provider that offers treasury courses for finance professionals. There are many financial management courses that are designed to help fast track you on the key issues that are associated with treasury management.
The right course will help you to gain:
- A good grounding in the various concepts and products that are used in treasury operations within banks, companies and other financial institutions.
- An examination of the risk characteristics of the different concepts and instruments used.
- An insight into the current market dynamics and the role of the market participants involved.
- An explanation of the terminology, jargon and ethics of corporate treasury functions.
- An understanding of how the instruments are inter-related and the opportunities this can present for arbitrage and risk management.
It will also help you gain:
- An introduction to basic financial maths, day count conversions, the time value of money, present values and future values.
- The definitions of the money market and the role of participants. Including the inter-bank deposit market, domestic and off-shore, establishing the costs of liquidity – LIBOR, Money market instruments, time deposits, certificates of deposit (aka CD’s), Treasury Bills, bills of exchange, commercial paper, the reposition market.
- An understanding of the role of the central bank and Bank of England on the open markets.
- An overview of the Spot Foreign Exchange market and its uses, including quotation of spot rates, key jargon and calculating cross rates.
- An overview of the forward foreign exchange – including calculating forward foreign exchange rates; derivation of forward points; covered interest arbitrage.
- An explanation of forward rates agreements (FRAs), Including calculating forward rates; settlement; the uses in hedging.
- An overview of Financial futures, including the definition, and an explanation of how they work, Centralised counterparties and margining, currency futures; short-term interest rate futures (STIRs) compared to FRAs.
- An explanation of Interest rate swaps, their uses; pricing; their variations, including SONIAs.
- An overview of Options, including their uses in managing risk and basic strategies.
Treasury management operations are a key component of financial management along with an understanding of investments and the capital markets.