About Twitter
Twitter, Inc. is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time. It provides a network that connects users to people, information, ideas, opinions, and news. The company’s services include live commentary, live connections and live conversations. Its application provides social networking services and micro-blogging services through mobile devices and the Internet.
The company can also be used as a marketing tool for businesses. It’s products and services include Twitter, Periscope, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends. Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Christopher Isaac Stone, Noah E. Glass, Jeremy LaTrasse, and Evan Williams on March 21, 2006, and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Situation Summary
As a multi-national company, it is essential that Twitter have an effective FX hedging strategy to manage the operational and financial complexity of a large number of currencies and to help protect it from FX volatility. The Twitter treasury team needed an FX hedging expert and partner with a robust technology platform to provide them with an automated, adaptable FX hedging platform that could be customized to meet their unique needs. Twitter’s treasury team also needed a platform that could display complete information on all their exposures and full analytics quickly and easily. Kim Banting, CTP, is the Treasury Manager at Twitter. She is responsible for global treasury operations and FX management. Recently, she shared her experiences evaluating FX solutions, working with AtlasFX, and the importance of automation and customization to this growing company.
Q&A with Kim Banting
What challenges or needs did you face that led you to look for an FX risk management system solution like one provided by AtlasFX?
Being a multi-national company means we have exposure to many different currencies. We needed a partner to help us consolidate data and reports, and see and understand all of our exposures, so we could more effectively and comprehensively know what needed to be hedged. Our system prior to AtlasFX had limited reporting capabilities, which made it difficult to know where we were exposed. We spent hours each month pulling together different reports and it was difficult to know where the exposures were and, importantly, what caused them. We also required a program that could be configured to meet our specific needs. This is what led us to AtlasFX.
Why did you switch to AtlasFX?
It was time for us to move from an out-of-the-box, “as is” solution to a customized platform. This is the main advantage of AtlasFX. They enable different ways to access, analyze and forecast our data quickly and as needed. We spent time manually gathering the data into one view and doing our own analytics and mark to market of trades. AtlasFX’s platform was able to pull in all the data, configure our views the way we needed, completely replicate and enhance our forecast template, and create a very detailed load dashboard. Ultimately, AtlasFX provides us with better ability and visibility to drill down realtime, any time we have questions about certain exposures. AtlasFX offered us exactly what we were looking for.
How was the implementation process?
We were impressed with AtlasFX’s implementation team. The transition to AtlasFX took time only because of the unique changes we wanted along the way. Support from the AtlasFX team was great. While we were transitioning, AtlasFX picked up all of our exposures the old program didn’t see because we had not coded them. They picked up movements in currencies we do less business in, but impacted us nonetheless. It revealed the thoroughness of the AtlasFX platform and their expertise in knowing that an incomplete picture of an entire basket of currency pairs and exposures might exclude material risk.
What results have you seen since working with AtlasFX? What do you have now that you didn’t have before?
We have a fully customized platform that delivers full analytics. Working with AtlasFX has also provided significant time savings. We are saving many hours each month. The amount of manual effort involved with consolidating and updating data and reports has been eliminated.