Corporate Treasury Editing and Proofreading Services

Treasury is invisible until the morning it is not. Nobody outside finance reads the treasury policy, right up to the day a bank fails, a currency moves 12 percent, or a covenant test is missed. Then the policy, the board paper, and the forecast commentary are read very closely indeed, by directors and auditors asking whether the risk was understood and authorized. Treasury documents are written for a quiet day and judged on a bad one. That is an unusual and demanding brief.

The documents we edit for Corporate Treasury

Treasury policies and mandates, counterparty and investment limit frameworks, and foreign exchange and interest rate hedging policies set the boundaries a treasurer works inside, and each of them is edited here. Cash flow forecasts and their commentary, liquidity and funding plans, board and audit committee papers, bank relationship and facility documentation summaries, covenant compliance certificates, and headroom calculations follow the same route. So do cash pooling and intercompany funding documentation, treasury management system procedures, payment controls and fraud prevention procedures, credit rating agency presentations, and going concern and viability support material. Our editors check that limits are expressed unambiguously, that a delegated authority is stated with its exception route, and that forecast commentary distinguishes committed cash flows from expected ones.

What the editing involves

The limits section of a treasury policy is the part that has to work when somebody is under pressure, and it is where vague drafting does real harm. A policy saying that counterparty exposure should be "appropriately diversified across highly rated institutions" gives a treasurer nothing to apply at nine in the morning with $40 million to place before noon. Each limit works better as a number against a defined measure: a maximum exposure per counterparty stated both as an amount and as a percentage of total cash, a minimum rating from a named agency, and a maximum tenor. The measurement basis and its frequency belong in the same place. A limit tested monthly and a limit tested at the moment of dealing are different controls.

A rating downgrade should trigger a written action with a deadline rather than a review at the next committee meeting. Wording requiring the position to be reduced within five business days of a downgrade below A minus can be audited, while wording promising that the exposure will be "kept under review" cannot. The person who may authorize a breach needs naming by role, together with the record that has to be made, the deadline for making it, and the date by which the board sees it. A policy drafted that way is also the document protecting the treasurer personally, which is worth saying to the board that approves it.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including cash positions, facility terms, and board material. We are editors, not treasury or accounting advisors, and we offer no opinion on the substance of your policy. What we can do is make it precise, internally consistent, and usable by the people who have to apply it under pressure.