Hello, my name is Ela Thakkar from J.P. Morgan, and I'm part of the Virtual Account Management product team. I'm joined today by a few of my colleagues to talk to you about an exciting and innovative product known as Virtual Account Management.
Matt Loos, thank you for joining me today. I heard there's a new buzzword in town, virtual account management. Can you tell me a little bit more about it?
Sure, so really virtual account management is an expansion or extension of virtual solutions we've had for many years. It started in the receipt space with virtual reference numbers. Which we gave to clients to allow them to slice and dice the receivables at a lower level. But unfortunately, it didn't take it to the level we can with virtual account management. Which also has a payables piece to it, and a balanced piece to it.
So virtual account management is really about mimicking a physical account in a virtual structure. A subaccount structure that allows clients the flexibility to build their own layers, to build their own detail. Either to mimic their own internal GL, to build structures that allow them to match receivables, match payables, ultimately giving them more efficiency and automation in their systems and automation in their processing.
So it's really a new way of doing business.
We really do see it that way. We see it as a tool set that is going to transform and change how all clients set up their structures in their accounts with banks going forward.
Great. Stacy, can you give me a few examples of how you see this benefiting clients specifically?
Sure. So we know that our clients are constantly looking for ways to simplify and rationalize their account structures. At the same time, they're looking at how can they best take advantage of all the data that's now out there and the insights that they can get from this data. And virtual account management is actually a strong value proposition for them on both fronts. So as Matt said, it allows them to reduce their reliance on many physical accounts. And at the same time, it can provide them more enhanced reporting and more flexible reporting than they get today.
And is it industry specific?
Actually we're seeing clients come to us across all industries. From higher education, large corporates, manufacturing, technology. We're seeing it across every spectrum. Some specific examples, we have clients that are using it for subsidiaries, and opening up accounts payable and accounts receivable virtual structures underneath the subsidiary. We have clients that are looking at boutique-level reporting by store or location. Clients are using it for treasury or finance projects or even business projects. We have a client that is using the multi-entity feature of virtual account management to onboard quickly new acquisitions that they're making.
Sounds like a use case for almost every single client. Martijn, J.P. Morgan has invested heavily in innovation, and virtual account management is exactly one of those solutions that is core to our innovation agenda. Can you provide us with a little more clarity and updates on innovation?
Well, certainly we do think that virtual account management is really at the heart of our information and data innovation. That's also part of the reason why we decided to build everything in-house, just to make sure that everything gets seamlessly connected for our clients globally. Really to provide our clients with this optimum client experience and virtual account management solutions that we provide is less of the optimal solution for clients who really slice and dice the information, just as the way they want to receive it. So that provides a huge value for our clients globally.
Right, and speaking of global, I've heard complex or large clients that have multiple currencies across the globe could benefit from a solution like this.
So we've built it for currencies in every location, every market we have around the world. And every global client has the same challenge, which is that centralization of that global position. How do they see when you've got accounts in different locations around the world? How do you get that immediate and centralized view of your cash, whether it's in euro, dollar, sterling or any of the other currencies we offer? And virtual account management now allows you to do that in a very simple way.
It's a centralized product bringing together on behalf of structures, in-house banks, and everything in between. It's all about, how do you manage your global cash positions more efficiently? How do you manage your payables, your receivables more efficiently? And virtual account management can do that for any client. And as Stacy said, I don't think there's a client out there that couldn't benefit from some way from our virtual client solution.
Right, and I see every single treasurer using this as a key differentiator to run their business.
Yes.
Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been very informative to learn more about our virtual account management solution. And thank you for joining us. Stay tuned for more innovation from J.P. Morgan.
[MUSIC PLAYING]