2021 Alexander Hamilton Awards
Treasury & Risk is pleased to announce the finalists for our 2021 awards.
Treasury & Risk is still in the process of presenting the final categories of 2020 Alexander Hamilton Awards, but our esteemed judges have reviewed the entries for our 2021 contest and met to hammer out the award decisions. Thank you to Jean-Francois Heitz, Craig Jeffery, Marie Hollein, and Erik Smolders for taking on the difficult task of selecting the most innovative projects among all the entries we received.
We saw a wide range of impressive projects this year. We will not announce the “color” of award that a particular company received until we present the awards for that category, sometime in 2021. However, we are pleased to announce our winners for 2021—in alphabetical order within each category:
Treasury Transformation
This category celebrates projects that have achieved noteworthy success through a major revamp of corporate treasury processes. Centralization or decentralization of the treasury function, outsourcing initiatives, restructuring of treasury to support new lines of business, and staff recruitment or development programs—among other types of projects—fit into this category.
2021 winners are:
- Bandwidth Inc.
- BDP International
- Microsoft
- Salesforce
Liquidity Management
This category is aimed at portfolio management, short-term investing, and cash visibility, as well as debt management and crisis planning to ensure adequate ongoing liquidity. Cash forecasting and cash pooling projects fit into this category.
2021 winners are:
- Charter Hall Group
- Holiday Inn Club Vacations
- Microsoft
Risk Management
This category includes innovative solutions in management of risks around domestic or international interest rates, foreign exchange, or commodity prices; the use of derivatives or capital markets to hedge the company’s financial risk exposures; and/or management of counterparty credit risk.
2021 winners are:
- AARP
- eBay
- Microsoft
Technology Excellence
This award recognizes corporate treasury or finance departments for their implementation of innovative technology solutions that may be developed either internally or externally. Winning projects must be exceptionally creative, must solve a major problem, must yield impressive results, and/or must set a precedent for a best practice in treasury or finance. Projects that fall into this category could include those that solve a complex issue in financial management or compliance, improve communication or analysis of financial information, mitigate risk, or give the business a strategic advantage.
2021 winners are:
- CUNA Mutual Group
- HCSC
- Microsoft
Working Capital & Payments
This category recognizes innovations related to the collection of incoming payments and the disbursement of outgoing payments, as well as the organizational structure around management of payments and the cash conversion cycle.
2021 winners are:
- eBay
- Microsoft
- Sodexo
- Woodstream Corporation
Working Capital: Partner Impact
This is a new category for 2021, designed to recognize large and stable businesses taking significant steps to help support their supply-chain partners in the Covid economy.
Winners are:
- Intel
- Walmart
Best Practices in Restricted/Emerging Markets
This award recognizes corporate treasury, finance, and risk management functions that have successfully supported business operations in parts of the world where other organizations may fear to tread. Winning projects may include pioneering solutions that overcome regional restrictions on movement of money, compliance or disclosure challenges, banking regulations, and/or cultural issues.
The 2021 winner in this category is:
- Microsoft
We will be recognizing these companies with a series of webcasts and articles throughout 2021. At that time, we will announce which company won which award (gold, silver, bronze, honorable mention) in each category and will discuss the best practices that made these organizations stand out in a field of truly exceptional projects.
Stay tuned to Treasury & Risk for more information. And congratulations to all our finalists!