Empowering NGED for simpler currency payments

National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED, formerly known as Western Power Distribution) is the UK’s largest electricity distribution network serving 8 million customers in the Midlands, South West, and Wales in delivering essential power to homes and businesses.

During a recent conversation with HSBC, it was discovered that a particular pain point for the business was the challenge of processing multiple individual foreign currency supplier payments. The prior process required the treasury team to input and approve each individual payment via the banking portal, selecting the relevant currency, and exchange rate each time a foreign currency payment was processed.

Through understanding NGED’s objectives, existing payment process and costs associated with their current arrangements that involve processing annually some 700+ payments, HSBC was able to help reduce the time, cost, and complexity of the prior process by recommending its innovative Global Disbursements solution to meet NGED's efficiency goals.

• Global Disbursements allows NGED to seamlessly execute international payments in various currencies from their treasury location from two funding accounts, using one standard payment file and a simplified authorisation process
• Centrally negotiated FX margins between HSBC and NGED are automatically applied to payments, providing greater transparency and control over FX costs. Payments are subsequently routed via lower-cost domestic ACH channels wherever possible to help NGED achieve further cost savings
• Payments are reflected as a single debit entry on the bank account, helping to reduce complexity in reconciliation efforts and the Track & Trace functionality provides an easy platform to make payment enquiries

In allowing NGED to conduct international payments from two funding accounts via one payment file, Global Disbursements has effectively streamlined their foreign currency payment process, reduced operational challenges and expenses, and released Treasury staff into other value adding areas of the business.