Historically, travel and entertainment (T&E) expense management in the financial industry has tended to be a case of “what is needed has to be done”. This has often led to large expense bills being built up as institutions have vied with each other to impress prospects, to keep customers and to close contracts.
With the massive changes of the last few years, financial institutions have suddenly found themselves under the utmost scrutiny by governments and the public alike. The global recession has been laid fairly and squarely at the door of the financial community. The public have been led to believe that profligacy, bad loans and a lack of foresight combined with a “get rich quick” mentality is prevalent across the financial sector, and governments are happy to reinforce this view as it enables them to avoid too much scrutiny of the part they have played in the situation. The perceived excesses of the boom years are being blamed for the current mood of austerity, and local and global laws are being enacted to make all aspects of investment and retail banking as well as insurance more transparent to both governments and the general public.
This means that institutions are now in a period of flux; the rules are unclear and are often contradictory when looking at how local, greater geographic and global rules interact. The future will bring a clearer set of policies that institutions have to follow, and now is the time when they should be considering what options there are to ensure that these rules can be easily — and cost-effectively — managed.
Quocirca has written a white paper about adopting best practices to manage employee expenses. To learn more about how institutions can put the right T&E tools in place, please complete a short pre-registration and then download the white paper by clicking here.
