Two recent surveys of corporate treasurers' readiness for SEPA have shown how many companies are leaving it very late to get started on their migration to SEPA standards:

• BNP Paribas's Treasury Barometer results, presented at their Cash Management University in Paris last week, showed that only 11% of the respondents said that SEPA was their top priority in 2013
• Eurofinance survey results released today showed that:
• 52 % of corporates in the SEPA zone have not yet started their SEPA project
• 31% are still uncertain about what is required to be compliant by February 2014.

This position is starting to worry many European banks, Deutsche Bank's Dieter Stynen's wrote in gtnews: "Corporations that are not ready to use SEPA formats by 1 February 2014 could risk not being able to make credit transfers or direct debits at all. Therefore, in order to ensure they are able to continue paying suppliers and employees, it is critical that corporates start to consider what SEPA will mean for them. It is not yet clear if there will be any regulatory or financial penalty for non-compliance." Dieter went on to list the benefits of adopting the uniform payments.

Nevertheless, from these survey results, few companies are listening....... and already some banks are saying many corporates will miss the end date.

---

What is needed is some way of assessing what is involved in moving to the SEPA standards, how long it will take and what is the cost-benefit analysis.