Saga Travel Group

Saga Travel Group wanted an integrated platform where they could manage multiple currencies and make international payments to their supplier base.

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About Saga Travel Group

Saga Travel Group deliver tailored tourism experiences, from escorted tours, cruises, hosted hotel stays, and even securing private jets for their clients. Operating in over 100 countries, they organise everything for their clients, and work with a whole host of suppliers across the world.

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The Challenge

Working in so many countries with such a diverse range of suppliers, Saga Travel Group needed a platform where they could manage multiple currencies and make both intra-company transfers and international payments. Previously, they had been using a banking platform for these activities, but it had proven to be no fit-for-purpose.

“We did try to use our bank, but we found it was quite sluggish” said Ryan Godson, Financial Controller at Saga Travel Group. “It was taking up a lot of resources just trying to input payments, get them approved, and we found that the customer service wasn’t great either.”

It was becoming a real challenge to pay their suppliers in the currencies they wanted to be paid in. Just the matter of securing the currency required from the bank was a slow process.

“It could take a couple of days when you ask the bank, "We need to buy this currency” and their response is, “You have to fill out this paperwork." It meant extra administration time, delays, and less flexibility.”

Once they had secured the currencies, actually delivering the international payments was another challenge. Paying out in multiple currencies across borders proved anything but easy.

“We had a number of problems with the banks rejecting our payments when trying to pay our international suppliers, and we’d have to try multiple times before eventually getting them through. And, of course, supplier relationships are so important in this industry, and we didn’t want delays in the payment process affecting them.”

All these delays and payment obstacles also led to a more drawn-out approval process, with approval needing to be given for each individual payment.

“We’d have to get the information out of our finance system, go through the approval process, get it signed off, and then it would be a matter of manually inputting payment by payment onto our banking portal. And then it would go through a secondary release process with someone that would then have to go in and click through each payment to approve them."

The resulting process meant a lot of working in different and disconnected systems, and administration time spent on each payment run was significant.

“The paperwork involved in having to use multiple different banks or multiple accounts made the admin time needed to make a payment run a lot more intensive.”

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The Solution

Saga Travel Group moved their international payments process to the TransferMate Platform and can now manage multiple currencies and pay internationally in multiple currencies much easier. The TransferMate Platform includes the ability to open virtual accounts in 30+ currencies, and pay into a network covering 200+ countries and territories.

“The Global Accounts part of the platform makes the whole process a lot better. We’ve opened up accounts in USD, Euro, GBP, Malaysian ringgit, South African rand, Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Japanese yen, Canadian dollar… It’s given us instant access to currencies we were never able to get from traditional banking platforms.”

The Global Accounts capabilities also means no more ringing up the bank and buying currencies ‘manually’.

“Having all these currencies in one place and being able to convert currencies between accounts is really helpful. Sometimes we may be short on euros or dollars, for example, and we just convert from our GBP account in a matter of seconds. It’s a big headache, instantly gone.”  

The Global Accounts act as a foundation for Saga’s international payments, allowing them to distribute centrally from their GBP holdings and out into multiple currencies. Beyond the currencies covered by the Global Accounts, the team are also able to pay out into the wider network, including some key exotic currencies – all on the same platform.

“We typically transfer money into our GBP account and then fund the payments into the other accounts from there. We can not only pay out in those local currencies from the relevant accounts, but we can also pay into currencies that were very difficult to process through the bank, like Mauritian rupees and That baht.”

As a result of this integrated system, the entire AP process has become more integrated too. While some manual work has been eliminated altogether, other parts of the process have been automated or significantly reduced.

“Now we’re using TransferMate we just upload a templated file for each payment run. We’ve set-up all our suppliers on the TransferMate platform, so when we the payment run out of our finance system each month, we populate the template and upload it all in one go. It significantly reduces the time we spend doing admin tasks.”

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The Results

The resulting process means the Saga Travel Group can pay out in local currencies, easily buy currencies when needed, and pay out into a global network. Suppliers are paid accurately and on-time, and the Saga Travel Group have saved time on their end too.

“It used to take us the best part of a day to do a payment run – and that’s not counting all the challenges outside of actually making payments. Now, it takes a couple of hours.”

The cost-savings have been significant too, not just in the currency conversion rates, but also in payment fees.

“In the busy season, we’ve got hundreds of invoices coming through and we’re trying to get the payments out the door quickly. The costs of those payments are roughly 10x less using TransferMate compared to our bank. When you’re making so many international payments, those savings really add up over time.”

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The Final Word

“We’ve reduced the cost of international payment fees by 10x using the TransferMate platform and have reduced the time spent on each payment run from a full day to a couple of hours.”  

- Ryan Godson, Financial Controller, Saga Travel Group

To improve how you pay, receive and store funds internationally, sign up to the TransferMate Platform here, or contact the team for a demo.