Finance Monthly - December 2021

Tr a ve l & Li f e s t y l e 76 Finance Monthly. he relief will be short- lived, however, as business travel is coming back. According to Deloitte research published in August 2021, “competition and growth imperatives will necessitate a resumption of business travel”. In the same month, the UK’s Department for Transport stated that more than a quarter (27%) expect to make more trips than they did before the pandemic. We need, then, to consider howwe can create a new ‘normal’ for business travel if we don’t want to simply return to the old, inefficient, and stressful way of doing things. FinTech can solve expenses headaches Post-pandemic, we have a chance to set a higher standard for business travel. We might not be able to entirely eliminate the tedious waits in departure lounges, traffic jams and nights spent in drab hotel rooms, but there is an opportunity to take a great deal of the pain out of the whole process. Flexible FinTech-enabled solutions can have a positive impact on the future of business travel, as well as how many organisations currently deal with expenses. Chances are if you work for a large corporation and you need to travel regularly you will have a company credit card. But for many people who don’t work for companies of that size, the process can be rather different, relying on the individual to pay for flights, car hire, accommodation and so on themselves, filing an expense claim when they ultimately get back to the office. Alternatively, there may be a single card tied to a business account in the name of a senior staff member being handed around between employees as and when they need to use it. Both of these scenarios are problematic. In the first case, the employee has to use their own money, while the company has no idea how much and where money has been spent until the expenses claim is made. In the second case, there are massive security implications and vendors may very well fail payments if they realise the person using the card is not the registered cardholder. Addressing the needs of the SME sector What’s required, then, are solutions that help SMEs to better process travel expenses. They need to provide flexibility for the employee, who may very well be incurring additional costs when travelling for work. For example, some countries require PCR test certification for entry — which comes at a cost — while private methods of transport such as a car hire are safer than public transport such as aeroplanes and trains, but will also come at a premium. Organisations, too, need to have better visibility on what employees T