One currency risk standard, not two separate habits

Most finance teams that have gotten this far have built two separate habits, usually for two separate reasons. Someone got burned by a board deck where the runway number moved without explanation, so FP&A built a re-forecast trigger: re-check runway when a currency moves more than a set percentage against the reporting currency. Separately, someone noticed the margin benefit of paying costs in a weaker currency wasn't free, so treasury set a hedging threshold: hedge a portion of exposure once it crosses a set share of total costs.

Both habits are genuinely good instincts. The problem is that they were built by different people, in different documents, answering what is actually the same underlying question — has this currency moved enough that we need to do something about it — and nobody ever checked whether their two answers agree.

The same judgment, filed in two places

In practice, the numbers rarely match. Treasury might set the hedge threshold at 15% of exposure, reasoning from cost structure. FP&A sets the re-forecast trigger at a 5% currency move, reasoning from board-deck stability. Neither number is wrong on its own. But in a real move, it's entirely possible for the hedge to fire while the runway forecast stays untouched — or for the board to get an off-cycle runway review for a move that treasury already absorbed through a position nobody mentioned in the deck.

The board ends up seeing two uncoordinated signals about the same event, from two teams that each think they handled it.

Building the shared register

This doesn't require a treasury system or a hedging desk. It requires treating the trigger model from runway forecasting and the hedging policy from FX management as one artifact instead of two:

• One shared definition of "a move." Pick a single percentage-move threshold per currency pair and use it for both the hedge decision and the re-forecast trigger, so a move that matters to one function matters to the other at the same point.
• One named owner. Usually finance, even when treasury executes the hedge — the point is one person is accountable for noticing when the two thresholds drift apart.
• A cross-check, not just two checklists. When either threshold fires, the document requires checking what the other one did — so a hedge that fired gets reflected in the next board deck, and a re-forecast trigger gets checked against whether a hedge already absorbed the move.
• A joint review, not two separate ones. Reviewed on the same cadence, by the same conversation — not FP&A's quarterly runway review and treasury's hedging review happening in different rooms, months apart.

A runway trigger and a hedging threshold that don't talk to each other are describing the same risk twice — and agreeing on neither.

Why this gets worse as more currencies enter the mix

With one foreign currency in the model, a mismatch between the two thresholds rarely causes real damage — someone usually catches it informally. The risk compounds with a third or fourth currency, each added by a different hire or a different market, each with its own quietly-set thresholds that were never reconciled against the first. Nobody did anything wrong. Nobody is also looking at the whole picture, which is exactly the condition under which a board gets two contradictory read-outs on the same quarter and starts asking why finance can't agree with itself.

What this doesn't require

• A new hedging program. Companies that don't hedge yet still benefit — the shared definition of "a move" is what matters, not the instrument used to respond to it.
• New tooling. A single shared document with both thresholds and an owner is the entire starting point.
• Picking one function to own both. Treasury can still execute hedges and FP&A can still own the board narrative — the standard just makes sure they're triggered by the same event.

The trigger model and the hedging policy, under one roof

The re-forecast trigger and the hedging threshold are both the right instinct on their own. What turns them into something a board can trust — rather than two separately defensible numbers that happen to disagree — is writing them down in the same place, with the same definition of when a currency has moved enough to matter, so "we handled it" means the same thing no matter which part of finance is saying it.