Screenrights reels in big-picture benefits with Airwallex APIs

Screenrights champions the creative minds behind Australia and New Zealand's film and television industry. As a dedicated copyright collection society, it protects the intellectual property of audiovisual creators, ensuring they receive royalties when their work reaches audiences.

We spoke to Screenrights’ CFO, Renee Bryant, about how her team worked with Airwallex to redesign its financial operations and more effectively grow the business.

The challenge

Screenrights relied on manual, legacy banking processes to pay royalties out to its members. These operational payment processes were put to the test during the busiest time of year, with a team of five taking between four and six weeks to process the payment run.

As schools and universities pivoted to online learning during Covid, the demand for audiovisual content skyrocketed, which exacerbated their legacy payment issues with even more royalties to process and remit to members.

"The consumption of audiovisual content doubled overnight and continues to grow at over 40% year on year," Renee explains. "From one perspective, that was a ‘nice problem’, because more usage means more value for our licensees."

While a boost in royalty payments was a welcome upside during Covid, the operational burden meant Screenrights needed to re-think their finance infrastructure. Being unable to meet the new level of demand posed a clear risk, and solving the integration puzzle became Renee’s top priority.

"Our legacy systems, which had already reached their scaling limits, started to fail," Renee reveals. "We couldn’t get our new data systems to talk to our legacy systems – or our accounting and banking platforms."

The solution

Getting started with Airwallex

Renee’s team mapped out systems and identified gaps: "Our goal was to have a low-cost, reliable and scalable accounting system, and most importantly, a global payments platform that would work with both our accounting and data infrastructure," Renee says.

During research on industry publications and forums, Airwallex appeared on Screenrights’ radar.

The discovery led to a big leap forward: "Our partnership allowed us to build the data system, integrate it with Airwallex and implement a simple accounting package in Xero – successfully tying the three together."

With Screenrights' trust structure, governance requirements, and member obligations front and centre, convincing the board to transition from a traditional bank to a fintech solution involved careful stakeholder management. The finance and IT teams’ well-researched approach made it clear that change would deliver tangible benefits.

Renee Bryant

CFO

“We needed a global financial solution that could deliver payments to anyone in the world in the currency of their choice, and that's where the integration with Airwallex really made a difference.”

Reducing payment processing time from weeks to days

Screenrights used Airwallex's payment API to develop a "Payment and Release Engine" (PRE) which revolutionised the team’s efficiency.

“Afterwards, being able to push payments out the door through Airwallex’s API and payouts, then using Xero to reconcile transactions, reduced that to 2 days."

The dramatic improvement had additional operational benefits, including a leaner team managing a growing workload. "We’ve streamlined staff required for processing from 5 to 3, freeing them up for more meaningful work," Renee adds.

Beyond efficiency gains, the new system opened up valuable new capabilities for serving international members.

"We always had to pay out those distributions in AUD. As a large portion of our members are overseas, we can now offer the option to convert to their home currency and have it paid to them fee-free."

Setting the stage for future growth

Thanks to advances in data engineering, Screenrights is now able to bring payments forward, getting revenue to clients quicker.

"Earlier payments mean more revenue in our members' pockets sooner. Many rely heavily on this revenue to kickstart their next production, so the timing can be critical to their creative journey."

Renee adds, “With plans to incorporate more Airwallex tools into our stack, like bill pay and spend management, the future’s looking promising. Ultimately, we want to be a technology solution for the film industry. Partnerships with a provider like Airwallex will help make that happen.”

Renee Bryant

CFO

“We were stuck because of a finance and accounting system that simply wasn't a fit. Automating with Airwallex has really spearheaded our growth strategy.”

Disclaimer: The information contained herein is factual information only and is not intended to imply any recommendation or opinion about a financial product.