There are 180 currencies in the world, and almost all of them can be converted into one another. Currency conversion became quite usual part of our lives, especially for travellers, and absolute routine for international business.

Conversion can still be a challenge, especially when ‘archaic’ ways of doing things apply. When it comes to clinical trial payments, let’s review some situation:

Patient travel reimbursement is performed through site contracts. Patients submit receipts in local currency for their travel to the study team and they convert local currency amounts into USD (contract currency at times) and submits this USD calculation to the Sponsor. Sponsor transfers USD to site and they convert this back into local currency and reimburse patients. It is quite old-fashioned model which is still in use in some countries. Not mentioning tax implications, let’s review what actually happens with the amount when it is converted twice.

Let’s assume Russian PI collected receipts from patients for RUB 1000. PI converts this amount into USD using official exchange rate RUB 1000 / USD 69,4822 = USD 14,39.

Even if we imagine that PI is reimbursed immediately and PI will convert USD back into RUB the same day using his bank’s exchange rate, the following will happen: USD 14,39 * RUB 69,20 = RUB 995,79.

Evidently, PI will be ‘under’-reimbursed.

This happens because official exchange rate differs from internal exchange rates of the banks, it is always less ‘beneficial’. Moreover, banks’ internal rates change several times a day, so it is impossible to use them for RUB-USD conversion.

Bluntly speaking, USD becomes smaller when it enters Russia… and it is not because Russia is a wintry country.

Jokes apart, currency conversion is a challenge for the businesses in many situations. Over last years the business invented several tools to respond this challenge, yet in some countries some extra effort is needed to keep higher satisfaction level between Sponsors, Sites, CROs, vendors.

We, CTA Focus, together with our partners, own some brilliant solutions and experience helping clinical trial market to tackle many challenges, including those connected with the jumping currency exchange rates. In the example above currency exchange could have not be an issue as such if the Sponsor of that imaginary study chose more modern and technological approach for patient travel reimbursement. But even if currency exchange implication in any reimbursement aspect is something unavoidable, we know how to make it in the most efficient way 😉