Spokesperson: Amit Kahana, Head of Credit, Cash Management & Treasury
To be successful today, businesses must manage their cash as well as their spend. The difference may be subtle, but the payoff is substantial.
Cash management involves thinking beyond solely outgoing payments, and instead scrutinising cash positions, multiple entities, risk management, liquidity and more. For many businesses these responsibilities typically sit within the treasury function. But the word ‘treasury’ conjures dusty images of a vault that bygone monarchs – and of course Scrooge McDuck – would be proud of.
And it’s not just perceptions of the treasury function that are outdated, but the processes too. As many as 75% of UK leaders say that as their business grows and finances become more complicated, the role of treasury becomes increasingly important – underlining just how important a revamp of the treasury function is.
Is the treasury function functioning?
To drive business performance in 2025, leaders need a well-oiled treasury function. When 87% of UK businesses currently rate theirs as effective, you might argue that the job is already done. But, in a fast-changing economic environment, what passes for “effective” has changed considerably – and will continue to.
Today, the treasury function is not just about protecting the coffers, but maintaining a strong level of control over cash flow and finances. It is as much about avoiding overspending as it is making excess cash work harder and staying agile to unexpected financial events. Lastly, the changes in the interest rate environment created an expectation for the Treasury function to also optimise the yield on one’s available cash.
But there is a serious lag between these expectations and treasury’s functionality. Today, financial tooling has evolved considerably, but treasury hasn’t kept up. The very team expected to pioneer financial stability is buried in manual processes that are draining efficiency, agility and sometimes motivation. This is true of CFOs too, with a third doing more admin than they did five years ago. So, what can UK leaders do to change this?
What’s needed to revamp the treasury function?
A good place for leaders to start is to ask what’s most important to them. According to our research, cash position forecasting and monitoring are most valuable to the treasury function. Further, automating manual work is a key ambition which often gets neglected, while, if teams are to manage uncertainties, visibility is essential.
Below, I outline three ways businesses can achieve these goals and prepare their treasury function for the challenging times ahead.
- Gain a global, consolidated overview
2025 has already served a reminder of why businesses must stay on their toes in an economically volatile world. Managing uncertainties has always been high on the agenda for finance teams, but as the world grows increasingly unpredictable, it’s ever more difficult. One way teams can keep pace with an uncertain world though is through visibility.
Despite the so-called effectiveness of treasury functions across UK businesses, more than a third (37%) are not confident they have enough visibility to make informed decisions and remain reactive to key financial events. To solve this, leaders must install a real-time, centralised overview of all their bank accounts, balances and financial activity. 73% of businesses agree that having such a single overview is the most important thing for full visibility. But even then, the finance function is never “done” – leaders must continuously revisit tools to ensure they are giving their teams the optimum visibility needed to stay in control of spending.
- Make cash work harder
Driving revenue and growth today is about doing more with what you have. And businesses must ensure their cash works harder for them. In fact, 72% of UK firms say this is a priority for them in the next 12 months. Keeping a laser focus on foreign transaction fees is one way to help this. If UK companies are spending thousands of dollars in US transactions, then they’ll be wasting a fortune on FX fees. Having oversight of this can be tricky for over-burdened finance teams, but this is where modern financial tooling and data-driven insights come in – prompting teams to open up an additional bank account and showing them the potential savings to boot.
This is just one way teams can ensure their cash isn’t wasted and that reserves aren’t sitting idle. Another is having a clear overview of budgets and spend allocation. With this, finance teams can scrutinise what money is going where in one place – whether subscriptions or budgets – and decide what’s not beneficial, as often as possible.
- Dedicate time to what’s mission-critical
To revamp the treasury function, leaders must change how their teams are spending their time. Currently, teams dedicate a jaw-dropping 163 working days a year to manual treasury tasks, and over half (51%) of finance professionals say they are unable to focus on mission critical work.
Leaders can empower change by introducing AI and automation into their treasury set-up. As many as 70% of financial decision-makers believe AI can play a role in taking CFO and finance team’s time off admin and returning it to more high-level and strategic tasks – whether it’s managing credit limits or staying up to date with key financial events. What’s more, AI provides a safety net when it comes to human error – something 42% say they are concerned about when making manual payments. All these factors are why those teams using AI extensively are more likely to say their treasury function is ‘very effective’ compared to those only using it occasionally or not at all.
In a situation where finance professionals are more under pressure than ever, efficiency and peace of mind are more important than ever. The rule of thumb should be that if you can automate it, it’s worth paying a fee to do so.
Cometh the hour, cometh the evolution
The treasury function is a core part of business finance, and it must be brought into the 21st century. This means implementing new technologies and creating a suite of tools which rewards teams with visibility, automation and control; that replaces financial guesswork with financial stability.
Bringing treasury all under one roof, and removing the hassle with advanced workflows and integrations, can transform the function from a thing of the past into a fully-integrated, predictive and strategic command centre of the future. This is how businesses can unbury this function and enjoy the payoff within.
