The uncertainties of exchanges, prices and interest rates make effective management of species management, which makes the role of the treasury more vital than ever.
Treasury management can be the decisive priority of the 2025 treasury, because CFOs re -evaluate their exposure to tariff schemes, interest rate changes and geopolitical volatility, firmly placing liquidity at the center of financial strategy.
An uncertain economic perspective that puts GDP growth in doubt through Asia and the Western world, combined with high interest rates and persistent interest rates, has created a complex risk environment, while continuous disturbances in the supply chain cause changes in cash allocation, liquidity reserves and coverage practices. In a market where financial conditions can swing from week to week, the cash function itself benefits from overvoltage of visibility, because its unique ideas guarantee it a seat at the table earlier in the decision-making process of the company.
The management of cash and liquidity has become the main priority of the Treasury in the World Treasury Survey in 2025 of PWC, which signals the challenges of the optimization of banking structures, the management of species and forecasts against a constantly evolving risk landscape. To consolidate flows, improve control and reduce costs, two -thirds (67%) of cash teams in organizations with more than $ 10 billion in annual income invest in internal banks, 60% in payment factories and 50% of model payments (POBO).
Strategic response
Beyond traditional responses such as repatriation and reduction of debt, companies adopt more sophisticated methods to optimize global liquidity and the effectiveness of the working capital. In the current climate, the preservation of cash is critical, explains Manish Kohli, responsible for global payment solutions at HSBC.
“The treasurers operate in an environment where the risk for capital and species is higher than what we have generally seen in a scenario outside of a large-scale war,” he notes, highlighting the cost of opportunity of money in a high interest rate environment. “Treasurers are increasingly confronted with questions about the question of whether their species is working enough, which leads to the adoption of structured programs around the sophisticated pooling in cash.” Customers feel forced to find financial efficiency that compensates for the compression of margins from prices, adds Kohli.
Overall, a cautious approach dominates, explains Stacey Pang, of the lawyer for the world’s law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.
“There is a general mood of prudence and conservatism which has considerably influenced debt strategies,” she observes. Companies are implementing cash management and cash management systems to better manage resources between the courts while emphasizing the diversification of debt financing sources for cost arbitration. Pang quotes the example of a customer based on a new bond market for the issue of foreign currencies, exchanged in the Sterling book to exploit lower interest rates.
The rise in prices and the current disruption of the supply chain are being incitement to changes in cash allocation, liquidity reserves and coverage practices, in particular in the sectors exposed to material and logistical costs.
“It is difficult to plan in the long term depending on the hypotheses and market conditions constantly evolving,” says Pang, “which perhaps explains the conservative approaches that we have seen.” Treasurers emphasize the role of diversification as a key to eliminating the risk of concentration and improving their agility, because the company is faced with the prospect of change. “This often means maintaining deeper liquidity reserves to manage unexpected disturbances.”
With generally shorter delivery times and smaller inventories, technology and consumption businesses are faced with higher pricing implications than other sectors such as industrial energy and public services. According to HSBC research, 87% of technological companies, media and telecommunications implement or plan to implement a distance.
Attention and continuous monitoring
In the middle of the current tariff turbulence, Marianna Polykrati, group treasurer at the Greek giant of Avramar seafood, underlines the need for prudence and continuous surveillance. The treasure team must collaborate closely with purchases to model import scenarios and adjust forecasts.
“The era of passive cash management is over,” explains Polykrati. Although it is mainly exporting to stable European markets such as France, Italy and Spain, it also has a certain exposure to the United States.
“Prices currently have a notable impact,” she adds, noting that coverage strategies and buffer levels are an integral part of Avramar forecasts, with basic products of basic products and exchange fully incorporated into the planning of the working capital. Given that ARMARS is supplied in certain raw materials of the United States, prices can be applied both to exports and imports, increasing complexity.
“The diversification of the supply helps to alleviate the increases in pricing costs,” explains Polykrati. “We now integrate dynamic liquidity planning into all operations and favor strong communication with each department. Flexible models cover several scenarios, basic cases to conservative and pessimistic perspectives, to reflect today’s reality, where geopolitical problems cause simultaneous slowdowns on a global scale. To mitigate the risks, his team seeks to cover around 50% of their exchange exposures and to apply strategies similar to interest rates by the end of this year.
Given a climate of uncertainty, the internal communication open is critical, she underlines. The teams inform the planned changes early on, allowing timely model updates. The integration of API with the company’s banks offers the team of the Polykrati team the visibility of the cash balance sheet at all entities. Their proactive approach and focused on the scenario promotes conservative forecasts, which often differ from more than 15% of indirect models at the end of the month. “Flexibility and continuous communication are at the heart of our cash management strategy,” she said.
Flexibility is a recurring theme between sectors and regions. Faced with fluctuating interest rates and the divergence of global policies, customers of the Lloyds banking group are looking for new and innovative methods for optimizing liquidity, explains Surath Sengpta, general manager and manager of banking products.
“We now see customers building larger liquidity pads and increasing their concentration on the concentration of geographic cash,” he notes. “Some are reshaping or supply chains on the plan, which has a significant training effect on liquidity. Companies revisit their coverage strategies to consider greater flexibility. ”
Lloyds also notes a certain hesitation in covering too far in advance, taking into account the potential changes in the currency flows of changes in pricing supply chain.
“Our team helps customers use more sophisticated and structured solutions,” said Sengpta, “opening the door to payment and receivables programs that improve the effectiveness of the working capital and offer benefits.” In industries strongly exposed to contributions and logistics costs, such as manufacturing or automotive, it expects treasurers to superfish currency and raw material curators with risk chain risk insurance.
A new era
Treasury teams that present a force today often have processes and the automation they built during the pandemic to thank, observes Kohli de HSBC. In tandem, the most resilient industries tend to be those that have done the same, kissing philosophy that a good crisis should never be released.
Kohli considers the role of the treasurer as going from a cash guard to a strategic growth catalyst, adopting real -time data and predictive analyzes.
“It is really refreshing to also see that treasurers are more interested in new and scalable forms of payment, because they then approach the task with a deeper risk objective,” he says. Treasurers are increasingly adopting a global approach, seeking aggregated positions in entire companies rather than regional clusters. The mandate: Provide visibility in cash worldwide, ensure optimal positioning without excess of counterpart or exposure to the risks of countries, and build automated tools that exceed operations and improve cash availability.
An HSBC client preparing a major acquisition was forced to rethink their financing strategy when debt costs have proven prohibitive. Instead of continuing traditional loans, the treasury team has reintegrated less conventional but more effective world cash structures which have released sufficient internal funding for the agreement.
“These are conversations that I did not expect the treasurers to be involved even four or five years ago,” said Kohli.
These strategic changes reflect not only the operational need, but a fundamental change in business risk management. As treasurers evolve in strategic architects, the question is how their organizations will exploit this capacity well.