It protects liquidity, manages risk and ensures that businesses can continue to operate through periods of uncertainty. Yet the past 12 months have underscored how quickly the risk landscape can change. Treasurers have had to navigate shifting tariff regimes, conflicts in the Middle East that have disrupted key shipping routes, continued supply chain reconfiguration away from single-country sourcing models and a higher-for-longer interest rate environment that has kept funding costs under pressure.
In that environment, the question for many organisations isn’t whether disruption will occur, but how quickly they can absorb it—across currencies, markets and operating models.
You can’t control the outcomes of the global events. But what you can control is how you make sure your organisation is resilient enough to be responding to those events.
Manish Kohli, Head of Global Payments Solutions at HSBC
The result is a fundamental redefinition of treasury. What was once viewed primarily as a control function is increasingly becoming a strategic capability that influences commercial decisions, operational resilience and long-term growth.
“The biggest shift is moving from a finance function to a key strategic component of a business structure,” says Vivek Ramachandran, Head of Global Trade Solutions at HSBC.
That shift is forcing treasury leaders to rethink not only their technology and processes, but also their role within the organisation.
Living with permanent volatility
For much of the past decade, treasury teams could treat major disruptions as exceptional events. Today, that assumption no longer holds. “The trade reconfiguration is a structural reset rather than a temporary detour,” says Yasemin Artar, Head of Corporate Sales, Europe at HSBC. “Volatility and disruption are going to be the base case.”
The forces driving this change are already visible. Corporates are adopting nearshoring and friendshoring strategies to reduce supply chain risks. “China + 1” or “China + many” sourcing strategies are becoming more common. New trade agreements are creating alternative trade corridors, while geopolitical tensions continue to reshape global commerce.
For treasury teams, this means uncertainty is no longer something that can be managed through periodic contingency planning. It must be built into day-to-day operations.
In practice, this means that organisations should focus on three priorities:
- The first is preparing for disruption through stronger liquidity buffers and more robust scenario analysis. Rather than relying on a single forecast, treasury teams need to assess multiple outcomes and understand how their companies’ underlying business cash flows would respond under different conditions. In practice, that means making decisions with a global lens: where cash best sits, how it moves across borders to be employed efficiently, and how FX volatility can amplify operational shocks.
- The second is re-engineering processes to improve resilience. Automation and digitalisation can reduce operational risk while creating greater flexibility when market conditions change.
- The third is building adaptability. As organisations expand into new markets and diversify supply chains, treasury teams must be able to support new currencies, payment corridors and risk management requirements. That often means navigating different local clearing rules, cut-off times and liquidity constraints—without slowing the business down. The same principle applies to foreign exchange management. In an environment characterised by sudden market moves and rapidly changing trade patterns, treasury teams are increasingly adopting layered hedging strategies and embedding greater optionality into their risk management frameworks. Done well, this helps protect margins, support confident pricing and reduce the risk that FX volatility turns an operational issue into a liquidity surprise.
The goal is no longer simply to predict the future. It is to remain resilient regardless of what happens.
Rethink your treasury for the digital economy
If volatility is forcing treasury to evolve, technology is providing the tools to make that evolution possible. Yet many treasury organisations are still at the beginning of the journey.
According to HSBC’s Treasury Pulse Survey 2025, spreadsheets remain the dominant tool for cash flow forecasting and planning, as well as reporting and analytics, with 32% of respondents relying on them. In a world of permanent volatility, that reliance can become a constraint when speed and accuracy matter most. “Many treasury functions need to be redesigned for the way the digital economy operates today,” Kohli adds.
Treasury transformation follows a three-stage journey:
- The first stage is automation. This involves removing manual processes and reducing operational risk through technologies such as APIs, real-time payments, ERP integration and ISO 20022-enabled infrastructure.
- The second stage is optimisation. Here, treasury teams begin using artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to improve forecasting, liquidity management and decision-making. Historically, many treasury functions have struggled to produce accurate cash flow forecasts because the volume and complexity of data exceeded human capacity. AI is beginning to change that equation by providing the computational power needed to identify patterns and generate predictive insights.
- The third stage is a fundamental reimagining of treasury. Technologies such as tokenisation and distributed ledger infrastructure have the potential to transform how liquidity moves through the financial system
While the long-term potential is significant, Kohli believes most organisations remain focused on the first phase of the journey. For many treasury teams, the greatest opportunity today lies not in adopting emerging technologies, but in eliminating manual processes and building a stronger digital foundation.
This trend is reflected in Euromoney’s latest Cash Management Survey, which found that 51% of corporate respondents are either already using AI or actively planning to do so, with 77% of identified use cases focused on automating routine tasks.
From working capital manager to strategic partner
Treasury’s transformation is not only technological, but also organisational. As organisations navigate increasingly complex operating environments, treasury is becoming more deeply embedded in strategic decision-making.
You can’t shape treasury strategy if you’re not at the table.
Vivek Ramachandran, Head of Global Trade Solutions at HSBC
The implications are significant. Treasury teams are now expected to understand procurement strategies and supply chain dependencies. They need visibility into sales contracts and customer payment terms. They must assess how inventory decisions affect liquidity and evaluate the funding implications of entering new markets. On top of that, they also need to understand how cross-border cash mobility and FX risk interact with those decisions—especially when trade corridors are recalibrating quickly.
Working capital optimisation provides a clear example. “Conventional wisdom once suggested that companies operating within the same sector should exhibit similar working capital characteristics”, Kohli adds. “In reality, organisations are becoming more differentiated as business models evolve and supply chains become more complex.” That requires a far deeper understanding of how the organisation operates as a whole.
AI raises the bar for treasury
Artificial intelligence has become one of the defining themes in corporate finance and treasury is no exception.
The biggest shift from my perspective is the AI adoption and automation in treasury risk management.
Yasemin Artar, Head of Corporate Sales, Europe at HSBC
While AI will transform treasury, it will not remove the need for human judgement. “You can’t delegate the thinking,” highlights Ramachandran. “AI accentuates bias in your data.” That makes data governance and model oversight as important as the technology itself. As a result, treasury professionals must become more technologically fluent. Understanding how data is structured, how models are trained and how outputs should be interpreted is becoming as important as understanding liquidity ratios or funding strategies. The future treasury professional will need a broader combination of skills: financial expertise, technological literacy, strategic thinking and commercial awareness.
As Artar notes, organisations may also need to rethink the types of talent they bring into treasury functions, broadening beyond traditional finance backgrounds to include more diverse and creative skill sets.
A new mandate for treasury
The old treasury playbook was built for a world that was more predictable, more linear and less interconnected. Volatility has become a permanent feature of the operating environment. Technology is reshaping how treasury functions operate. AI is transforming decision-making. Supply chains are becoming more fragmented. And growth increasingly depends on an organisation’s ability to adapt quickly to change. Against that backdrop, treasury is emerging as one of the few functions with visibility across the entire enterprise.