Expanding Treasury’s Role and Influence: A Vision for 2030

A Citi GPS report offers ways treasury can modernize to avoid irrelevance in an increasingly real-time world.

Put aside, if only for a moment, the challenges and opportunities treasury teams will face in 2025. Consider instead what they need to do in the next five years to expand the function’s role and influence. This week, in a report titled Treasury 2030, Citi GPS offered its vision of how treasury can develop into a more proactive, strategic partner enabling business growth. The provocative subtitle: “Modernize or Risk Irrelevance.”

• Ron Chakravarti, Citi’s Global Head, Client Advisory Group, Services, is one the primary authors of the report, which includes contributions from the consulting firm Zanders. “The future holds so much for high-performing treasuries,” he said in an interview with NeuGroup Insights.
  • “Through astute investments in technology, talent and partner collaboration, treasury teams can become key contributors to company growth.”
• This report arrives about a year after Citi GPS released Treasury Leadership: Does it Matter?, a study co-authored by Mr. Chakravarti.
  • In a Strategic Finance Lab podcast available on Apple and Spotify, he and NeuGroup founder and CEO Joseph Neu discussed the earlier report’s findings. Among them: companies that deliver superior financial performance also have top-performing treasury leaders and teams.

Four key characteristics. The 2030 report says that for treasury to move beyond being a liquidity and risk manager and become a strategic business partner and value creator, change must occur. “For many companies, the harsh reality is that their technology infrastructure, organizational construct, and current positioning are not properly equipped to support this vision of treasury.” The report identifies four key areas where change will take place at leading treasury teams:

1. Center of excellence for financial transactions. “While the management of risk, cash, and funding remain table stakes, treasury needs to be equipped to proactively contribute to the success of the business. We believe this calls for any transaction with financial impact or implication to be governed by treasury.”
2. Chief returns and risk officer. “Treasury should be at the center of cross-functional alignment in the corporate planning process, bringing to the table its unique end-to-end understanding of risk, returns and cost of capital. Horizontal collaboration between treasury, FP&A, and business development will ensure that top line growth, returns, and risks are all considered.”
3. Always on, 24/7. “We think treasuries in the future will need a real-time mindset to always get the most from corporate cash. Companies, irrespective of business model, will need to move towards real-time treasury that accelerates the velocity of cash.”
4. Automation through AI. “AI should be at the core of a new treasury operating system that powers automation, efficiency, accuracy, and data-supported insights. Recognizing the sensitivity of treasury’s role, humans become integral in managing, overseeing, and interjecting the AI when the situation exceeds set parameters.”

More on AI. The paper quotes NeuGroup member Sandra Ramos-Alves, treasurer of Bristol Myers Squibb, on the scope of the challenge and opportunity of AI. “As an organization, we need to have a complete mindset shift and realize that the AI and the technology is not here to replace us. It’s to help us augment our thinking, provide better analysis so that we’re making smart and timely decisions,” she said.

• Comments from Mr. Neu on AI are also featured. “You as treasurers should be working with your banks, technology partners and consultants to ensure there is the right governance around AI and new technologies to ensure that they are serving the human customers your business aims to serve and supporting the humans ensuring your business is meeting their needs,” he said.
• “Human change management will be a vital role going forward and preparing for the future of treasury even for 2030 means we are going to need a dedicated change manager in the function—ASAP.”

More calls to action. The Citi GPS paper presents calls to action for banks, technology providers and, of course, corporate treasury:

• “There is no time for complacency. Treasurers should be bold and position themselves as influencers and develop an ambitious roadmap towards 2030. Articulate the value that treasury can bring to the group to ensure funding and approval for modernization initiatives.
• “Ensure close alignment with your corporate IT counterparts. Understand where data can support treasury; get involved in the group’s data architecture and make sure treasury requirements are included.
• “Broaden involvement in adjacent functions. Because the treasurer governs all financial transactions, they should therefore be close to procurement, O2C, and P2P teams. As a result, treasurers need to build knowledge of other group functions to provide thorough business and financial risk management input.
• “Adopt a mindset of being the trusted financial innovation partner and be a leader in change.
• “Develop talent. Treasury will change and expand in scope, but the core of what it does today will not disappear. Consider the skill set of the future treasury team, which may need data science, change management, business partnership, influencing, and process re-engineering. Meanwhile, active planning and development will be necessary to retain people while developing the next generation.”