NeuGroup’s Treasury and Finance Agenda Survey also shows more emphasis and urgency on digital transformation.
The biggest risk facing companies next year is an economic downturn, according to preliminary results of NeuGroup’s 2024 Treasury and Finance Agenda Survey. At the same time, 57% of respondents predict interest rates will remain high or even go higher. The result is that treasury teams placed liquidity and capital structure optimization at the top of their objectives for the coming year (see ranking below). Amid ongoing uncertainty, that makes a lot of sense. By eking out as much cash as possible internally, treasuries can reduce the need for external financing, a significant component of a company’s capital structure.
Liquidity and capital structure also dominated treasurers’ 2023 list of objectives. One significant change from a year ago is where digitization of the treasury function landed in the ranking. Last year, it was at No. 6; this year it shot up to No. 3. That’s a welcome development. The desire to modernize treasury’s technology stack aligns with rising concerns about costs as well as the push to improve analytics and decision support. Absent automation, staff are occupied with manual tasks instead of looking at the bigger picture and extracting valuable insights from data.
