In 2025, treasurers will find themselves in a moment of transformation, where artificial intelligence (AI) moves beyond simple automation and starts playing a more integral role in strategic decision making. We’re not just talking about using AI to support repetitive tasks – that’s been the early promise of machine learning.
Now, AI is maturing to the point where it can offer deeper insights and help shape long-term strategies for treasury functions. We will see a shift towards harnessing AI to make better, faster and more informed decisions, whether that’s around investments, risk management or working capital decisions.
What’s particularly exciting is how AI will help treasurers tackle more sophisticated challenges. For instance, think of the way AI can process vast amounts of data to spot trends, model scenarios and predict market movements.
That’s going to allow treasurers to approach things such as hedging strategies or capital allocation in a way that’s much more data-driven and forward looking. Instead of being reactive to market conditions, treasurers will have the tools to anticipate changes and make adjustments proactively. The focus shifts from managing tasks to truly optimising financial strategy.
AI is maturing to the point where it can offer deeper insights and help shape long-term strategies for treasury functions
Of course, AI adoption in treasury is still somewhat cautious because of the high standards of governance, compliance and control that the function demands. The hesitation is understandable, as treasury functions are built on frameworks of security and risk management that will still remain.
But what we’re going to see in 2025 is the establishment of more formal AI-driven cultures within organisations, and clear protocols in compliance and security. This shift will allow treasurers to embrace AI as a critical part of their toolkit without compromising controls that keep treasury functions stable and reliable.
This will come as no surprise, but 2025 will also be marked by the need to navigate ongoing economic headwinds, and this is where the partnership between AI and human judgement becomes especially important. Interest rates are likely to remain a source of volatility, with central banks taking different approaches.
We’re seeing the US Federal Reserve lean towards rate cuts, while others, such as the Bank of England, are beginning to follow after holding steady for longer, and Japan is heading towards rate hikes. These moves will have significant implications for liquidity management, capital structures and FX exposures.
The shift to more agile SaaS-based platforms will become even more critical for CFOs and treasurers who don’t just want to keep up, but optimise liquidity performance
In the technology landscape, 2025 will also see the fall of legacy platforms that simply can’t keep pace with modern demands. Instead ASP technologies will further bring software as a service (SaaS) solutions at the forefront of the market. The ability to navigate economic headwinds and fully leverage AI is predicated on the use and access to real-time, accurate data.
Legacy on-premises systems and archaic active server pages (ASP) platforms, which once dominated the treasury landscape, are struggling to manage the scale of data we deal with today. How can a system that still has trouble processing incoming bank data growing in volume possibly evolve to support AI? While it’s true you can build AI into almost any system, it becomes irrelevant if the data it’s processing is lagging, incomplete or inconsistent. That’s
why the shift to more agile SaaS-based platforms will become even more critical for CFOs and treasurers who don’t just want to keep up, but optimise liquidity performance.
Finally, in 2025 treasurers will be balancing the challenges of a volatile economic and geopolitical environment with the opportunities presented through more formalised AI offerings. It’s going to be a time of shifting from managing financial operations to optimising them in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago.
The future will belong to those who can harness and fine-tune AI rather than leveraging it as a replacement for human insight. Blending technology with strategy to navigate both current risks and long-term opportunities would, therefore, add a competitive advantage to the organisation.
Thomas Gavaghan is vice president of global presales at Kyriba
This article was taken from Issue 4, 2024 of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, members can log in to view the full issue.
