Treasury in 2030

5 Practical Steps for Preparing Ahead

No-one knows precisely what the future holds, but a successful digital treasury team must be able to adjust quickly to the evolving ecosystem – and be able to scale at speed. In this article, four industry experts outline their visions of a digital treasury function in 2030 and explain how to start laying the foundations for these future goals, today. They touch on everything from embedded finance to best-of-breed architectures and innovative ways to offset carbon emissions through treasury products.

“For tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” Over the years, this African proverb has been transformed into pithy quotes from world leaders and changemakers – and its relevance still rings true, especially in the business world.

Of course, there will always be unpredictable factors treasury teams cannot prepare for. Before 2020, few had predicted a world of global lockdowns and remote-working due to a Coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, there are many elements of the future that treasury leaders can start preparing for today:

1. Embrace total automation of day-to-day processes

“Automation is a treasury trend that’s been talked about for several years now – because teams spend so much of their time on low value tasks and the management of manual processes. In 2021, we have already seen a number of leading treasury teams looking to embrace technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) in order to reduce their manual burden, with the aim of only dealing with exceptions,” says Conor Maher, Head of Transaction Banking Products, NatWest. In fact, 16% of treasurers surveyed by TMI and NatWest in Q2 2021 stated that implementing AI is currently their number one digital priority.

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