241 respondents
December 2024
Q1: Priorities
- Improving cash visibility across entities, accounts and countries (64%)
- Improving cash-flow forecasting accuracy (58%)
- Centralising or rationalising bank accounts and banking relationships
- Optimising surplus cash and short-term investments (48%)
- Strengthening payments security, fraud prevention and controls
- Reducing payment, reconciliation or manual-processing costs
- Improving collections and receivables visibility
- Supporting cross-border growth and multi-currency operations
- Managing FX exposure and execution (39%)
- Improving trade finance or supply-chain finance (34%)
- Implementing or upgrading treasury-management systems, APIs or ERP connectivity (46%)
- Using AI, automation or data analytics in treasury
- Raising debt, refinancing or improving working-capital funding
- Other
Q2: Greatest difficulty
- Lack of real-time or timely group-wide cash visibility (22%)
- Inaccurate or unreliable cash-flow forecasts (23%)
- Excess idle cash or difficulty deploying surplus liquidity (15%)
- Fragmented bank accounts and banking platforms (22%)
- Manual payments, reconciliation and reporting processes (14%)
- Payment fraud, cyber risk or approval-control weaknesses
- Cross-border payments, trapped cash or regulatory restrictions
- FX volatility, hedging or execution (13%)
- Trade-finance speed, documentation or availability
- Lack of integration between banks, ERP and treasury systems (10%)
- Bank service quality or implementation delays
- Lack of internal treasury expertise or resources
- Other (3%)
Q3: Liquidity managed
- Less than US$5 million (15%)
- US$5 million to less than US$25 million (27%)
- US$25 million to less than US$100 million (30%)
- US$100 million to less than US$250 million (15%)
- US$250 million to less than US$500 million (7%)
- US$500 million to less than US$1 billion (4%)
- US$1 billion to less than US$5 billion (2%)
- US$5 billion or more
- Prefer not to say
Q4: Liquidity distribution
- More than 75% is held in one home market (31%)
- 51–75% is held in one home market (23%)
- Broadly spread across several Asian markets (29%)
- Materially spread across Asia and markets outside Asia (13%)
- We do not have a clear consolidated view of group liquidity (4%)
- Prefer not to say
Q5: Capability
| Capability | Limited/manual | Partly automated | Mostly automated | Real-time or near-real-time |
| Daily cash visibility | (23%) | (38%) | (29%) | (10%) |
| Short-term cash forecasting, up to 13 weeks | (31%) | (37%) | (24%) | (8%) |
| Forecasting beyond 13 weeks | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Consolidation across currencies/entities | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ |
Q6A: Banking model
- We use one primary bank for most domestic and cross-border cash-management needs (15%)
- We use a lead bank, supported by several specialist or local banks (46%)
- We use multiple banks with no clearly dominant lead bank (24%)
- Banking is primarily selected and managed independently by each country or subsidiary (8%)
- We are actively consolidating or reviewing our banking relationships (7%)
- We expect to add banks or specialist providers in the next 12 months
Q6B: Bank criteria
- Quality of digital platform, APIs and ERP/TMS connectivity (61%)
- Domestic clearing and collections capability
- Cross-border payment reach and speed (48%)
- Liquidity-management and cash-pooling capability (53%)
- Security, fraud controls and resilience (38%)
- FX pricing and execution
- Trade-finance and supply-chain-finance capability (39%)
- Local market knowledge and regulatory support
- Relationship coverage and implementation capability
- Pricing and transparency of fees (45%)
- Credit appetite and wider financing relationship
- Data, analytics and reporting
Q7: Technology
| Technology | In use | Planned | No current plan | Not familiar |
| Treasury-management system | (38%) | (21%) | ||
| ERP-bank integration | (52%) | (27%) | ||
| Bank APIs | (29%) | (34%) | ||
| Host-to-host connectivity | ||||
| SWIFT connectivity | ||||
| Payment factories or shared-service centres | ||||
| Virtual accounts | (22%) | (29%) | ||
| Automated reconciliation tools | ||||
| Treasury data analytics or dashboards | ||||
| AI-enabled cash forecasting, reconciliation or exception management | (7%) | (24%) | ||
| FX trading platforms | ||||
| Electronic trade-finance platforms |
Q8: Cross-border needs
- Faster, cheaper cross-border supplier payments (43%)
- Better visibility of inbound and outbound trade-related cash flows (32%)
- Documentary credits, collections, guarantees or standby instruments
- Digital trade documentation and reduced paper processes (47%)
- Supply-chain finance or supplier-payment programmes (37%)
- Receivables finance or distributor finance
- Import/export FX management and hedging (45%)
- Better support in restricted or hard-to-access currencies
- Regulatory, sanctions and compliance support
- Working-capital financing linked to trade flows
- Not applicable (10%)
Q9: Planned actions
- Issue an RFP or review transaction-banking providers (26%)
- Consolidate bank accounts or reduce the number of banking relationships
- Add new domestic or cross-border banking partners
- Implement or upgrade a treasury-management system (31%)
- Improve ERP-to-bank connectivity or APIs (51%)
- Establish or expand a regional treasury centre/shared-service centre
- Introduce or expand cash pooling, sweeping or liquidity structures (27%)
- Strengthen payment-security controls and fraud prevention
- Review short-term investment or surplus-cash policy
- Expand FX hedging or electronic FX execution
- Digitise trade-finance processes (27%)
- No major change planned (10%)
- Not sure