287 respondents
December 2024
1. Top treasury priority: What are your organisation’s three most important treasury and cash-management priorities over the next 12 months?
Select up to three.
- Improving cash visibility across entities, accounts and countries (70%)
- Improving cash-flow forecasting accuracy (58%)
- Centralising or rationalising bank accounts and banking relationships
- Optimising surplus cash and short-term investments (60%)
- Strengthening payments security, fraud prevention and controls (42%)
- 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 (48%)
- Improving trade finance or supply-chain finance
- Implementing or upgrading treasury-management systems, APIs or ERP connectivity (52%)
- Using AI, automation or data analytics in treasury
- Raising debt, refinancing or improving working-capital funding
- Other
2. Greatest pain point: Which single issue causes the greatest operational or strategic difficulty for your treasury/finance team today?
Select one.
- Lack of real-time or timely group-wide cash visibility (24%)
- Inaccurate or unreliable cash-flow forecasts (21%)
- Excess idle cash or difficulty deploying surplus liquidity (14%)
- Fragmented bank accounts and banking platforms (8%)
- Manual payments, reconciliation and reporting processes
- 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 (17%)
- Bank service quality or implementation delays
- Lack of internal treasury expertise or resources
- Other (3%)
3. Cash held: Approximately how much cash and near-cash liquidity does your organisation currently manage across all entities and currencies?
Please select a range. Responses will be reported only in aggregate and no individual company information will be disclosed.
- Less than US$5 million (7%)
- US$5 million to less than US$25 million (15%)
- US$25 million to less than US$100 million (24%)
- US$100 million to less than US$250 million (20%)
- US$250 million to less than US$500 million (13%)
- US$500 million to less than US$1 billion (11%)
- US$1 billion to less than US$5 billion (10%)
- US$5 billion or more
- Prefer not to say
Note: “Cash and near-cash liquidity” includes bank deposits, cash equivalents and short-term liquid investments available for treasury management. Please exclude restricted cash where possible.
4. Cash structure: How is this liquidity generally distributed?
Select the option that best describes your organisation.
- More than 75% is held in one home market (11%)
- 51–75% is held in one home market (16%)
- Broadly spread across several Asian markets (43%)
- Materially spread across Asia and markets outside Asia (27%)
- We do not have a clear consolidated view of group liquidity (3%)
- Prefer not to say
5. Forecasting and visibility: How would you assess your organisation’s current capability to forecast and view group cash positions?
| Capability | Limited/manual | Partly automated | Mostly automated | Real-time or near-real-time |
| Daily cash visibility | (11%) | (28%) | (40%) | (21%) |
| Short-term cash forecasting, up to 13 weeks | (19%) | (31%) | (35%) | (15%) |
| Forecasting beyond 13 weeks | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ |
| Consolidation across currencies/entities | ○ | ○ | ○ | ○ |
6. Banking relationship model: Which statement best describes your current transaction-banking model?
- We use one primary bank for most domestic and cross-border cash-management needs (12%)
- We use a lead bank, supported by several specialist or local banks (48%)
- We use multiple banks with no clearly dominant lead bank (28%)
- Banking is primarily selected and managed independently by each country or subsidiary (5%)
- We are actively consolidating or reviewing our banking relationships (7%)
- We expect to add banks or specialist providers in the next 12 months
What would most influence a decision to appoint, retain or expand a cash-management bank relationship?
Select up to three.
- Quality of digital platform, APIs and ERP/TMS connectivity (64%)
- Domestic clearing and collections capability
- Cross-border payment reach and speed (62%)
- Liquidity-management and cash-pooling capability (58%)
- Security, fraud controls and resilience (49%)
- FX pricing and execution (54%)
- Trade-finance and supply-chain-finance capability
- Local market knowledge and regulatory support
- Relationship coverage and implementation capability (43%)
- Pricing and transparency of fees
- Credit appetite and wider financing relationship
- Data, analytics and reporting
7. Technology adoption: Which treasury and transaction-banking technologies does your organisation use today, and what are you likely to adopt within the next 24 months?
For each item, choose: “In use”, “Planned”, “No current plan”, or “Not familiar”.
| Technology | In use | Planned | No current plan | Not familiar |
| Treasury-management system | (63%) | (17%) | ||
| ERP-bank integration | (68%) | (18%) | ||
| Bank APIs | (49%) | (31%) | ||
| Host-to-host connectivity | ||||
| SWIFT connectivity | ||||
| Payment factories or shared-service centres | ||||
| Virtual accounts | (39%) | (29%) | ||
| Automated reconciliation tools | ||||
| Treasury data analytics or dashboards | ||||
| AI-enabled cash forecasting, reconciliation or exception management | (12%) | (31%) | ||
| FX trading platforms | ||||
| Electronic trade-finance platforms |
8. Trade finance and cross-border needs: For organisations with cross-border trade or operations, which areas need the greatest improvement from banks?
Select up to three; include “Not applicable” as an option.
- Faster, cheaper cross-border supplier payments (63%)
- Better visibility of inbound and outbound trade-related cash flows
- Documentary credits, collections, guarantees or standby instruments
- Digital trade documentation and reduced paper processes (43%)
- Supply-chain finance or supplier-payment programmes
- Receivables finance or distributor finance
- Import/export FX management and hedging (53%)
- Better support in restricted or hard-to-access currencies
- Regulatory, sanctions and compliance support (34%)
- Working-capital financing linked to trade flows
- Not applicable (5%)
9. Spending and switching intention: Over the next 12–24 months, what is your organisation most likely to do in relation to cash-management and treasury banking?
Select all that apply.
- Issue an RFP or review transaction-banking providers (36%)
- 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
- Improve ERP-to-bank connectivity or APIs (54%)
- Establish or expand a regional treasury centre/shared-service centre
- Introduce or expand cash pooling, sweeping or liquidity structures (34%)
- Strengthen payment-security controls and fraud prevention
- Review short-term investment or surplus-cash policy (45%)
- Expand FX hedging or electronic FX execution
- Digitise trade-finance processes
- No major change planned (8%)
- Not sure