245 respondents
December 2025
The December 2025 polls should show a more nuanced picture: companies remain committed to digitisation, cash visibility and cross-border capability, but they are more cautious about trade-policy risk, currency volatility and funding conditions. The ADB expected Southeast Asian growth to remain robust overall, but noted differentiated country performance, with strong third-quarter results in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, steadier growth in Thailand and softer prospects in the Philippines.
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 (58%)
- Improving cash-flow forecasting accuracy (68%)
- Centralising or rationalising bank accounts and banking relationships
- Optimising surplus cash and short-term investments
- Strengthening payments security, fraud prevention and controls (61%)
- Reducing payment, reconciliation or manual-processing costs
- Improving collections and receivables visibility (40%)
- Supporting cross-border growth and multi-currency operations
- Managing FX exposure and execution
- Improving trade finance or supply-chain finance
- Implementing or upgrading treasury-management systems, APIs or ERP connectivity
- Using AI, automation or data analytics in treasury (29%)
- Raising debt, refinancing or improving working-capital funding (43%)
- 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 (18%)
- Inaccurate or unreliable cash-flow forecasts (29%)
- Excess idle cash or difficulty deploying surplus liquidity
- Fragmented bank accounts and banking platforms (18%)
- Manual payments, reconciliation and reporting processes (14%)
- Payment fraud, cyber risk or approval-control weaknesses (19%)
- Cross-border payments, trapped cash or regulatory restrictions
- FX volatility, hedging or execution (7%)
- Trade-finance speed, documentation or availability
- Lack of integration between banks, ERP and treasury systems
- 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 (23%)
- US$5 million to less than US$25 million (31%)
- US$25 million to less than US$100 million (26%)
- US$100 million to less than US$250 million (12%)
- US$250 million to less than US$500 million (5%)
- US$500 million to less than US$1 billion (2%)
- US$1 billion to less than US$5 billion (1%)
- 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 (46%)
- 51–75% is held in one home market (22%)
- Broadly spread across several Asian markets (20%)
- Materially spread across Asia and markets outside Asia (8%)
- We do not have a clear consolidated view of group liquidity (4%)
- 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 | (31%) | (40%) | (23%) | (6%) |
| Short-term cash forecasting, up to 13 weeks | (39%) | (37%) | (18%) | (6%) |
| 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 (11%)
- We use a lead bank, supported by several specialist or local banks (36%)
- We use multiple banks with no clearly dominant lead bank (29%)
- Banking is primarily selected and managed independently by each country or subsidiary (14%)
- We are actively consolidating or reviewing our banking relationships (10%)
- 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 (43%)
- Domestic clearing and collections capability (56%)
- Cross-border payment reach and speed
- Liquidity-management and cash-pooling capability
- Security, fraud controls and resilience (68%)
- FX pricing and execution
- Trade-finance and supply-chain-finance capability
- Local market knowledge and regulatory support
- Relationship coverage and implementation capability (41%)
- Pricing and transparency of fees (37%)
- Credit appetite and wider financing relationship
- Data, analytics and reporting
- Raising debt, refinancing or improving working-capital funding (32%)
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 | (29%) | (24%) | ||
| ERP-bank integration | (46%) | (30%) | ||
| Bank APIs | (24%) | (31%) | ||
| Host-to-host connectivity | ||||
| SWIFT connectivity | ||||
| Payment factories or shared-service centres | ||||
| Virtual accounts | (19%) | (27%) | ||
| Automated reconciliation tools | ||||
| Treasury data analytics or dashboards | ||||
| AI-enabled cash forecasting, reconciliation or exception management | (8%) | (27%) | ||
| 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 (48%)
- Better visibility of inbound and outbound trade-related cash flows
- Documentary credits, collections, guarantees or standby instruments
- Digital trade documentation and reduced paper processes
- Supply-chain finance or supplier-payment programmes
- Receivables finance or distributor finance (34%)
- Import/export FX management and hedging (39%)
- Better support in restricted or hard-to-access currencies
- Regulatory, sanctions and compliance support (29%)
- Working-capital financing linked to trade flows (41%)
- Not applicable (14%)
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
- 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 (30%)
- Improve ERP-to-bank connectivity or APIs (48%)
- Establish or expand a regional treasury centre/shared-service centre
- Introduce or expand cash pooling, sweeping or liquidity structures
- Strengthen payment-security controls and fraud prevention (56%)
- Review short-term investment or surplus-cash policy
- Expand FX hedging or electronic FX execution
- Digitise trade-finance processes
- No major change planned (8%)
- Not sure