Bank Accounts

Geopolitics and Contingency Bank Relationships in Corporate Treasury

Report date: 
11 May 2026

Commentary

How to run an efficient global treasury and cash management system, while keeping risk under control?

This dilemma is becoming increasingly acute. In the past, treasurers focused mainly on counterparty risk – the danger that a bank might fail, or decide to exit a specific market. This risk is still present, but today the real concern is geopolitics. One month before this call, we held a session on banking in the Gulf and the Middle East, where the peers had been happy with progress in cash management, banking systems and the economy. By the time this call took place, they were worrying about the physical safety of their teams in the region, and the very uncertain outlook.

As one peer put it: by centralising cash management and reducing banking relations, we have moved the risk from the individual banks to the system.

Traditionally, risk is managed by building redundancy. If you sell healthcare products into Russia or Iran, you are usually exempted from trade sanctions. But your core relationship international banks are not – so it is prudent to set up accounts with banks you can fall back on if needed.

This makes sense, but it brings challenges. In addition to increasing KYC requirements, the extra accounts often require local teams, the banks are often difficult to integrate into global cash pooling systems, and the global banking spend is further diluted, making it even harder to manage wallet share amongst the banks.

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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Accounts, Bank Relationships, Political Risk, Risk - counterparty, Sanctions
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Citi, HSBC, JP Morgan

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Usages of AI in Corporate Treasury

Report date: 
1 Apr 2026

AI is everywhere. It dominates many business discussions – and, of course, is having a profound impact on the equity and funding markets. 

In treasury, the main focus so far has been on cash forecasting. This is a promising area: it is a real problem for treasurers, and some are reporting improvements. But it is complex, and the quality of historical data in many companies’ systems is an issue.

For this report, treasurers shared with us the increasing number of uses they are finding for AI. These usually improve productivity, and include various automation efforts, such as using the tools to generate and verify bank and capital markets agreements, as well as monitoring internal systems accesses. Increasingly, AI is being used to write internal software and bots to help with these tasks.

In turn, this is having an impact on the skills in treasury: increasingly, staff members and interns who can use AI tools are making a significant contribution. At the same time, IT policies, which were initially very concerned about potential data leaks, are becoming more open – and yes, most companies have one.

We are in the early stages of a journey which will change the way we all work. Find out more in the report.

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Topics covered in this report: 
AI, Technology, Netting, Bank Accounts, Intercompany loans, Capital Markets, policies

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Banking & Cash Management in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates

Report date: 
18 Jun 2025

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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Accounts, Bank Relationships, Cash - deposits, Cash Pooling - cross border, Cash Pooling - domestic, Cash Repatriation, Local ownership
Service providers discussed in this report: 
JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Bank of America

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Approaches to Investing short-term cash in Corporate Treasury

Report date: 
22 Apr 2025

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Topics covered in this report: 
Money Market Funds, Investing, Risk - counterparty, Bank Accounts
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Westpac, Bloomberg, JP Morgan, Bank Mendes Gans, spotfire, Blackrock, Cachematrix, FIS, 360T, Santander, Itau, Citi, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Pictet Asset Management

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Mexico - Corporate Treasury Update

Report date: 
12 Jan 2024

Commentary

In many ways, Mexico is a paradox. It has a vital, and complicated, relationship with its northern neighbour: apart from anything else, migration across its land border into the USA is a significant, and highly contentious, topic in US domestic politics.

But the reality is that Mexico has a thriving economy, and has modernised its financial and banking infrastructure to the point where the consensus on the call was that it is a country where it is relatively easy to work, and where most modern treasury management techniques can be used. There are no exchange controls, cash can be freely transferred across the national borders, and cross border cash pooling is regularly practiced. FX hedging can be done freely both onshore and offshore, and the country is well banked, with both good local banks and most international banks being well represented.

Despite this overall positive environment, we still had a lively call. There are a series of challenges, and some points were not always totally clear. None is particularly serious, but they still take up management time and attention:

  • Citibank operate through a relationship with Banamex. While this works well, several participants reported service level issues, and there were challenges with data not being transmitted through the IT systems. This resulted in manual interventions which should not have been required.
  • Consistent with their global strategy, Citi/Banamex are withdrawing from the retail banking sector. For some participants, this caused a problem, as banks in Mexico share the Latin American practice of giving employees a better deal on their retail banking services if the company pays payroll through them.
  • Otherwise, some participants reported issues setting up and managing local
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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Accounts, Bank Relationships, Cash Pooling - cross border, intercompany netting, payroll, POBO/ROBO
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Banamex, JP Morgan, HSBC, Bank Mendes Gans, Bank of America, BBVA, Citi

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