POBO/ROBO

Corporate Treasury: Approaches to In-House Banking

Report date: 
21 Apr 2026

Commentary

Cash pooling and sweeping is one of the most basic and widespread tools in modern cash management. To the extent allowed under exchange controls and regulations, it is important to bring all the liquidity into a central entity, and avoid having cash balances earning little to no interest, while some entities are borrowing and paying spreads. 

By definition, this central entity performs the functions of a bank: it is taking deposits and making loans - for tax reasons, it needs to pay and charge interest on the balances. This also means it faces a lot of the challenges banks have: it needs good systems to track the loan balances and calculate and post the interest, and it also needs to ensure any FX exposures are properly identified and managed. Of course, it also needs to have access to sufficient group funding to meet the group’s net cash needs.

Unsurprisingly, once they have set up the relevant structures, many treasurers find they can be used to provide additional functions: POBO (Payment On Behalf Of) is quite common; ROBO (Receive On Behalf Of) exists but is less frequent. Some, but not all, have used their in-house banks to eliminate intercompany netting: any transaction between group companies gives rise to a debit or a credit to their accounts with the IHB, which will be cash settled or not in accordance with regulations and cash management policies. The central entity can also be used for FX management, executing trades with the market and doing back-to-back intercompany hedges. 

In this call, peers went through the systems they use, and gave a frank assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of IHBs – it is not all plain sailing. 

 

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Topics covered in this report: 
in-house bank, Netting, Cash Pooling - cross border, POBO/ROBO, Funding, Hedging FX, Virtual accounts
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Chatham Financial, Citi, FIS, Wall Street Systems, Kyriba, SAP, TIS, SWIFT

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Corporate Treasury: Approaches to Cash Pooling

Report date: 
17 Sep 2025

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Topics covered in this report: 
Cash Pooling - cross border, Cash Pooling - domestic, Zero balance accounts, in-house bank, withholding tax, Tax, Notional Pooling, Virtual accounts, POBO/ROBO, Target Balance Account
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Bank Mendes Gans, BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Citi, Bank of America, MUFG, Standard Chartered, Commerzbank, PNC, Bank of Montreal

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Corporate Treasury: Approaches & Experiences with Multilateral Netting

Report date: 
23 Jun 2025

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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Relationships, Netting, intercompany netting, Intercompany loans, In house bank, POBO/ROBO, Hedging FX
Service providers discussed in this report: 
CoProcess, GTreasury, Kyriba, it2, Finastra, Integrity

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User Experiences with Virtual Bank Accounts

Report date: 
20 May 2025

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Topics covered in this report: 
Virtual accounts, POBO/ROBO, COBO, in-house bank, Cash Pooling - cross border, Cash Pooling - domestic, payroll
Service providers discussed in this report: 
BNP Paribas, Citi, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Barclays, HSBC, FIS, Coupa, Blackline, SAP, Deutsche Bank

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Managing Bank Relationships in Japan

Report date: 
18 Mar 2024

Commentary

With complex countries, we usually think of emerging markets. Japan is one of the most advanced, largest and affluent economies in the world – but it is also a very complex place for foreign companies to operate in.

Usually, the complexity for treasurers comes from regulation. In Japan, this is not the case: the yen is freely traded in one of the deepest markets; cash can be pooled and swept both within the country and across borders; one participant does POBO there; Japanese banks willingly report transactions and balances by MT 940; it has deep and open capital markets; and four of the world’s twenty largest banks by assets are Japanese. Instead, the complexity comes from a very strong culture, which is often not well understood by non Japanese, and which leads to a different way of doing business.

This call, which was well attended and quite animated, went into the challenges foreign treasurers face in this environment. Peers raised the following:

  • High bank fees: Japanese banks are reluctant to negotiate these down
  • Japanese banks are not used to RFPs for cash management – this is not how the domestic market operates. Many large Japanese companies have strong historical relationships with their banks, which often involve minority shareholdings.
  • While MT 940s are not an issue, one participant faced significant issues getting their Japanese bank to implement even a simple host to host communication
  • Communications challenges: it can be difficult to find Japanese employees who speak good English – very few bankers in domestic operations speak it.
  • The need to carefully manage business meetings: these are usually more formal than in many other cultures: deference to senior personnel is required
  • Difficulty managing onshore operations from a remote location: the local online banking tools are nearly all Japanese language only
  • The language issue is further complicated by the katakana character set
  • Resistance of local teams to change, especially if it involves working with foreign banks
  • Complexity in managing relationships and wallet share with Japanese banks, who are often key global providers of credit and FX
  • The use of company chops instead of signatures, and the related control issues
  • The requirement to use local bank accounts for certain types of tax payments
  • Security and confidentiality in Japanese online payment systems is not best in class – one participant had an issue with a single person (not in HR) making all payroll payments
  • Repatriating cash via dividends and intercompany loans is not a problem, but it brings the usual complications: the need for retained earnings (one participant’s business receives advance payments), withholding tax and currency hedging cost. 

How to handle these problems?

  • One peer did an RFP a few years ago, and awarded

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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Relationships, Intercompany loans, Dividends, POBO/ROBO, RFPs, Cash Pooling - cross border, Cash Pooling - domestic
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Bank of America, JP Morgan, MUFG, Mizuho, SMBC, Citi, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank

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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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