SWIFT

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, Banking & FX in India

Report date: 
1 Apr 2025

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CXC reports are based on confidential peer discussions between senior corporate treasurers sharing their solutions to complex treasury challenges.

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Topics covered in this report: 
FX, Hedging FX, Funding, GiftCity, Bank Relationships, Collections - domestic
Service providers discussed in this report: 
DBS, Citi, JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, ICICI, HDFC, State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, SWIFT, 360T, Bloomberg

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Corporate Treasury & FX in Egypt

Report date: 
29 Oct 2024

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Topics covered in this report: 
Bank Relationships, FX, Hedging FX, Letters of Credit (LC), Customs, Factoring, Cash Repatriation
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Standard Chartered, HSBC, QNB, Citi, SWIFT, Commercial International Bank Egypt

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Corporate Treasury KYC & AML Issues and Approaches

Report date: 
29 Nov 2023
Topics covered in this report: 
AML, KYC
Service providers discussed in this report: 
JP Morgan, Citi, Barclays, Standard Chartered, ING, Santander, BNP Paribas, Bank of America, SWIFT, Kyriba, Ethixbase, CoorpID, HSBC, Avallone

Please email Rupert at rupert@complexcountries.com if you have any comments to add, or discussion points you would like to raise on this topic.

Treasury & FX in Russia

Report date: 
30 Jan 2019
  • Documentation – complex, time consuming & critical
  • Inter banks – 2 way pooling is available in theory but not at all straight forward in practice
  • Find hedging banks- operating outside to inside
  • Sanctions are very specific – details are key and need to be looked at closely
Topics covered in this report: 
Cash Pooling - cross border, Hedging FX, Sanctions, Zero balance accounts
Service providers discussed in this report: 
Rosbank, VTB, Sberbank, PNC, Commerzbank, SWIFT, LexisNexis, Citi

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Treasury & FX in Egypt

Report date: 
12 Feb 2019
  • Egypt is a prime example of how you need a different mindset in complex countries. Two years ago, we would have just heard tales of woe and people struggling to keep basic operations running. Now, it is beginning to work again. But for how long? These countries have cycles: it is important not to despair during the difficult periods, and not to get carried away during the good ones.

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Topics covered in this report: 
FX, Hedging FX, T-bills, Invoicing, Cash Repatriation, Banking
Service providers discussed in this report: 
SWIFT, Citi

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Treasury & FX in China

Report date: 
14 Mar 2019

Included in this report: Entrustment pools, cross-border pooling, electronic BADs

Topics covered in this report: 
Entrustment loans, Bankers Acceptance Drafts, KYC, Invoicing, Cash Pooling - cross border, Cash Pooling - domestic, Bank Relationships, Supply Chain Finance, Funding
Service providers discussed in this report: 
SWIFT, ICBC, Bank of China

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