The shift to independent treasury is reshaping the world of corporate finance, driven by new strategies and technologies—from automated financial forecasts to AI-driven engines—that are replacing legacy systems and increasing yields.
To realize its full potential, corporate finance leaders are investing in key areas that will accelerate this transformation. The next phase of private treasury will be defined by three areas of investment focus, said Sayantan Chakraborty, head of Digital Payments at Fiserv. “Financial managers are no longer visible; they don't have widgets that can make that visible in real time,” he said. “The gap isn't math. It's action.”
While agent AI can predict currency positions and draft funding orders, Chakraborty notes, the company's current infrastructure often operates in batch mode. The first important missing link is complete, real-time cash position, second, combined with rule-based, timely cash movement across all payment methods—including instant and traditional—and third, the integration of new features such as token deposits and programmable payments.
Technological travel still requires human expertise, however. And Chakraborty advises building around legacy ERP systems rather than waiting for complete modernization.
“Think of it as an AI-powered autopilot added to the old cockpit,” he says. “Policies are implemented, actions are implemented, and audit procedures are maintained without forcing a complete replacement on day one, under the watchful eye of a trained staff and cabinet team.”
The multi-year, big-bang development is over, Chakraborty argues. Instead, the best course is to use a lightweight, 24/7 automation layer to manage real-time balances, rules, and payments.
As faster payment methods and real-time reporting become more common, Chakraborty predicts the current trend of accounts receivable before the cutoff expires. Instead, “the AI of the agent will take the treasury from one-day orders to continuous, timely funding: as soon as the execution is consistent with the purpose in all routes.”
This change will disrupt liquidity, cause idle balances to decline and drive banks to focus their revenue on 24/7 payment services, intraday credit, and real-time liquidity.
Siemens, a leading independent treasury office, has adopted JP Morgan's (formerly Onyx, now Kinexys) programmable payment feature by late 2023. Siemens is transitioning to advanced programmable payments using a blockchain-based ledger, JPM Coin. This allows their bank accounts to automatically manage money and perform transactions based on pre-defined rules. To address the inefficiencies of non-performing pre-funded balances, Siemens adopted a timely approach. Funds are transferred to a specific account only at the time of payment. If the balance drops below a set threshold, the system automatically sweeps funds from the central cash point, allowing Siemens to operate with near-zero balances in local accounts.
“In my experience, the biggest challenge is not technology, but a change in the mindset of finance and treasury,” said Heiko Nix, global head of Cash Management and Payments, Siemens. “For almost every technical problem, there is a solution. But simplifying embedded processes and changing the way people think about wealth and its role takes a lot of time and effort. Actually, you don't need to convince everyone at the same time, what's important is to create enough momentum throughout the organization to enable real change.”
'Forward-Look Control Tower'
AI creates a strategic opportunity, said John Stevens, senior vice president, global head of Capital Markets, Financial Institutions and Working Capital at Kyriba.
“AI can transform operational finance management from a backward-looking reporting function into a forward-looking control tower,” he says. “Instead of focusing on past events, you can prepare for the future in real time. This is because tasks that used to require manual, analog effort, or require analysts to spend long hours compiling reports, can now be done in an instant. This real-time capability allows for more rational and timely decision making.”
Companies still need to work closely with vendors to build AI safely, he warns: “We don't see a single 'standalone' product coming out of the box for a variety of treasury needs.” The future will be “unbundled,” he predicts, though it's important to be precise about what this means.
Although Kyriba App Studio serves as an extensible layer for building bespoke integrations and workflows in the Kyriba environment, Stevens emphasizes that it is not an agent-building toolkit. The agent's AI layer is TAI, which provides agents developed by Kyriba with a “clear person in the loop.”
Using a third-party model does not automatically make an AI tool less intelligent and using only in-house models does not make it more intelligent, he argues.
“In the financial sector, the deciding factor is whether AI can be used safely and sustainably in a controlled environment,” Stevens said. TAI is not well positioned to avoid foreign LLMs. “We use the best foreign model [Anthropic’s Claude] within controlled, controlled deployment. The difference is wrapping the model: strict limits on what data it can access, clear rules on what it is allowed to do, and a full audit trail of activity.”
Essentially, that means AI can help generate information—summaries, explanations, flag anomalies, incident narratives—while anything that might affect payments, payouts, or risk remains under field control, approval, and policy-driven workflows.
“So it's not a binary choice between openness and dominance,” he notes. “Some organizations will need to make independent choices for reasons of policy or power, but most regulated stocks are looking for AI to rule: models that are robust, implemented in a secure, testable way, and designed to control real-world performance.”
Redefining Corporate Finance
The potential benefits to the treasury have created a push for independence, complete with aggressive industry targets and a race for “fully independent” platforms.
HighRadius recently revamped its agent AI platform with the goal of achieving more than 90% automation in the CFO Office by 2027. The program involves deploying AI agents across six product suites and 20 products within accounts receivable, payable, treasury, closing, and integration. The release of 186 AI agents, announced last February, brings HighRadius closer to the “autonomous platform vision” first announced in 2019, with spending and revenue forecasting already showing 90% untouchable automation.
HighRadius prioritizes “creating measurable value,” which it ensures with customers through the agreed upon success method (MASC). This value is delivered through automated agents, designed for 90%-plus automation, and assisted agents, designed to triple user effectiveness.
CEO Sashi Narahari sees the agency's AI as an interim step toward HighRadius' goal of making all of its products “fully autonomous”—defined as 90%—and an untouchable end-of-year process—by 2027. Narahari emphasizes the critical nature of this goal, such that failure to achieve it can lead to the downfall of the company.
What about central banks that may not want to jump into a full transition? To them, Chakraborty advises that a single, reliable orchestration endpoint is better than many different APIs.
“The key to this is a real-time balance and payment API,” he says “to reveal positions, limits, and quick movements through a single, robust interface. That's what allows AI-driven treasury systems to act as agents, not just analysts.” Combining such a process with token deposit movements is also beneficial where possible, he adds.
That said, the journey towards autonomous treasury, led by pioneering companies like Siemens and driven by the emergence of agent AI, is redefining corporate finance.
The shift is not just about increased efficiency gains but will be seen as a key strategy to increase yield, gain real-time revenue, and move beyond the limitations of legacy systems. Corporate treasurers who embrace this change are attracted by the promised roadmap for a future-proof role. For independent financial institutions, independent treasury is an urgent call to align their offerings with the new era of continuous, smart, and timely financial management.
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