In a world of constant disruption, Mansour Davarian, Head of Transaction Banking Solutions at Lloyds, asserts that treasurers who harness technology, data, and strong banking partnerships can turn uncertainty into a powerful driver of resilience and growth.
Geopolitical uncertainty, changing trade dynamics, climate events, and unpredictable global economics are reshaping the operating landscape for corporate treasurers.
But despite a rapidly evolving landscape, businesses remain optimistic. By taking a strategic stance, effectively managing volatility can be a source of strength. By foster resilience, hone financial strategies, or tap into new efficiencies with technology, treasurers can effectively become the strategic backbone of their organisations.
So how can treasury teams chart a steady course through uncertainty?
Ongoing unpredictability has forced businesses to rethink liquidity and working capital. Many corporates have shifted from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’ inventory models, carrying higher stock to protect production. While this approach mitigates disruption risk, it comes with added financing and warehousing costs.
Some firms have explored nearshoring or onshoring, but even localised supply chains are vulnerable to tariffs, labour shortages, or natural disasters. One in four organisations report disruption from extreme weather, yet more than a third still do not fully analyse climate risk1.
Corporate firms are likely to have complex global supply chains, which may be overly-dependent on a small number of countries or territories and leave them exposed to shortages and disruption. Mapping, stress-testing, and diversification can help to reveal a business’ risk exposure, and allow them to take appropriate action.
Additionally, financial tools such as Supply Chain Finance or Receivables Purchase can help to improve the business’ working capital position to be better prepared for unexpected volatility. These tools not only support suppliers’ liquidity but also strengthen relationships, turning resilience into a competitive advantage.
Currency markets remain reactive to political events, sanctions, tariffs, and interest-rate expectations. For global businesses, an uncertain environment means that foreign exchange (FX) volatility can quickly eat into margins.
Mapping exposures across the organisation is the essential first step towards managing this. This often reveals inefficiencies, such as paying invoices in a suboptimal currency, which treasurers can address to reduce costs. Updating centralised FX policies is equally important; many were designed in calmer markets and no longer reflect today’s environment.
With a clear view of exposure, treasurers can deploy practical tools: currency accounts to control conversion timing, forward contracts and natural hedges to protect margins, and transactional FX solutions to increase efficiency. In doing so, treasurers can transform FX management from a reactive task into a source of resilience.
Technology is no longer a differentiator; it’s business as usual. But challenges such as cost, limited resources, and integration complexity continue to slow adoption.
The benefits, however, are compelling. Digital tools like externally addressable virtual accounts simplify reconciliation and cash mobilisation, while API-powered Embedded Payment solutions allow treasurers to initiate near-instant payments directly from internal systems. By automating routine tasks, treasury teams release capacity for higher-value analysis and forecasting.
There is an unprecedented opportunity to make operations faster, cheaper and less cumbersome if technology is treated as an investment in long-term resilience.
Treasurers now have more data at their fingertips than ever before. But it all comes down to quality, and obtaining insightful data can be difficult in large organisations with many different systems, teams and locations. Without reliable and consistent inputs, forecasting and decision-making risk being undermined.
Investing in systems that consolidate data across multiple banks and geographies can transform raw transaction records into actionable insight. Real-time dashboards, predictive analytics, and cash-flow forecasts give treasurers the clarity they need to manage liquidity and risk more effectively.
In many ways, reliable, consistent and complete data has become as important to treasury as cash itself. Those who fulfil its potential can achieve new levels of efficiency and foresight.
Needless to say, the remit of the treasurer has expanded dramatically. Beyond liquidity and risk management, they are now expected to provide strategic insights on technology, payments, and data, and often with fewer resources at their disposal.
This makes the bank-treasurer relationship a pivotal one. By encouraging a consultative, discovery-led approach, rather than acting as product providers, banks can help treasurers identify new areas and ideas for exploration. Drawing on cross-industry experience, banks can share proven solutions and best practices, helping treasurers reduce costs, improve efficiency, and identify new growth avenues.
By working side by side, treasurers and their banks can turn today’s volatility into an opportunity for long-term improvement.
With resilient supply chains, disciplined FX strategies, digital tools, trustworthy data, and collaborative banking relationships, treasurers can turn disruption into a catalyst for resilience, innovation, and growth.
Treasurers are no longer passive custodians of liquidity. They are architects of resilience, commercial advisers, and strategic anchors in a world that refuses to sit still. For those who embrace the role, uncertainty becomes less a threat than an opening.