In a 24/7/365 payments environment, liquidity management has moved decisively into the strategic spotlight. For banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), the ability to act confidently on cash positions in real time underpins operational resilience, regulatory rigor, and competitive advantage. Yet many financial institutions (FIs) continue navigating this new reality with legacy infrastructure, manual processes, and fragmented systems, restricting visibility.
These challenges were explored during the recent Techsommet virtual event, Reimagining Treasury Management, where Craig Jeffery, Founder and Managing Partner at Strategic Treasurer, together with Leo Gil, VP of Product Management for Treasury Solutions at Bottomline, dug deep into how banks and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) can maximise liquidity while improving cash visibility.
The duo agreed on one premise from the get-go: awareness of the problem is widespread, yet corrective action continues to lag.
The Cash Visibility Gap and the Rise of the Payment Pioneers
Feedback from the Techsommet audience about how their FIs currently view cash, responses closely reflected findings from Bottomline’s Fifth Annual Future of Competitive Advantage in Banking & Payments Report. Only around a third of institutions reported having a single, consolidated view of cash across the business. Nearly half indicated that while some automation exists, visibility remains incomplete. More than one in five institutions said manual spreadsheets are still used to manage cash positions.
Barriers behind these figures are well understood. Gil spoke of disparate systems as the most common obstacle, preventing an end-to-end view of liquidity across accounts, geographies, and various payment rails. Limited investment and inconsistent prioritization also slow progress. All the while, regulatory expectations and customer demands are increasing the pressure on treasury teams operating in ever-more complex environments.
At the same time, the research highlights a distinct group of high-performing institutions it categorizes as “Payment Pioneers.” These banks and NBFIs have made meaningful progress in modernising their payments and liquidity infrastructure. As a result, this group is far more likely to have achieved an enterprise-wide view of cash.
This level of maturity enables more accurate forecasting, intraday decision-making, and advanced analytics. By contrast, a significant proportion of the wider market remains (because it bears repeating) dependent on spreadsheet-based cash management. One in three institutions report that legacy systems hinder them from keeping current with industry changes and regulatory demands. The Payment Pioneers group demonstrates what becomes possible when constraints are removed, opening the way for integration, real-time visibility, proactive liquidity optimisation, and greater confidence in both risk and opportunity management.
Why Real-Time Liquidity Is Now Important. Really.
Real-time liquidity management has become essential because risk decisions depend on up-to-date data, noted Jeffreys. In an environment being reshaped by instant payments, compressed settlement cycles, and heightened regulatory scrutiny, delayed or incomplete information creates blind spots that institutions can’t afford.
Regulators now expect improved intraday views, while real-time payment schemes continue to shrink liquidity windows. At the same time, treasury functions are often dependent on systems that were never designed to communicate seamlessly with one another. Without real-time insight, institutions face increased operational and liquidity risk, slower response times, and reduced agility when speed and precision are most critical.
The challenge is more structural than tactical. Many institutions operate multiple cash, treasury, and payments platforms accumulated over years of growth, acquisitions, and regional expansion. These environments frequently include NOSTRO and VOSTRO dependencies, virtual account structures, regional payment engines, and legacy data formats that inhibit consistent reporting and forecasting. Competing transformation agendas can leave treasury modernisation deprioritized, reinforcing fragmentation.
ISO 20022, Automation, and the Business Case for Modernisation
ISO 20022 is widely recognised as a foundational enabler of payments modernisation, but its real value emerges only when institutions move beyond compliance. Richer, more structured data dramatically improves reconciliation accuracy, forecasting quality, and intraday monitoring. Both Gil and Jeffreys offered a view on the upsides of integration.
Automated balance ingestion reduces manual effort, while standardised formats enable interoperability across previously siloed systems. Better data also reduces false positives, accelerates exception handling, and improves the overall customer experience.
Bottomline advocates a practical, phased approach to modernisation that connects systems through APIs, standardises data, centralises liquidity information, and operationalises insight through dashboards, alerts, and AI-driven forecasting.
This approach allows institutions to realise immediate value while building a scalable foundation for future payment schemes and regulatory demands.
When framed around outcomes, the business case for treasury transformation is compelling. Real-time visibility and automation reduce operational and liquidity risk. Eliminating spreadsheets and slow reconciliations improves efficiency. Enhanced resilience is achieved through multi-rail support and real-time exception management.
Most importantly, improved insight allows institutions to optimise liquidity buffers and release trapped cash, directly supporting profitability.
Treasury modernisation, therefore, is not simply a technology upgrade, Jeffreys said. It’s a strategic investment in resilience, performance, and competitive advantage.
Moving Toward Payment Pioneer Maturity
For banks and NBFIs operating in this climate, progress starts with understanding where visibility is fragmented or delayed, then prioritising automation in high-effort treasury processes, and investing in real-time, ISO-native technology (or partnerships) that can scale alongside evolving payment schemes and regulatory requirements.
As Leo Gil noted, Bottomline supports institutions throughout this journey, enabling real-time, enterprise-wide liquidity visibility, automating high-friction treasury processes, consolidating and standardising data, and delivering AI-enabled forecasting and analytics.
For organisations ready to modernise treasury operations and elevate liquidity management, becoming a Payment Pioneer is no longer aspirational. It’s achievable.