Treasury and Risk - REAL November 2019 Special Report

functions “will need to respond by changing role definitions, performance expectations, and hiring plans.”

 Banking relationships. Some treasury consultants point to declining levels of satisfaction with banking partners’ pay-ments-related services. Given the need for increased speed and treasury functions’ drive to improve end-to-end payment processes, some banking relationships are “creating levels of friction not seen in recent times,” Jeffery observes.

Adjusting Investment Priorities and Policies

Given the variety of internal and external issues currently challenging cash management activities, it is not surprising that corporate treasurers continue to favor approaches and investment allocations that safeguard principal and increase immediately available liquidity.

The investment priorities that this
year’s survey respondents identified
are notable in that they illustrate an
even stronger desire to protect prin-
cipal—that is the top short-term in-
vestment goal in this year’s results
(and the third-highest priority in
the 2018 results). The proportion of
respondents who selected “eliminat-
ing any chance of lost value in prin-
cipal” as their top priority doubled in
2019. “Understanding and mitigating
the impact of geopolitical uncertain-
ty” is also the top priority for a far
larger proportion of 2019 respondents
(16 percent) than 2018 respondents
( 6 percent). “I think the priority of
‘eliminating any chance of lost value
in principal’ may move even higher
if uncertainty in the business climate
increases over the coming months,”
Nguyen says. See Figure 4.

As treasury groups in global companies work through these priorities, they are not planning to repatriate a lot of funds. Among the respondents whose companies have cash or short-term investments overseas, 64