Treasury management

Treasury management (or treasury operations) includes management of an enterprise's holdings, with the ultimate goal of managing the firm's liquidity and mitigating its operational-, financial- and reputational risk. Treasury Management includes a firm's collections, disbursements, concentration, investment and funding activities. In larger firms, it may also inhere the financial risk management function. In general, a company's treasury operations comes under the control of the CFO, Vice-president / Director of Finance, or Treasurer; and is handled on a day-to-day basis by the organization's treasury staff, controller, or comptroller. Most banks have whole departments devoted to treasury management and supporting their clients' needs in this area. Smaller banks are increasingly launching and/or expanding their treasury management functions and offerings, because of the market opportunity afforded by the recent economic environment (with banks of all sizes focusing on the clients they serve best), availability of highly seasoned treasury management professionals, access to industry standard, third-party technology providers' products and services tiered according to the needs of smaller clients, and investment in education and other best practices. A number of independent treasury management systems (TMS) are available, allowing enterprises to conduct treasury management internally. Bank Treasuries may, in turn, have the following departments: A fixed income or money market desk that is devoted to buying and selling interest bearing securities. A foreign exchange desk that exchanges currencies as a service to the clients. A capital markets or equities desk that deals in shares listed on the stock market. In addition, the Treasury function may also have an asset liability management (ALM) desk that manages the risk of interest rate mismatch and liquidity; and a funds transfer pricing or pooling function that prices liquidity for business lines (asset sales teams) within the bank.