Beyond the Hype: Building a Proactive, Agentic Treasury with Mike Dion and Nilus

The conversation around AI in treasury has shifted. We’ve moved past the magic button phase and into a more practical, impactful era: the era of the AI Agent.

Last Thursday, we sat down with Mike Dion — founder of F9 Finance and instructor at The Delta by Nilus, and our own Avichai Medalie-Bacon, to discuss how finance leaders are moving from reactive reporting to proactive orchestration.

If you missed the session, here are the four key pillars we covered:

1. From Reactive to Proactive: The Rise of AI Agents

Traditional treasury is often a game of catch up. Like reacting to bank statements that are 24 hours old. Mike and Avichai discussed how AI agents transform this by monitoring cash movements in real-time.

• The Shift: Instead of a treasurer asking "What happened yesterday?", an AI agent provides cash movement alerts the moment a threshold is crossed or an anomaly is detected.
• Strategic Impact: By offloading the monitoring to agents, finance leaders can focus on navigating economic uncertainties with data-backed confidence rather than gut feel.

2. Mastering Cash, Liquidity & Forecasting

Forecasting is where AI moves the needle most. However, Mike emphasized that teams shouldn't try to "boil the ocean".

• Where to Start: Begin with liquidity tracking. AI-powered platforms can ingest massive amounts of transaction-level data to identify patterns humans might miss.
• Risk Management: AI doesn’t just predict cash. It enhances risk strategy by simulating what-if scenarios, allowing teams to stress-test liquidity before a crisis hits.

3. Automation That Actually Moves the Needle

We’ve all heard of automation, but Mike and Avichai focused on the workflows that provide the highest ROI: Financial Reconciliations.

• Closing the Books: By automating the tedious matching of bank records to ERP entries, AI reduces the month-end crunch from days to hours.
• Control vs. Automation: The consensus was clear — AI isn't about giving up control. It’s about augmented intelligence, where the AI handles the data processing while the human maintains the final audit & approve authority.

4. The Human Element: Adoption & Change Management

The biggest hurdle isn’t the technology — it’s the culture.

• Simplify First: You cannot automate a broken process. Finance leaders must simplify workflows before layering on AI.
• The Mindset Shift: To move teams from "AI will replace us" to "AI will empower us”, focus on the Caffeinated Intern concept. AI handles the grunt work (the spreadsheets), allowing the team to graduate to higher-level strategic roles.

Ready to start your own journey? 

Check out Mike Dion’s new course — “Automate Any Treasury Process Without Writing Code,” now available at The Delta by Nilus.