Treasury’s Turning Point: What AI Actually Looks Like in the Real World

“AI won’t replace you. But a person using AI might.”

That quote set the tone at TMANY’s Future of AI in Treasury roundtable, co-hosted by Nilus and Redbridge. And it hit home.

Because here’s the truth:

AI in treasury is no longer theoretical. It’s not a slide deck or a distant roadmap. It’s already reshaping how finance teams forecast, reconcile, report, and act.

At this roundtable, treasury leaders got honest about what they’re trying, what’s actually working, and what’s still standing in the way.

The Shift Is Here, And It’s Personal

Treasury leaders aren’t chasing buzzwords. They’re chasing hours, clarity, and confidence. What surfaced again and again was how everyday pain points are ripe for transformation, and how much time is lost trying to manually solve problems that AI is now equipped to handle automatically.

Here’s what attendees want AI to fix first:

• Cash flow visibility: Too many teams still don’t know their cash position until the books close. Real-time insight is non-negotiable.
• Forecast accuracy: Static models, error-prone spreadsheets, and unpredictable variances are no longer acceptable in volatile markets.
• Manual reporting: Executive summaries, board packs, and audit memos are draining finance time, and they shouldn’t be.
• Idle liquidity: Without dynamic analysis, cash sits dormant. AI can help unlock working capital by optimizing short-term allocations.
• Burnout: High-value talent is stuck cleaning CSVs and tagging transactions. Treasury isn’t short on brainpower; it’s short on bandwidth.

These are not hypothetical use cases. They’re the daily friction points slowing down strategic work. And the message from the room was clear: if AI can lift the load, it should.

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Inside the Roundtable: What We Heard

The roundtable, co-led by Nilus Co-Founder & CEO Daniel Kalish and Redbridge’s Bridget Meyer, was equal parts reality check and roadmap. It wasn’t about whether treasury should adopt AI; it was about how to get it right.

Here’s what’s already in motion:

• Narrative automation: Teams are using AI to write variance memos, condense 10-Ks, and prep one-page liquidity summaries.
• Document parsing: Loan agreements, bank statements, and payment terms are being parsed and categorized with natural language models.
• Communication efficiency: From summarizing 100+ emails to generating replies, AI is helping teams triage information overload.
• Scorecarding and benchmarking: Relationship managers are using AI to build bank performance dashboards and optimize fee strategies.
• Internal tooling: AI copilots are showing up in Word, Excel, and ERP integrations to streamline SOP creation and forecast modeling.

But the room wasn’t blind to the hurdles. In fact, naming the barriers sparked some of the most tactical conversations:

• Data chaos: Without structured, tagged data, even the best models flounder.
• Security anxiety: Compliance, GDPR, and model transparency remain top of mind.
• Change fatigue: Teams are hesitant to adopt tools that feel like a layer of work, not a lift.
• AI literacy gaps: Most treasury professionals aren’t prompt engineers, yet.
• Disconnected systems: Without native integrations, most AI pilots stall at the POC stage.

The most resonant insight? Treasury isn’t resistant to AI. It’s resistant to hype. Teams are ready, but only if the tools respect their complexity and prove ROI fast.

Where Nilus Fits: AI That Drives Action

At Nilus, we’ve always believed AI in treasury must do more than generate insights. It must drive action.

That means:

• Agentic workflows: AI that not only flags issues but suggests steps and automates follow-through.
• Explainability by design: Forecasting logic, assumptions, and anomalies made clear.
• Security-first AI: SOC2, GDPR, and enterprise-grade privacy controls are foundational.

When you pair that with real-time cash visibility, actuals-to-forecast reconciliation, and continuous liquidity optimization,, you don’t just save time. You unlock faster, better decisions across the org.

Strategic Takeaways for Treasury Leaders

Here are five questions to bring back to your team this quarter:

1. What problems are we still solving manually that AI could automate?
2. Do we trust our forecast enough to act on it? If not, why?
3. What’s our internal policy on AI usage—and does it exist yet?
4. Where do we lack visibility, and how is that slowing down decision-making?
5. Which AI-powered tools are our peers already using that we’re not

And if you’re not sure where to start:

• Use these 25 AI prompts for finance leaders: We compiled a list of prompts to jump-start your AI journey, specially tailored to different finance roles.
• Map your workflows: Document where time is lost, where data is manually pulled or duplicated, and which processes are ripe for automation. Highlight pain points that slow down reporting, forecasting, or decision-making.
• Pick one high-impact use case: Start small but strategic. For most teams, that’s cash forecasting, transaction tagging, or liquidity reporting—areas where AI can deliver fast ROI and free up bandwidth.
• Pilot a purpose-built tool: Choose a platform designed for treasury, not retrofitted for it. It should offer native integrations, real-time syncing, and secure, explainable AI features. Start by asking these 10 questions before you choose a tool.
• Run side-by-side comparisons: Test the AI-driven output against your current manual workflows. Where is it faster? More accurate? Easier to explain? Build confidence with small wins.

AI doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. It starts with one well-scoped experiment.

The Bottom Line

The TMANY roundtable made one thing clear: Treasury teams aren’t waiting for a perfect roadmap. They’re learning, experimenting, and adapting together.

If you want AI to work for treasury, it has to work with treasury. That means respecting the complexity of your data, the nuance of your decisions, and the stakes of getting it wrong.

At Nilus, we’re building for that reality.

Want to see what agentic AI looks like in your treasury org? Book a free consultation and let’s explore it together.