Treasury is a profession that is growing in scope. Going beyond foundational technical skills, treasury professionals are expected to develop communication skills, business acumen, and critical and strategic thinking.

But as treasury professionals are strengthening their role as a strategic business partner, they’re also continuing to navigate challenges with cash forecasting and payment process improvements. All while many companies choose to remain lean and instead expand their impact through automation and efficiency gains.

To examine the current landscape of the treasury profession, AFP gathered a panel of experts to discuss the 2025 AFP Treasury Benchmarking Survey Report, underwritten by Wells Fargo.

Treasury departments becoming leaner

When treasury professionals gather, one question that typically gets asked is, “How big is your treasury department?”

According to the 2025 AFP Treasury Benchmarking Survey, when adding back- and front-office employees together, the average is nearly 12 full-time employees. But this number seems to vary depending on company revenue.

Larger companies (>$5 billion in revenue) tend to have larger, more specialized treasury teams, whereas smaller companies (<$1billion in revenue) typically have 1-3 full-time employees (FTEs).

Making strategic use of shared services and automation has allowed some organizations to reduce the need for large in-house teams while improving oversight and efficiency. “I prefer having shared services instead of a big team,” said the CFO of a nonprofit organization. “The good part about shared services is that oversight is easier. Condensing makes the process a little more efficient for the office today than what it was in previous years.”

The role treasury plays

Treasury has a distinct leading role in the areas of capital funding and borrowing (cited by 69% of respondents), interest rate risk management (67%), payments strategy and execution (67%) and long-term investing (60%), according to the treasury benchmarking survey.

“Lead what you’re good at,” said Brad Costantino, Senior Manager of Global Treasury, Under Armour. “But if your treasury team has no role in some of these, I would encourage teams to at least have a supporting role so you can have a seat at the table. That's how you get into leading other categories and become the enhance and optimize treasury team.”

The survey also found that treasury plays a significant supporting role in financial planning and analysis (cited by 70% of respondents), accounting and SEC compliance (69%), business continuity planning (65%), mergers and acquisitions (65%) and enterprise risk management (64%).

The role of treasury can depend on the type of organization you work for. For example, at a nonprofit, treasury is often deeply involved in long-term investing such as endowments and capital planning. The role of treasury is also impacted by the reporting lines (e.g., CFO vs. controller) and the industry focus (e.g., tech, insurance, retail, manufacturing).

Top challenges in treasury

According to the treasury benchmarking survey, the most challenging task treasury faces is cash and liquidity forecasting, cited by 62% of respondents. One area of difficulty is that while treasury teams are working to make the process more data-driven, obtaining the IT resources to make it happen is often in competition with their company’s broader priorities.

“We find that many clients will tell us tech resources are scarce and last to come to treasury because generally they're trying to do more around client experience,” said Jessica Lupovici, Global Head of Sales Payments and Liquidity, Wells Fargo.

Automating manual processes (57%) came in second among most challenging treasury tasks. Organizations are seeking ways to streamline longstanding manual tasks such as cash management and receivables processing.

The third most challenging treasury task, improving payment processes (51%), is especially critical for industries such as insurance and retail, which need to be able to move funds quickly and securely to gain a competitive advantage.

The skills and competencies most needed in treasury

Today’s treasury skill set contains a combination of technical skills, such as cash forecasting, data analysis and risk management, and soft skills, such as communication, influencing and strategic thinking.

“When you're at the professional level, it's almost like a T. You want to get really good at the technical skills. You want to be good at Excel. You want to understand how to analyze data. And then as you move up to the senior level, the T broadens out and you want to have more of a breadth of knowledge to be able to explain your story,” said Costantino.

Of all the skills that treasury professionals need, communication (cited by 96% of respondents) was identified as the most important in the treasury benchmarking survey. Being able to convey the story behind the data is what influences the decision-makers and leads to productive cross-functional conversations that drive business outcomes.

“One of the key aspects in treasury is that treasury professionals, and certainly senior professionals, all communicate up and down and across the organization,” said Tom Hunt, CTP, Director of Treasury Practice, AFP. “You might be sending an analyst up to talk to the CFO about a situation that you're working on and how it might get resolved.”

In the fast-changing economic environment in which we operate today, being able to adapt and prioritize also remains essential. Forecasting variances, responding to market shifts and communicating with stakeholders all require you to be able to manage shifting priorities — without losing focus.

“I work a lot with my team on prioritization and organization,” said Costantino. “You have to look ahead and know what's coming up on your calendar next week, what's due next week, what might pop up and limit you from getting that done next week. We work a lot on the two-by-two metrics to see what's important, what's urgent, what's not important and what's not urgent.”

As companies work to navigate a more complex financial landscape, the expectations placed on treasury professionals continue to grow — and so do the opportunities.