Part 1 of 5
The Augmented Treasurer
Introduction
I am not much into social media, but every now and then I like to visit a profile called “nature is metal.” Either on YouTube or Instagram, you can see wild footage of raw nature, predator and prey, and sometimes them switching roles. It is a guttural reminder of the principle “survival of the fittest.” This set me on a train of thought about the adoption of Artificial Intelligence and its perceived threat to white-collar jobs. Specifically: what does this mean for the Corporate Treasurer? Is the Treasurer becoming a dying breed?
Well, we have seen this before. With the first Agricultural Revolution around 10,000 BC, humans stopped being hunter-gatherers. The Second Agricultural Revolution through the 17th and 19th centuries enabled urbanization and labor specialization. The Industrial Revolutions of the 18th to 20th centuries brought mass production, motor engines, and accelerated growth across industries. The Digital Revolution just a few years ago brought computers, the internet, digital access to information, and instant communication. And now we are experiencing a new wave within the Digital Revolution: the dawn of Artificial Intelligence.
Each of these mega-advancements brought challenges and sometimes calamity. The Agricultural Revolution shifted us toward processed foods with consequences for health and ecology. The Industrial Revolution made entire job categories redundant: in Norway, farming, fishing, and timber had to readapt; in Mexico, skilled artisans in textiles and pottery found their products unable to compete with industrialized, low-cost alternatives. The Digital Revolution eliminated the bank teller and the cashier and arguably contributed to more sedentary lifestyles and mental health pressures. These consequences, while inherently serious, are in the big picture growing pains.
For the purpose of this article, I do not aim to dig into psychological ramifications, political implications, or environmental impact. I am fascinated by how the conversation started with Big Data in the 2000s, followed by Machine Learning in the 2010s, and now the adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) giving birth to what we call Artificial Intelligence, specifically within our field of Corporate Treasury.
To structure my thoughts into a coherent story, I gathered perspectives from four distinct sources: Academia (NorwAI’s Andreas Hafver on trustworthy AI), the solution architect (SkySparc’s Marcus Gullers on MCP and OmniFi), the practitioner (a corporate treasurer speaking from the operational front line), and perhaps the most revealing conversation of all: the AI itself.
The Treasurer’s World: A Baseline
Before we can assess what AI changes, we need to be clear about what the Corporate Treasurer actually does. The function is broader and more complex than most outsiders appreciate, and even within treasury, the split between strategic and operational responsibilities is rarely as clean as an org chart suggests.
The treasurer, and the cash manager, have been challenged across multiple fronts: macroeconomic crises, pandemics and their economic fallout, and disruptive technologies; some of which never saw the light of day (hi distributed ledgers!). Through all of it, the tools of the function evolved: from the well-loved spreadsheet, to early on-premise Treasury Management Systems requiring heavy upgrades, to the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions promising to always run on the latest version. Now, legacy TMS vendors that do not offer APIs or integrated AI face an existential choice: evolve, or give way to the next generation.
The seven pillars of treasury
- Cash & Liquidity Management
- Payments Management
- Foreign Exchange Management
- Debt Management
- Investment Management
- Risk Management
- Banking Relationship Management
These responsibilities are divided into strategic and operational categories. The operational layer, which includes account reconciliation, settlement confirmations, debt reporting, and payment monitoring, is where the manual labor lives, often supported by a Shared Service Centre. It is also, not coincidentally, where AI’s immediate impact will be greatest. The strategic layer, where policy-making, bank account structure design, and hedging strategies live had been somewhat reserved for white-collar executives, but for how long?
What the Experts Said
Across four conversations, with an AI assurance specialist, a treasury technology architect, a corporate treasurer, and an AI, several themes emerged consistently, cutting across very different perspectives.
From Academia (Andreas Hafver, NorwAI): The explainability problem is the wrong problem. The right question is not how the model works internally, but whether its outputs can be verified. Task decomposition — breaking workflows into auditable steps — is the answer. AI should run the calculator, not do the calculation.
From the Solution Architect (Marcus Gullers, SkySparc): MCP — Model Context Protocol — is the most important concept in treasury technology that most treasurers have not heard of yet. It is the infrastructure layer that lets AI connect to your TMS, your bank feeds, and your market data without a three-year implementation project. OmniFi is already delivering this today.
From the AI (Claude, Anthropic): The treasurer is not being eliminated — but the number of roles will shrink, and the profile required will shift dramatically upward. The professionals at risk are not the most senior ones. They are the mid-career specialists whose entire value was manual execution expertise in a specific operational domain.
Final Thoughts: The Augmented Treasurer
It is clear to me that more than ever, the Treasurer and Cash Manager will continue to remain relevant, transformed, evolved, and ever more agile. As the digital landscape develops with increasing speed, humans must continue to evolve and to adapt. As we have done since the Agricultural Revolution.
Yes, nature is metal. But the ultimate apex in nature continues to be the human. I think of AI as the equipment to create the super Treasurer. The Human Treasurer is not meant to be replaced by AI, but instead to become an augmented version of itself:
Human + AI = The Augmented Treasurer
A TMS with AI capabilities will become our new colleague, an investment into an agile treasury department, and potentially a replacement for the Shared Service Centre as we know it. The Virtual Treasurer. Not a threat to the treasurer. A force multiplier for the treasurer who is ready.
The professionals who should be most anxious are not the most senior ones. They are the mid-career specialists whose entire value proposition was manual execution expertise in a specific operational domain. That is the transition that deserves honest attention, and proactive preparation.
The skills that will matter: deep process fluency before automation, data architecture literacy, structured critical evaluation of AI outputs, relationship capital at the right level, and the ability to translate AI-generated analysis into board-level narrative. These are not the skills of a technician. They are the skills of a strategist who happens to understand the technology well enough to govern it.
“The Treasurer is not a dying breed. The Treasurer is becoming something more capable, more strategic, and frankly more interesting than the role has ever been. But only for those who choose to evolve.”
Rafael Dominguez, SkySparc
This article is the concluding piece in the SkySparc thought-leadership series “The Augmented Treasurer,” which brought together perspectives from academia, treasury technology, independent advisory, artificial intelligence, and corporate practice. To read the full series, visit skysparc.com/insights-and-articles
Rafael Dominguez has spent over 20 years in corporate treasury and as an independent advisor at SkySparc, selecting and implementing treasury management systems across Nordic and global clients.
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