Treasury transformation
26 Nov 2025
Bana Akkad-Azhari, head of Treasury Services Europe, Middle East and Africa at BNY, speaks with Tahlia Kraefft about how firms are shifting their treasury operations from facilitators of operational efficiency, to enablers of strategic value
Image: BNY
Treasury services are undergoing a major transformation, evolving from a traditional transactional role to become strategic drivers of growth and resilience. This evolution comes amid rapid digital innovation, changing client needs, tightening regulation, and an increasingly complex financial ecosystem.
The sector is engaging technology, interoperability, and intelligent infrastructure to assist corporations to address regulation, liquidity, and technology disruption.
Treasury operations in EMEA face further challenges as they manage diverse regulatory frameworks, multiple currencies, and a range in level of infrastructure maturity.
Changing client demands
The shifting treasury function is being shaped by trends of rising client expectations for intuitive digital experiences, fast technological advancement, and growing private markets.
Payments and trade solutions, BNY’s treasury services’ key focus areas, are not immune from this rapid evolution — Akkad-Azhari notes — with client demand for speed, cost efficiency, and security being the leading driver of the shift followed by digitalisation.
She highlights instant payments and cross-border interoperability are seeing strong uptake fuelled by clients wanting around-the-clock money movement, adding: “What clients demand from their banking providers and their financial institutions, we aim to solve and to help enable these financial institutions to serve their clients better.”
Treasurers now perceive payments as a competitive differentiator, not only an operational necessity. Banks and treasury services are adapting to meet these new demands by offering enhanced data services, liquidity tools, and integrating technology-driven solutions to deliver agility and efficiency.
Akkad-Azhari says treasury services will need to put in significant capital investment and upgrade infrastructure to meet these growing pressures from clients and digitalisation.
“How do financial institutions solve that? This also requires a great deal of upgrading of their own infrastructure. We all know, capital spend is something that is not infinite. To that extent there’s a high level of prioritisation that needs to be done.”
Digitalisation and instant payment innovation
The growth of 24/7 payments is setting the standard for more transparent, efficient and cheap payments, expected by both clients and businesses. Akkad-Azhari, says the predicted surge in businesses investing in payment infrastructure reflects this strong demand.
She notes: “92 per cent of businesses expect to invest in payment improvements over the next two to three years. 80 per cent of businesses expect volumes of cross border payment transactions to increase in the next few years,” according to Rapyd’s ‘The 2023 State of B2B Cross-Border Payments report’ and Stripe/PYMNTS’ ‘State of Global Digital Payments’.
Instant payment scheme uptake across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is increasing rapidly as regulations evolve, driving technological investment, and requirements for interoperability.
Fragmentation challenges across EMEA
Treasury operations in EMEA work across diverse regulatory frameworks, multiple currencies, and a range in level of infrastructure maturity. Fragmentation continues to be a key hurdle in the region as firms seek to manage across different networks, rails, and standards.
Akkad-Azhari, comments: “A diverse region with its own set of opportunities and challenges has to do with the different schemes, the different trails, whether, you have in the EU 27 a single currency, but you do have an overarching regulator, but you also have individual country regulators. Then even when you go broader in the region, there’s also other currencies, and then monetary policy, and all of that comes into play.”
Akkad-Azhar says BNY strives to deliver unified connectivity to drive interoperability for financial institutions.
“The world is more and more global, and money moves around the world, interoperability becomes a crucial requirement in order to provide a seamless experience to the end client.”
Harmonisation efforts led by ISO 20022, SWIFT initiatives, and collaborative EIB’s Project Agora, aim to make cross-border payments seamless similar to the domestic process.
BNY also uses smart routing, where payments are automatically directed through an efficient and secure path.
Additionally BNY employs AI-driven automation to help improve speed, accuracy, as well as AI for payment instruction validation, fraud detection, OCR in trade finance, and enhancing operational efficiency.
“A very important use of the AI is to enable anomaly detection, particularly as the world moves towards faster payments in many of these rails. We need to significantly amplify capacities to detect anomalies and to help ensure that we protect against possible fraud in a fast moving system.”
Navigating regulation and compliance
Regulatory changes such as Basel III Endgame, liquidity coverage rules continue to be front of mind for firms as regulators continue to focus on improving customer protection in payments, liquidity management, and systemic risk prevention.
As the instant payment revolution takes off Akkad-Azhari, notes: “Stats are telling us of increased fraud in the payment space in certain markets, and we are seeing the regulators paying more and more attention to customer protection when it comes to payments and payment services.”
Akkad-Azhari argues that the regulatory environment is continually evolving in response to the regulator’s demands to safeguard the financial ecosystem, the economies they regulate, and ensuring they both remain open.
She says in addition to addressing the rising risks in the financial markets the regulatory updates “aim to bolster the financial strength of the financial institutions who support customers and client bases in these markets.”
Collaboration between regulators, banks, and infrastructure providers is vital to establishing trusted, compliant payment ecosystems.
BNY works alongside regulators and industry bodies to help create effective frameworks.
Akkad-Azhari emphasises: “We work with the regulators, as well as with industry bodies that are aimed towards the common goal of trying to also achieve harmonisation to the extent possible, across the various ecosystems.”
The firm also uses technology and AI investment to assist institutions to comply with changing rules across different markets, protect clients and balance sheets, and to harness capital intelligently.
“We seek to provide the tooling that would enable financial institutions to, comply with the regulations, protect their clients right, but also safeguard their own balance sheet and businesses and be able to really deploy their own resources in an intelligent way that can best serve their purpose and comply with their particular regulations.”
Technology leading treasury revolution
Treasury services are using artificial intelligence and automation to streamline their operations, in addition to facilitating smart routing, anomaly detection, and real-time risk monitoring. In AI’s role in supporting compliance, Akkad-Azhari offers an example: “For instance, the trade finance space — which is still very much paper intensive and very complex. How do we embed the technology in that so that we speed the time to execution?”
Bana Akkad-Azhari says being early adopters of emerging technologies is a core pillar of BNY’s strategic priorities across the treasury and transaction space.
Akkad-Azhari, states that in addition to forming partnerships in the sector, BNY is focused on continually investing in technology, and exploring new areas to stay ahead.
“We are doing that as part of our responsibility to our partner clients around the world, in the EMEA region and beyond, to make sure that we continue to try to drive to achieve harmonisation, interoperability in a fragmented space, to the extent possible. So that’s really a key factor for us.”
Growth of digital assets and stablecoins
Digital assets, tokenised deposits and stablecoins are growing in use as mechanisms for settlement.
Treasury services are exploring how they can integrate digital assets into their businesses to improve liquidity, transparency, and efficiency, while upholding regulatory compliance.
BNY helps enable stablecoin issuers and digital asset clients to operate securely, maintain compliance and carry out smart settlement.
Bana Akkad Azhari comments that we can holistically service this space, including by providing reserve asset custody, and supporting cash settlement for mint and burn activity.
As the treasury’s function rapidly evolves from the back office to a strategic enabler, treasury operations are embracing technology, interoperability, and intelligent infrastructure to meet rising client demands and address regulation, liquidity, and technology disruption.
The sector is engaging technology, interoperability, and intelligent infrastructure to assist corporations to address regulation, liquidity, and technology disruption.
Treasury operations in EMEA face further challenges as they manage diverse regulatory frameworks, multiple currencies, and a range in level of infrastructure maturity.
Changing client demands
The shifting treasury function is being shaped by trends of rising client expectations for intuitive digital experiences, fast technological advancement, and growing private markets.
Payments and trade solutions, BNY’s treasury services’ key focus areas, are not immune from this rapid evolution — Akkad-Azhari notes — with client demand for speed, cost efficiency, and security being the leading driver of the shift followed by digitalisation.
She highlights instant payments and cross-border interoperability are seeing strong uptake fuelled by clients wanting around-the-clock money movement, adding: “What clients demand from their banking providers and their financial institutions, we aim to solve and to help enable these financial institutions to serve their clients better.”
Treasurers now perceive payments as a competitive differentiator, not only an operational necessity. Banks and treasury services are adapting to meet these new demands by offering enhanced data services, liquidity tools, and integrating technology-driven solutions to deliver agility and efficiency.
Akkad-Azhari says treasury services will need to put in significant capital investment and upgrade infrastructure to meet these growing pressures from clients and digitalisation.
“How do financial institutions solve that? This also requires a great deal of upgrading of their own infrastructure. We all know, capital spend is something that is not infinite. To that extent there’s a high level of prioritisation that needs to be done.”
Digitalisation and instant payment innovation
The growth of 24/7 payments is setting the standard for more transparent, efficient and cheap payments, expected by both clients and businesses. Akkad-Azhari, says the predicted surge in businesses investing in payment infrastructure reflects this strong demand.
She notes: “92 per cent of businesses expect to invest in payment improvements over the next two to three years. 80 per cent of businesses expect volumes of cross border payment transactions to increase in the next few years,” according to Rapyd’s ‘The 2023 State of B2B Cross-Border Payments report’ and Stripe/PYMNTS’ ‘State of Global Digital Payments’.
Instant payment scheme uptake across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is increasing rapidly as regulations evolve, driving technological investment, and requirements for interoperability.
Fragmentation challenges across EMEA
Treasury operations in EMEA work across diverse regulatory frameworks, multiple currencies, and a range in level of infrastructure maturity. Fragmentation continues to be a key hurdle in the region as firms seek to manage across different networks, rails, and standards.
Akkad-Azhari, comments: “A diverse region with its own set of opportunities and challenges has to do with the different schemes, the different trails, whether, you have in the EU 27 a single currency, but you do have an overarching regulator, but you also have individual country regulators. Then even when you go broader in the region, there’s also other currencies, and then monetary policy, and all of that comes into play.”
Akkad-Azhar says BNY strives to deliver unified connectivity to drive interoperability for financial institutions.
“The world is more and more global, and money moves around the world, interoperability becomes a crucial requirement in order to provide a seamless experience to the end client.”
Harmonisation efforts led by ISO 20022, SWIFT initiatives, and collaborative EIB’s Project Agora, aim to make cross-border payments seamless similar to the domestic process.
BNY also uses smart routing, where payments are automatically directed through an efficient and secure path.
Additionally BNY employs AI-driven automation to help improve speed, accuracy, as well as AI for payment instruction validation, fraud detection, OCR in trade finance, and enhancing operational efficiency.
“A very important use of the AI is to enable anomaly detection, particularly as the world moves towards faster payments in many of these rails. We need to significantly amplify capacities to detect anomalies and to help ensure that we protect against possible fraud in a fast moving system.”
Navigating regulation and compliance
Regulatory changes such as Basel III Endgame, liquidity coverage rules continue to be front of mind for firms as regulators continue to focus on improving customer protection in payments, liquidity management, and systemic risk prevention.
As the instant payment revolution takes off Akkad-Azhari, notes: “Stats are telling us of increased fraud in the payment space in certain markets, and we are seeing the regulators paying more and more attention to customer protection when it comes to payments and payment services.”
Akkad-Azhari argues that the regulatory environment is continually evolving in response to the regulator’s demands to safeguard the financial ecosystem, the economies they regulate, and ensuring they both remain open.
She says in addition to addressing the rising risks in the financial markets the regulatory updates “aim to bolster the financial strength of the financial institutions who support customers and client bases in these markets.”
Collaboration between regulators, banks, and infrastructure providers is vital to establishing trusted, compliant payment ecosystems.
BNY works alongside regulators and industry bodies to help create effective frameworks.
Akkad-Azhari emphasises: “We work with the regulators, as well as with industry bodies that are aimed towards the common goal of trying to also achieve harmonisation to the extent possible, across the various ecosystems.”
The firm also uses technology and AI investment to assist institutions to comply with changing rules across different markets, protect clients and balance sheets, and to harness capital intelligently.
“We seek to provide the tooling that would enable financial institutions to, comply with the regulations, protect their clients right, but also safeguard their own balance sheet and businesses and be able to really deploy their own resources in an intelligent way that can best serve their purpose and comply with their particular regulations.”
Technology leading treasury revolution
Treasury services are using artificial intelligence and automation to streamline their operations, in addition to facilitating smart routing, anomaly detection, and real-time risk monitoring. In AI’s role in supporting compliance, Akkad-Azhari offers an example: “For instance, the trade finance space — which is still very much paper intensive and very complex. How do we embed the technology in that so that we speed the time to execution?”
Bana Akkad-Azhari says being early adopters of emerging technologies is a core pillar of BNY’s strategic priorities across the treasury and transaction space.
Akkad-Azhari, states that in addition to forming partnerships in the sector, BNY is focused on continually investing in technology, and exploring new areas to stay ahead.
“We are doing that as part of our responsibility to our partner clients around the world, in the EMEA region and beyond, to make sure that we continue to try to drive to achieve harmonisation, interoperability in a fragmented space, to the extent possible. So that’s really a key factor for us.”
Growth of digital assets and stablecoins
Digital assets, tokenised deposits and stablecoins are growing in use as mechanisms for settlement.
Treasury services are exploring how they can integrate digital assets into their businesses to improve liquidity, transparency, and efficiency, while upholding regulatory compliance.
BNY helps enable stablecoin issuers and digital asset clients to operate securely, maintain compliance and carry out smart settlement.
Bana Akkad Azhari comments that we can holistically service this space, including by providing reserve asset custody, and supporting cash settlement for mint and burn activity.
As the treasury’s function rapidly evolves from the back office to a strategic enabler, treasury operations are embracing technology, interoperability, and intelligent infrastructure to meet rising client demands and address regulation, liquidity, and technology disruption.
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