Organizational types of corporate treasury. Digital transformation as optimization through (de)centralization

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, language: English, abstract: This thesis analyses different organizational types of corporate treasury in the view of digital transformation and new regulations and searches for the optimal centralization level of corporate treasury that can fully leverage the potential of new technologies like artificial intelligence, data analytics, robotic process automation, APIs and blockchain. The main organizational types of treasury that are analysed and compared in this thesis include the fully decentralized treasury, hybrid forms of treasury organization, regional service centres and the fully centralized corporate treasury. Recent regulations that impact the work of corporate treasury are also discussed. A criteria catalogue, which puts together different criteria that impact treasuries’ performance closes the theoretical part of this thesis. The catalogue is based on theoretical explanations provided in this part and also on the practice of international corporations as different reports and reliable surveys show later in this thesis. The main part of the thesis (chapter three) describes the functionality of the main processes of corporate treasury. It is followed by the evaluation of the previously mentioned criteria for ‘cash and liquidity management’, ‘governance and risk management’ and ‘bank rela-tionships management’ as a comparison between a centralized and a decen-tralized treasury. After a transparent evaluation of the criteria for each of the above-mentioned processes, the elaboration of the concept of ‘in-house bank’ as an enabler of treasury centralization and possibilities for its imple-mentation close this chapter. The thesis concludes with the presentation of the idea of a digital corporate treasury, which leverages new technologies like artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, data analytics and blockchain. Possibilities and challenges that come with digital transformation of corporate treasury together with some tips for a transformation path close the analytical part. A short conclusion at the end summarizes the findings of this thesis.