Treasury Staffing Cuts and AI Adoption: Company Size Matters
# People and Talent
# AI
NeuGroup research reveals the largest companies are more likely than smaller ones to cut staff and embrace AI.
The largest multinational corporations are more likely than smaller ones to cut treasury staff this year, according to NeuGroup’s 2025 Treasury Outlook Survey. It found that a quarter of companies with more than $50 billion in annual revenue said they planned to reduce treasury headcount in 2025—nearly double the percentage (13%) of all respondents who expected their teams to shrink.
In a video you can watch by hitting the play button below, NeuGroup’s head of research Joseph Bertran suggests the disparity in part reflects a faster embrace of automation and AI by larger companies driven to cut costs and unlock efficiencies. Another reason, he notes, is that smaller, growing companies are still building out lean treasury teams.
About two-thirds (65%) of the largest companies surveyed said they planned to keep staffing levels flat while another 10% expected to add full-time employees—half the 20% of all respondents planning to increase in size.
The promise of AI in treasury. The survey showed that all the companies planning to decrease treasury headcount are either currently using advanced analytics, AI and/or automated cash forecasting. But while emerging technologies may allow larger treasury teams to slim down even more, the data reveals a disconnect between expectations for AI and the current state of adoption.
Mr. Bertran said the gap between where treasurers thought they’d be and where they are today reflects several friction points: a lack of confidence in large language models, uncertainty about how AI fits within treasury workflows and the difficulty of integrating new technology without the support of tech specialists on the team. And while some companies are seeing success with early implementations, many are still struggling to move past pilot phases or to identify high-value use cases..
Early movers, top-down mandates. The survey shows that most companies have yet to implement AI at scale in treasury. Still, some are pulling ahead and offering clues about what’s working.
“The companies that are ahead of the curve are the ones that started early in this journey, the ones that have that mandate from their CFOs or CEOs and also the ones that are bringing in tech specialists into the treasury team to help bring that all together,” Mr. Bertran says in the video.
