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May 12, 2026

NeuGroup Quick Takes: 2026 First Half Peer Group Meetings: Life Sciences and Tech Treasurers

# Cash and Working Capital

# Technology

# EMEA

AI agents deliver investment gains; life sciences treasury teams explore global funding structures.

Editor's note: NeuGroup Quick Takes will be updated with new takeaways following the completion of each of NeuGroup's spring peer group meetings.

NeuGroup for Tech Treasurers 2026 H1 Peer Group Meeting, May 6-7, Half Moon Bay, CA

Sponsored by Standard Chartered

ROI: AI agent investment recommendations. The treasurer of a large technology company and a tech specialist working with her team demonstrated how AI agents can move beyond productivity gains and directly improve financial outcomes. The treasurer described an investment agent designed with Concourse trained on treasury policy, duration targets and portfolio parameters. By using some of the recommendations generated by the agent for “bond rotation” trades, the team has generated an incremental gain in net interest income over the next two years of $2.5 million. “So positive NPV, positive ROI trades, that shows the value in terms of what the agent's doing in 10 minutes every morning versus an analyst looking at a Bloomberg screen” for up to 90 minutes,” she said. In addition, treasury also deployed AI to monitor global cash pools and alert analysts when excess balances could be invested. That initiative has generated “another $500,000 of incremental interest income annually,” the treasurer said.

Building an AI-ready workforce. This company’s determination to “move the needle” on AI initiatives with direct P&L impact or risk mitigation is clear from the CFO’s mandate on finance function hiring of interns and early-in-career AI analysts: only recruit candidates with quantitative, data analytics and AI backgrounds. More broadly, the treasurer said, “We are recruiting across the entire company where it is expected and mandated to include AI questions as part of your interview.” Employees are now required in self-assessments to describe how they are using AI. The treasurer described a mandatory AI training day last December that will be repeated next month. She said treasury had demonstrated enough “momentum” and “traction” with AI projects to win approval for a dedicated AI analyst headcount. She also described a “build and buy” approach in which the team develops some tools internally while also experimenting with outside AI-agent vendors and platforms.

Another emerging best practice: encouraging AI champions who set a high standard for experimentation and achievements. This company has a quarterly CFO organization all-hands meeting where someone receives a monetary recognition for being an AI champion. “It's really the recognition,” the treasurer said. “We're really trying to do as much as we can to push forward the fluency, the leadership and that mindset.”

NeuGroup for Life Sciences Treasurers 2026 H1 Peer Group Meeting, May 6-7, New Brunswick, NJ

Sponsored by Societe Generale

Foreign financing structures draw interest from life sciences treasury teams. Several life sciences treasury teams discussed using foreign financing entities to fund M&A, diversify investor access and create additional capacity to efficiently issue lower-cost non-US-dollar debt. One member described using an overseas financing entity to issue euro debt that helped refinance higher-coupon debt, free up roughly $5.5 billion for business development and generate about $85 million in interest expense savings. The structure also diversified a debt stack that had been almost entirely dollar-denominated and accelerated rating agency deleveraging commitments by roughly two quarters.

Much of the discussion focused on the mechanics behind these structures, including the need for financing entities with real local substance: people, operations and activity that make them more than shell companies. One member said the issuing entity also needed to sit under a parent with enough operational scale and capacity to repay the debt, even with a corporate guarantee in place. Several also noted that once the debt is issued through the structure, companies may need to keep refinancing it over time rather than quickly unwind the arrangement.

The accounting complications proved just as challenging for some as the financing itself. One member cited an example in which they did not want to change existing FX accounting policy to accommodate a transaction, forcing treasury to convert euro proceeds back into dollars through a spot trade that created roughly $7 million of P&L volatility as currencies moved during the trading day.

Brainstorming next-wave AI projects. Treasury teams used the meeting to compare notes on larger AI projects that reach well beyond drafting emails or summarizing documents. Much of the discussion centered on whether AI can be connected directly into treasury infrastructure—including SAP, Bloomberg, Kyriba, Clearwater and internal data lakes—to automate processes that are still heavily manual.

One member described building an AI-driven process for FX exposure gathering and cash flow hedge analysis, replacing spreadsheets and manual data collection with a system tied into treasury data feeds. Another said the company wants AI continuously monitoring counterparty news against positions held in Clearwater that automatically identifies potential risks, exposures and recommendations. Others discussed projects to use AI to automate end-of-day cash positioning, trigger investment proposals based on bank limits and accelerate DSO monitoring by identifying lagging countries as soon as consolidated financials close rather than weeks later.

Several examples focused on connecting AI to existing systems. One member said Copilot reduced a recurring SAP-based investor relations support process from roughly a day and a half to about 10 minutes by extracting, formatting and organizing data automatically. Another treasury team used ChatGPT to cut a Kyriba transaction-tagging process from about 40 hours to two.

The discussion repeatedly returned to the same challenge: how to move from isolated experiments to scalable treasury infrastructure that teams can maintain long term.

NeuGroup for Global Cash and Banking 2026 H1 Peer Group Meeting, April 29-30, Las Vegas

A deeper look at bank fees. Members said bank fee analysis, a perennial treasury issue, starts with a basic problem: many teams do not have clean, reliable visibility into what banks are charging, what the charges mean or whether they match contracted pricing. Several described going back to basics: manually reviewing statements, reconciling charges and cleaning up data before attempting to automate.

One member said a global bank fee review uncovered nearly $500,000 in savings, including a Mexico payroll process that was generating a $1 fee for each confirmation email sent by the bank. Another discovered a bank account transaction fee error that led to excess charges of about $100,000 a month that had gone unnoticed. Others said even a simple pushback to banks produced results, including one company that achieved a 40% reduction in fees after initiating discussions.

Some teams are using AI to interpret the data. One member has a Gemini agent that reads bank statements, maps charges to AFP codes and compares them against master fee agreements, flagging exceptions for review and follow-up. The approach is still evolving, but it reflects a broader shift: once the baseline is established, teams are looking to automate the recurring review rather than repeat the same manual analysis each month.

Embedding AI into workflows. This same pattern is showing up beyond bank fees: members are aiming AI at the parts of treasury that are repetitive, manual and time-consuming. The focus is inserting AI-enabled tools into specific steps that involve checking, reconciling, documenting or following up. Early results are measured in time saved and cleaner execution.

One member said an agent checks whether expected interest payments arrived from dozens of banks, flags gaps and drafts outreach to banks. Another described using AI to validate FX rates in the company’s ERP and flag discrepancies before they create downstream issues. Others pointed to account-opening support, using AI to pull requirements, draft emails, review bank responses and reduce the back-and-forth involved in gathering documentation.

Treasury teams are starting to rewire around AI. As practical use cases take hold, members said the AI shift is beginning to show up in how teams are structured and what skills are needed. Many described formal coordination across finance or the enterprise, with treasury expected to participate, even if resources and data readiness lag. Others pointed to emerging roles—AI champions, data specialists or embedded technical resources—helping bridge the gap between treasury and IT.

The conversation around the future of treasury is shifting toward what work remains distinctly human. Members raised concerns about junior staff losing opportunities to build judgment if foundational tasks are automated. At the same time, several said treasury roles are requiring skills outside of traditional treasury knowledge, moving toward interpretation, cross-functional coordination and influencing decisions across the business. One participant framed this as treasury becoming more consultative, connecting data to action and helping other teams understand implications. That emphasis on communication echoed a theme from last week’s Working Capital Optimization meeting (see below): storytelling is a critical treasury skill, especially as automation increases the volume of data but not necessarily the clarity of decisions.

Key takeaways from NeuGroup for Working Capital Optimization and NeuGroup for Cross-Border Credit & Collections.

Cash culture catalyst: storytelling. A session at the spring meeting of NeuGroup for Working Capital Optimization sponsored by SAP Taulia that included treasury, procurement, AR and AP leaders underscored that creating a cash culture requires effective storytelling that makes clear to non-finance teams how their day-to-day decisions affect working capital and cash flow as well as DSO, DPO and DIO. “The art of that is just a really big deal,” said one member who has designed courses that connect the dots between the company’s P&L, balance sheet and operating cash flow.

The ultimate goal is to demonstrate how cash decisions flow through to return on invested capital, total shareholder return and the company’s stock price. To do that, finance teams need the ability to tell stories in a way that people “can digest and create action,” the member said. Otherwise, terms like leverage, cash conversion cycle or working capital can sound abstract to sales, procurement and inventory teams.

It’s important not to overwhelm people with data. “You don’t want to have 85 million words on a slide,” she said. Instead, the messaging should answer basic questions and define terms. When teams can see how one day of DSO, DPO or DIO translates into real dollars, they are more likely to change behavior. Cash culture sticks when finance turns numbers into a story people remember and act on.

“I am fortunate to have a few storytelling experts on my team,” the member said. “We talk about how you actually approach a story in order to tell it to people, down to how you storyboard, how you actually pull things together to deliver it. Otherwise, people won’t remember.”

Credit and collections challenge: selling to startups. Among the many topics discussed during the pilot meeting of NeuGroup for Cross-Border Credit & Collections in Dublin, members shared how they manage the risks of selling to startups that do not have a track record of traditional credit metrics. Some participants assess startup risk as a portfolio, not just a single-customer credit decision. They said traditional financial-statement analysis is often insufficient for young AI/cloud startups seeking large, multiyear compute contracts. Instead, they look at funding quality, investor support, internet/news sentiment, customer concentration, geopolitical exposure, banking relationships and available collateral.

They also emphasized risk appetite. Some companies favor macro-level portfolio management: track how risky the startup book is becoming, set acceptable loss pools and decide how much exposure the company is willing to tolerate. Others noted that credit teams do not get venture-style upside, so they cannot simply accept many failures in hopes of one winner. The upside is sales revenue, not equity returns.

Mitigation options included shorter terms, collateral, guarantees, insurance, channel financing, selling through partners or banks taking part of the risk. Several participants said emerging markets often require a different approach, with more use of partners, securitization or bank-supported structures. Software suppliers generally face less downside if a startup fails because they can cancel or suspend subscriptions, while hardware makers may have to repossess equipment that has already been installed.

The strongest theme was balance: Protect assets while enabling strategic sales. One participant framed this as knowing when to prioritize asset protection and when to support revenue. For startups, that means combining automated scoring and external data with human judgment, especially when the exposure is large, multiyear or tied to rapidly changing markets.

NeuGroup for Cash Investments, EMEA Regional Treasurers and Asia Treasurers

KYC AI agent buzz. One member's description of an AI agent that will one day receive and respond to the flood of KYC requests from banks generated visible and vocal interest from peers at the spring meeting of NeuGroup for Cash Investments. KYC, of course, is one of treasury’s most repetitive, inefficient and vexing burdens. For now, the member explained, the agent built by a junior staffer with solid AI skills pulls the KYC data and fills in the forms sent by banks; the staffer emails the forms to the banks. Ultimately, the goal is for the banks to email the corporate’s agent directly for KYC requests. And yes, at some point, bank AI agents will in all likelihood be the ones emailing the corporate’s agent.

Continuous improvements, disruptive events. All of the sessions at the meeting for NeuGroup for EMEA Regional Treasury in Amsterdam addressed “continuous improvements punctuated by disruptive events,” said group leader Paul Dalle Molle. Improvements are usually spurred by organic corporate expansion and the availability of new technologies; the disruptive forces are often M&A and divestitures followed by big changes to corporate culture that must be reflected in treasury.

Two members told peers about complex spin-off journeys leading to the creation of new global treasury organizations suited to evolving needs, including internal growth and ambitious acquisitions. One member’s focus: the creation of a cash culture and the decisions leading to an optimal EMEA cash pool. The other presenter zeroed in on treasury optimization requiring technology decisions and implementation. One key finding from an in-session poll: Members consider their treasury processes highly standardized and reliable but in need of more automation.

Gift City hype. Members at NeuGroup for Asia Treasury cautioned banks and other service providers not to oversell solutions such as Gift City in India, especially with headquarters, before regional treasury has vetted whether they fit the company’s actual structure, funding model and operating needs. Gift City, the special economic zone and financial hub, recently doubled the tax holiday for businesses establishing operations there to 20 years. And while this incentive makes the use case potentially more valuable, several members said the current value proposition remains narrow and highly fact-specific.

NeuGroup Founder and CEO Joseph Neu attended the meeting in Singapore and observed that “this fits into another theme about restructuring legal entities as a strategic role for regional treasurers as part of their business partner responsibilities. To maximize liquidity and facilitate repatriation, business structure and capitalization often needs to be rethought in collaboration with tax, accounting and legal.” He added that one member at the meeting said the structures for rapid investment in new markets are often less ideal for pulling money out of them as the business matures.

Women in NeuGroup (WiNG) Salon Dinner, April 14, New York City

Women in NeuGroup brings together women members for candid peer exchange, professional connection and mutual support across the NeuGroup Network. At an April 14 salon-style dinner in New York sponsored by CIBC, members joined a conversation facilitated by NeuGroup's Julie Zawacki-Lucci on how AI is shaping day-to-day work, leadership and life outside the office. AI: moving from curiosity to workflow. What stood out most for attendees was how quickly AI has become part of everyday work. Some companies are leaning into the shift proactively, like one member’s “AI Tuesday” initiative, which dedicates time for experimentation and learning, with an emphasis on curious exploration and permission to fail. Even inefficiencies, like duplicated work, are being reframed as part of the learning process and an investment in improving AI outcomes over time.

“The AI train has left the station,” one member said. “You’re either on it, or you’re left behind…or worse: under it!”

Claude drew the strongest endorsements among the various LLMs discussed, particularly for Excel-heavy tasks, data analysis and explaining variances. Several members noted it has already become embedded in their day-to-day workflows.

Trovata’s TMS platform was also singled out as easy to implement and intuitive to use, with members noting that both Trovata’s native AI capabilities and Claude have helped teams identify and interpret exceptions more quickly.

One member said the solution had improved payment matching accuracy from 80% to 96%.

Artificial intelligence, human judgment. Much of the discussion turned to what may be lost as AI takes over more of the work that once helped junior employees build judgment, technical fluency and confidence. Members said efficiency gains are real, but so is the risk of developing professionals who can prompt effectively without fully understanding the underlying work. “AI is helping people work faster, but not necessarily smarter,” one member said.

That concern centered on whether younger team members will be able to challenge faulty outputs, detect hallucinations or explain their reasoning if foundational tasks are increasingly automated away. Members returned repeatedly to the idea that human judgment remains the real control layer and that AI should be treated as a starting point, not the answer.

Event Week: March 23-26, 2026, San Diego

A packed week of insights shared at Qualcomm’s headquarters kicked off with members of NeuGroup for Foreign Exchange engaging in proactive, outcome-oriented discussions on AI, forecasting, hedging and market volatility. The FX meeting began the same day as the publication of the NeuGroup Guide: FX Hedging, a timely companion to conversations about how FX teams are refining programs, improving forecasting and rethinking processes in a more uncertain market environment.

Qualcomm then hosted a joint meeting of NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Assistant Treasurers and NeuGroup for Large-Cap Assistant Treasurers where members dug into many of the same priorities—including AI, liquidity, capital allocation and M&A execution—from a broader perspective. The four days offered a concentrated look at how treasury teams are trying to improve execution while preserving flexibility.

AI is getting practical, fast. AI was the most persistent theme, with conversations ranging from high-level planning on transformational projects to automating small, everyday tasks. The discussions ran through many practical use cases: summarizing materials, building dashboards, reviewing policies, generating analyses, creating lightweight agents and accelerating work that used to sit in Excel or email chains.

FX members narrowed into this, with a dive into one member’s heavily automated hedging process, primarily through so-called vibe coding using LLMs. Another FX hedging manager described using AI assistants to condense reports and pull together analysis more quickly.

Forecasting is the finance nerve center. Forecasting was at the heart of conversations all week, especially among FX managers focused on what better forecasts enable and what weak ones still limit. The discussion ranged from making hedging programs more dynamic to improving exposure gathering and reducing manual work.

It became clear how much structure sits behind mature programs, with one presenter describing a process built around long-dated forecasts, regular review forums and confidence scoring tied to both data and judgment. Forecasting still depends on the quality of inputs as much as the tools used to analyze them.

Managing liquidity amid uncertainty. In discussing the macroeconomic outlook, one session leader from FX meeting sponsor Chatham Financial said, “There’s no longer a base case,” as the war in Iran adds another layer of uncertainty. In the AT meeting, an expert from sponsor TD Securities said the conflict was adding to inflation concerns through oil prices, making markets less confident about rate cuts and more sensitive to how long the disruption might last. As he put it, the “fulcrum for the market is, how long will this last? And how long will oil prices stay high?"

That uncertainty fed into more practical questions around liquidity and capital allocation. One member is spending “lots of time” balancing lower cash, strategic investments and capital return, calling it “capital allocation balanced with appropriate levels of liquidity.” Another said 2026 “looks and feels different,” and her team is working through the “bookend of scenarios, plan of action.”

M&A gets harder when treasury joins late. Three ATs shared how they managed the complexity of recent M&A deals. One compared some separations to a “messy divorce.” The discussion highlighted how deals that look straightforward at a high level can become far more complicated once treasury gets into bank accounts, debt, leases, systems and legal entities.

The biggest takeaway from the session: treasury needs to be involved early. By the time teams are asked to help execute, many of the decisions that shape cash, funding and bank structure have already been made.

Liability management gets a practical review. During a Spotlight Session in the AT meeting, Loop Capital Markets focused on liability management as a set of usable tools rather than a niche capital markets exercise, with discussion centered on upcoming maturities, above-market coupons and ways to smooth out debt towers before they become a problem.

One member said Loop’s analysis was compelling not just for interest-expense savings but also as a way to show balance sheet discipline, even if the final call still depends on cash levels and refinancing plans.

NeuGroup for Mega-Cap Treasurers H1 Peer Group Meeting. March 17, 2026. New York City. Using stablecoins to free trapped cash. One treasurer almost succeeded in using stablecoins to move trapped cash out of Venezuela and volunteered to share the details with peers. (A local stablecoin exchange house license had expired, thwarting the plan for now.) While some members would love to use stablecoins to free cash trapped in countries including Russia, others voiced concerns about regulatory uncertainty, tax implications, accounting treatment and operational readiness. One treasurer is interested in establishing a working group to resolve resolve stablecoin challenges: “My CEO is asking me all the time, ‘Why aren’t we using stablecoin?’” Tech, talent and treasury 2030. Technology, talent and strategy are converging in a broader treasury transformation toward a “2030” vision. AI adoption—particularly in cash forecasting and automation—was a recurring theme, but participants stressed that success depends on foundational investments like clean data and robust data lakes. TMS decisions remain complex, with no single system meeting all needs, reinforcing the importance of defining future-state requirements before selecting tools. “I find it very challenging to go through the treasury management system search right now as we also are changing how we do things with AI,” one treasurer said. At the same time, talent management remains critical: teams must evolve their skillsets while navigating retirements and organizational change.

Working on working capital. Working capital management emerged as a shared priority, with companies focused on both payables and receivables optimization. Several participants discussed extending payment terms (often toward 90 days), though success varies by vendor leverage, industry norms and geography. Members discussed supplier financing and dynamic discounting, with mixed adoption and questions around ROI and operational burden. For receivables, efforts included accelerating collections through ACH, direct debit, and reducing check usage. Virtual cards are seen by some as a practical tool delivering both rebates and extended payables. A recurring challenge is data quality and cross-functional alignment, as procurement and business teams often prioritize P&L over cash flow outcomes.

NeuGroup Quick Takes: 2026 First Half Peer Group Meetings: Life Sciences and Tech Treasurers

AI agents deliver investment gains; life sciences treasury teams explore global funding structures.

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