For much of corporate history, liquidity risk was understood in traditional financial terms. It reflected access to funding, exposure to market volatility or the ability to roll over debt in stressed conditions. Treasury operations, while important, were rarely viewed as sources of systemic fragility.
That assumption no longer holds.
The shift to real-time payments, digitised cash management and API-driven banking has quietly redrawn the boundaries of treasury risk. In the process, cyber threats, once treated as operational or technology concerns, have moved directly onto the balance sheet. Today, liquidity can be compromised not only by market shocks or credit events, but by cyber-enabled failures originating within treasury itself.
This evolution is not abstract. It is already reshaping how leading corporates and regulators think about financial resilience.
Liquidity at the Speed of Code
The defining feature of modern treasury is speed. Funds now move continuously rather than in batches. Settlements are increasingly irrevocable. Exceptions are resolved in real time rather than at day-end.
The implication is straightforward: the window for human intervention has narrowed dramatically. A compromised payment file, falsified mandate or manipulated interface can result in cash leaving the system before standard controls are activated. Unlike traditional fraud, reconciliation-based detection may come too late to prevent liquidity disruption.
What was once an operational failure can now trigger immediate financial stress.
India’s High-Performance, High-Exposure Environment
India provides a particularly instructive case. Its payments infrastructure is among the fastest and most integrated in the world. Always-on settlement systems, digitised collections and API-linked banking have delivered undeniable efficiency and inclusion benefits.
They have also introduced new vulnerabilities.
Many Indian corporates operate across multiple banks, platforms and service providers, often with decentralised approval structures and significant reliance on third parties. Yet governance models within treasury functions have not always evolved in parallel with technological capability.
The result is a widening gap between how quickly liquidity moves and how quickly risk is detected and contained. In such an environment, cyber incidents can escalate from technical disruptions into liquidity events with board-level implications.
From Cyber Incident to Balance-Sheet Event
Globally, treasurers are beginning to recognise that cyber risk no longer sits neatly within IT risk frameworks. Payment diversion, credential compromise and data manipulation have direct consequences for working capital, covenant compliance and counterparty confidence.
What makes cyber-linked liquidity risk especially challenging is its capacity to cascade. A single failed or fraudulent payment can delay payrolls, interrupt supply chains, or trigger contractual penalties. Even short-lived disruptions can damage trust with suppliers, banks and regulators.
Trust, once questioned, is rarely restored quickly.
The Limits of Legacy Controls
Many treasury control frameworks were designed for a slower financial system. Dual authorisation, post-transaction reviews and periodic reconciliations remain necessary, but they are insufficient in a real-time environment.
Risk has shifted from detection to prevention and containment. This requires treasuries to develop controls that are not merely compliant, but adaptive, capable of responding to abnormal behaviour patterns rather than predefined rule breaches.
It also forces a broader rethink of accountability. Cyber-linked liquidity risk cuts across finance, risk and technology functions. Fragmented ownership creates blind spots precisely where coordination is most needed.
Toward a More Resilient Treasury Architecture
A growing number of global organisations are responding by reframing treasury around resilience rather than efficiency alone.
Several themes are emerging. First, clearer alignment between CFOs, treasurers, CROs and CISOs, recognising that liquidity resilience is a shared responsibility. Second, increased attention to behavioural vulnerabilities, social engineering remains one of the most effective attack vectors, regardless of technical sophistication.
Third, the adoption of velocity and anomaly-based controls that reflect how funds move in practice, not merely how processes are documented. And finally, more robust incident preparedness, including rehearsed response playbooks and closer coordination with banking partners and insurers.
The common thread is acceptance: cyber-related liquidity events are no longer low-probability outliers, but plausible stress scenarios that must be planned for.
Treasury’s Expanding Mandate
The deeper shift is strategic. Treasury can no longer function solely as a manager of funding and compliance. In a digitised financial system, it has become a guardian of organisational continuity.
Liquidity remains the bloodstream of the enterprise. Cyber risk has become one of its most potent threats.
For Indian corporates, the lesson is clear. As payments become faster and systems more interconnected, treasury risk management must evolve from a control function into a resilience function. Those that adapt early will strengthen credibility with boards, lenders and regulators. Those that do not may discover that in the age of instant money, failure travels just as fast.
