Q&A: The Evolution of Treasury and the Office of the CFO

Few executive seats are undergoing a transformation as radical as the Office of the CFO. Driven by the rapid convergence of enterprise technology and global capital markets, the modern finance leader is being asked to evolve from a retrospective reporting function into a forward-looking strategic architect.

In this exclusive Q&A with Finance Chief, Hilary Norris Wilson, Head of Global Operations, Ripple Treasury, explains how the modern finance chief can best utilise modernisation to ensure efficient operations in the Office of the CFO. 

Previously having held the position of CFO for six years at GTreasury before its acquisition by Ripple, Hilary has a unique stack of experience with technology  and finance, gleaned from a 30-year career. 

“It isn't often you land at the intersection of two industry shifts in the office of the CFO happening at once, AI and digital assets.” she says. “Staying with Ripple gives me both a front row seat in that transition, plus a hand in leading it.”

Hilary unpacks why legacy manual handoffs are failing modern enterprises, how agentic AI is redefining liquidity management and why the window for CFOs to capture early mover advantage is rapidly closing.

Is the Office of the CFO relying on outdated systems in everyday workflow?

In many cases, and even within corporations you may not expect, yes. Whether that’s more about legacy software systems, legacy process systems, or a combination of the two depends on the business.

The good news for CFOs is there are well-proven and scalable benefits to modernising workflows. The ROI for transformation has never been clearer than it is today.

As one example, the office of the CFO and their treasury teams report cash forecasting is where a lot of time goes.

Strategic Treasurer’s Treasury Perspectives survey put that figure at 54%, the top answer for four surveys running, and AFP’s 2025 Treasury Benchmarking Survey found 73% of corporates naming cash management and forecasting their leading priority. 

Behind those numbers are spreadsheets moving between inboxes and reconciliation steps living in one person’s head because that’s “how it’s always been done.” Money movement carries its own version of the same problem.

Most corporate treasuries still run on a single primary rail with no real alternative if it goes down over a weekend or a holiday. Modernising the office of the CFO starts with naming those manual handoffs before adding new tools on top of them.

How can CFOs implement a culture of success to advance the business?

Some of the best treasury and finance cultures I’ve seen within our customers treat momentum as a resource you protect more so than a milestone you hit once.

I’d recommend picking projects that produce a visible result in weeks (not quarters), because a team that sees fast, tangible progress will keep pushing for the next improvement on their own.

It also involves giving people credit publicly when a forecast tightens or a reconciliation step disappears, since those wins build the internal trust that harder changes will need later.

Take AI in cash forecasting, for example.

CFOs helping implement a quick, smaller-win AI-in-forecasting project helps prove out the idea, get confidence up on the direction and prepare for scale.

That puts CFOs on track to capture a shift like AI or stablecoin rather than watch competitors move first.

In what ways have treasury operations evolved in the last few years?

The last decade moved treasury from spreadsheets to SaaS automation, and that shift already changed a lot, but treasurers and analysts were still spending 30 to 40% of their time generating forecasts and analysing variances by hand even after making that jump.

AI taking over that extraction and pattern detection work directly is the more recent shift, turning hours of manual forecasting into an output generated in seconds with root cause analysis attached. Digital assets are the newest layer on top of that.

Ripple’s 2026 survey of more than a thousand global finance leaders found 72% saying they need to offer some kind of digital asset capability to stay competitive, even though most don’t yet have a starting point that fits inside their existing workflow.

Treasury has gone from a reporting function tracking what already happened to a strategic one shaping what happens next.

What’s the key to a perfect data strategy in a modern climate?

It’s a tricky question, but I think “chasing data perfection” before you start is usually how treasury teams end up delaying value they could be capturing. I’d split the question in two. 

Operational AI applied to cash forecasting and liquidity works on data that’s already reasonably structured. So, figure your standard ERP setup and normal bank connectivity, and most treasury functions clear that bar today.

Agentic AI that reasons autonomously and executes decisions sits at a different and higher bar, where a genuinely clean and governed foundation matters because every output needs to trace back to source data for the CFO and audit committee.

Architecture can lower that bar considerably, and the principle we hold to is simply to keep the language model away from the math.

Deterministic engines calculate every number, and the AI layer is limited to explaining those numbers in plain language. A model cannot hallucinate a figure it never computed. 

Protiviti’s Global Finance Trends Survey reports 61% of finance leaders name AI privacy and security a high priority, and a governed foundation is what answers that question before anyone has to ask it.

Teams building governance in from day one, instead of retrofitting it later, close the gap faster and more effectively.

What potential does stablecoin hold for the Office of the CFO?

I’d frame it as optionality. Corporate treasury already builds redundancy into everything else (multiple banking relationships and backup counterparties for hedging, etc), except the actual movement of money, which usually runs on a single rail with no fallback if a corridor closes over a weekend or a holiday. Stablecoins are the first credible alternate option there.

There is also a return dimension that gets less attention, because once you count nights, weekends and holidays, cash sits outside investable windows for more than 260 hours a week.

For a company holding US$50m to US$500m in operating cash, that is roughly US$1m to US$7m a year in foregone return. Around-the-clock settlement puts that time back in play.

The appetite is already showing up in the data. EY-Parthenon surveyed 350 corporate and financial institution executives and found stablecoins were expected to be in use by more than half of those organisations by now.

Regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act and MiCA removed the excuse to wait. What’s left is mostly an integration question, and corporations have been clear about the answer.

Fifty-six percent want stablecoins delivered through embedded APIs inside the treasury platforms they already run, not a separate wallet bolted on the side.

How can agentic AI be implemented in the Office of the CFO to overcome legacy barriers? 

Implementation works best as a sequence, not a leap. You want to start with the data foundation, connected systems and clean inputs, because agentic AI reasons only as well as what it’s reading. That groundwork opens up some fantastic operational AI cases, like cash forecasting or risk management, that treasury teams can act on immediately.

Architecture, as you’d expect, matters as much as the data. The agent proposes and a person approves, with every recommendation citing the exact policy clause it followed, rather than an autonomous system acting with no visibility into what it can’t see.

Strategic Treasurer found the share of practitioners expecting AI to ease manual reconciliation work rose from 55% to 62% over the past year, a sign that early wins in one process build confidence toward the next.

The piece most implementations overlook is the feedback loop, where the system should learn from every approval and override so that each cycle of proposals is sharper than the last.

This is the point agentic AI stops being a tool you operate and becomes a capability that compounds.

What is your advice for a modern CFO?

Stop waiting for a perfect moment to start modernising your stack, because there isn’t one coming. Every business function that has gone through a real technology shift shows the same pattern.

Early movers compound their advantage while everyone else is still building the foundation those movers already have in place.

The corporate treasury version is playing out right now in forecasting, the move toward digital assets, agentic AI and a lot of other really transformative ways.

The corporate treasurers I talk to are more productive and happier to be spending more of their time on business-impacting responsibilities versus manually updating and sending off Excel files.

My advice is to pick the highest value, lowest risk piece available today, cash forecasting is often it, and get a real result in front of the business within weeks.

That single proof point earns more budget and trust for the next step than any strategy document will.

Build governance into whatever you deploy from the start, and treat every new capability as something you add once the foundation underneath it is already sound.

About Ripple Treasury 

Ripple Treasury is the new name for GTreasury after it was acquired by Ripple for US$1bn in 2025. It is under the executive leadership of CEO Brad Garlinghouse. Ripple Treasury is trusted by 1,000 customers, spread out over 160 countries. Ripple Treasury is headquartered in Chicago, US, whereas Ripple is headquartered in California, US. Before the acquisition, GTreasury was led by CEO Renaat ver Eecke.

Ripple’s partners:

Subway: Founded in 1965 as Pete's Super Submarines by Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck, Subway is a major American fast-food restaurant chain. Headquartered in Connecticut, US, it is world-renowned for its customisable submarine sandwiches and wraps. The company operates globally across thousands of locations under the executive leadership of CEO Jonathan Fitzpatrick who joined the sandwich giant in 2025. Subway has 37,000 restaurants around the world to date. 

Volvo:  Synonymous with safety innovations and engineering excellence, the brand continues to lead the automotive sector in electric vehicle transition and commercial mobility solutions under current CEO Martin Lundstedt. Martin joined Volvo Group in 2015, and is Co-Chairman for the UN Sec­retary-General’s High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Trans­port. Volvo was founded in 1927 in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo is an iconic global manufacturer. Headquartered in Gothenburg, the famous automotive manufacturer has 99,000 employees worldwide.

Sulzer: Founded in 1834 by the Sulzer family in Winterthur, Switzerland, Sulzer is an industrial engineering powerhouse. Headquartered in Winterthur since 1834, the company specialises in fluid engineering, pumping systems and chemical processing technologies. Steering the global operations as Executive Chair and CEO is Dr. Suzanne Thoma, who has driven performance-critical application solutions across energy, water and industrial sectors worldwide. The company has over 200 years of experience, even supporting a Guinness World Record in agricultural water treatment for reuse.

Stihl: Headquartered in Waiblingen, Germany, the family-owned company revolutionised forestry and landscaping tool technology. Stihl was founded in 1926 by Andreas Stihl, and is a world-leading manufacturer of chainsaws and outdoor power equipment. Interim President Lorraine Amesbury Holder is driving the brand's shift toward high-performance battery technology alongside its traditional petrol machinery. Stihl produces in 8 countries, is 100% family-owned, and claims to be the world’s top selling chainsaw brand since 1971. 

Quest Diagnostics: Founded in 1967 as Metropolitan Pathology Laboratory by Dr. Paul A. Brown, Quest Diagnostics is a premier American clinical testing provider. Headquartered in New Jersey, US, it delivers critical diagnostic insights across healthcare systems. President and CEO Jim Davis leads the corporation, advancing AI-driven pathology and accessible direct-to-consumer medical testing solutions. Quest has almost 60,000 employees, and serves half the hospitals and physicians in the US.