A playbook to unlock trapped cash in a fragmented landscape

01

Diagnose the constraint

The starting point is mapping liquidity to its underlying causes: not just where balances sit, but why they cannot move. This means assessing positions across regulatory barriers, tax implications, entity structure, market practices, and the capabilities of banking and clearing partners. This typically reveals that a meaningful portion of apparently trapped cash is operationally constrained, not structurally immovable.

Balances may sit in the wrong entity for historical tax reasons but can be moved through an existing intercompany loan structure that has never been activated. Surplus currency may be held in accounts outside the group’s pooling or interest optimisation structure, bypassing preferential terms already negotiated with the bank. Account structures may include redundant local accounts that could be consolidated within a single reporting cycle. At times, cash that was put up as collateral due to credit constraints can be freed up using alternative funding mechanisms if financial conditions have improved.

02

Define and prioritise the liquidity agenda

Not all constraints require immediate resolution. Initiatives must align with broader business priorities: improving forecasting, strengthening control over intercompany flows, reducing reliance on external funding or enabling faster capital deployment.

This involves distinguishing between three problems: a structural constraint might be a legal entity hierarchy that routes liquidity inefficiently and requires reorganisation over many months; an operational inefficiency might be a footprint of bank accounts larger than the business needs, such as legacy accounts retained after market exits or entity restructuring, which can be rationalised within weeks; and an economic trade-off might be whether to hedge a structural FX exposure now or wait for more favourable market conditions.

In practice, starting with operational inefficiencies unlocks meaningful liquidity within a single reporting cycle, building the mandate to pursue the structural work that takes longer.

03

Align structure and execution across markets

A liquidity model is only as effective as its executability. This means adapting structures to local realities, capturing regional efficiencies where available, and ensuring banking and clearing capabilities support the flows required.

An account management structure powered through sub-accounts or virtual account ledgers that consolidates receivables across multiple entities in a single market can reduce account complexity and improve visibility within weeks, without any change to the underlying entity structure.

Regional cash concentration arrangements can move liquidity into a treasury hub where it can be deployed more flexibly than if spread across subsidiary accounts. Payments- and receipts-on-behalf-of arrangements can further reduce account proliferation by routing flows through a single in-house bank entity, particularly where local entities operate in markets with limited cross-border functionality. Working with partners that operate across markets and clearing systems – such as Standard Chartered’s Payments and Treasury Solutions team – can help treasurers design solutions that work in practice.

04

Operationalise and continuously optimise

Structural change is only the starting point. Treasurers need real-time visibility of balances, commitments, liquidity forecasts and intercompany positions, and the ability to see and deploy available liquidity under real constraints. This visibility helps determine when internal liquidity can be mobilised and when external funding is required.

Platforms such as Straight2Bank Liquidity offer enhanced visibility that allows treasurers to act on real-time liquidity positions as conditions change – redirecting a surplus position to cover a short position in another market before it triggers a funding requirement.

Liquidity and foreign exchange should also be treated as a single, interconnected problem. Structures that combine pooling with embedded FX capabilities – for example, through integrated solutions such as Standard Chartered’s PrismFX – allow organisations to manage liquidity and currency exposure within a unified framework at pre-negotiated terms, eliminating the spread cost of converting through multiple independent transactions. Interest optimisation structures can further improve outcomes by ensuring balances that cannot be pooled immediately, whether for regulatory, operational or timing reasons, continue to earn competitive returns while remaining available for future deployment.

Together, these steps shift treasury from reacting to constraints toward actively shaping how liquidity moves.