Ensuring liquidity is the number one priority for treasury departments operating in the Asia-Pacific region, a study from Asset Benchmark Research (ABR) has revealed.

The ABR study asked close to 800 CFOs and treasurers to rank 11 different goals in order of importance. Each goal was given a total score out of 100, which was weighted by the ranked positions given by each respondent.

When the scores were calculated, ensuring liquidity achieved the highest score of 79, indicating that it was considered the most important goal by CFOs and treasurers. This was followed by optimizing finance costs (69) and increasing control over cash (59).

In terms of regional breakdown, North Asian companies ranked liquidity as their chief treasury consideration, indicating that there are still concerns over China’s capital control policies. Window guidance imposed early last year has restricted corporates from moving renminbi offshore, in an attempt to curb capital outflows from the country.

South and Southeast Asian companies, on the other hand, not only saw ensuring liquidity as a top goal, but also cash visibility, control and forecasting. Adhering to the cash management concerns of its domestic companies, India launched the Unified Payments Interface, a peer-to-peer instant payment platform to help track payment activity.

Centralization was also a key theme of the ABR study, with around 80% of survey participants stating that they had centralized or would centralize their payment operations. Most North Asian and South/Southeast Asian companies shared that they plan to centralize payments.

However, regions differed when it came to other top treasury functions, with most North Asian companies favouring the centralization of funding after payments. South/Southeast Asian companies sought to centralize banking relationships after payment centralization was completed.