Institutional Market Insights: Treasury

Olaf Ransome’s latest article on liquidity management explores PORTS (Perpetual Overnight Rate Treasury Securities) and how they could expand the supply of on-chain high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) for treasury and cash management. He explains why long cash balances create risk, how stablecoins and tokenised money market funds need safe short-duration assets, and what PORTS could mean for reverse repo, liquidity management and wholesale banking.

Guest insight from Olaf Ransome on UNITE Global FMI and a “single pool of liquidity” vision to reduce nostro reliance, cut buffers and enable real-time PvP/DvP.

Why buy-side and sell-side firms are turning to tokenised collateral for efficient liquidity management.

Money Markets are a cornerstone of day-to-day cash aka liquidity management for both financial institutions and corporate treasuries; we need those instruments to fine tune what we do. And things are changing post the “run-on-the-bank 21st century version” which hit Silicon Valley Bank & Credit Suisse. So, understanding what is changing helps us make the most out of the necessity of optimising what we do around cash management. To gain some insight on the latest market developments, I spoke to Hugh MacMillen from iIxNotes. Hugh is a long-time Money Markets guy who has a passion for developing new products and marketplaces.

Digital assets are on the Trump agenda. Amongst the flurry of Executive Orders signed in the White House was a directive on things Digital Assets (see comments for link). Trump was expected to be “pro Crypto”. This order tastes better than “just Crypto”; in my opinion it is “pro Digital Assets” ice cream with a generous sprinkling of “America first” on top, but bureaucrats don’t get one of whatever it is “this” turns out to be. Read on for more, and please do share a comment or two.

Whether you are in FX, equities, or even crypto, you have to settle trades and make payments. That world is complex and fragmented. And the complexity keeps growing as we add new forms of future money: Stablecoins, tokenised deposits, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and e-money. All of those are niches which we have to manage. This article focuses on how you can fine tune your processes to best manage the scarce resource that is intraday liquidity.

In financial services, tomorrow’s world is all about digital assets. Stablecoins are a new way to hold a cash balance, but they don’t pay interest. Until now.

These things are all the rage, so it is worth spending a little time to understand what they are, how they work and what the implications are for your business. If you are in treasury or transaction banking, or trading, I’d offer the view that having some insight and a view on this is essential.

On the MMF front, I’d like to share a couple of things. First, what I learnt watching a recent episode of the Security Token Show, which featured an interview with Archax CEO Graham Rodford and second what I think this means.

Tokenisation. Let’s allow that this is going to happen. So, if it does, what are the implications for liquidity management?

Liquidity risk is an important part of running and planning a business. In this guide, we provide a brief overview of what liquidity risk is, why it’s important, and how to manage liquidity risk.