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Integral has published the findings of two concurrent benchmark studies covering 143 corporate treasuries and financial institutions, which project that programmatic execution will account for 42% of corporates' FX channel mix within five years, up from 18% today.
The research combines a Corporate Treasury Survey, which covers buy-side demand for foreign exchange pricing and execution solutions, with an FX Distribution Survey, which assesses sell-side capability to provide liquidity and distribution strategies. Of the 143 respondents, 67 sat on the corporate treasury side and 76 on the distribution side, producing 103 completed datasets and a 72% completion rate.
Large domestic and multinational corporations made up 67% of the treasury sample, with mid-market and high-growth enterprises accounting for 29% and the remaining 4% unknown. Tier-2 and tier-3 banks accounted for 64% of the distribution sample, institutional brokers 15% and non-bank market makers 5%, with financial technology providers, insurance firms, proprietary trading shops, exchanges and wealth managers making up the remaining 16%. The distribution respondent base spanned Asia at 37%, Europe at 27%, Latin America at 16%, the Middle East and North Africa at 16% and North America at 4%.
Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral
Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral, said:
“Corporates are looking for more streamlined and automated solutions to manage their FX risk at a time when market volatility, disrupted trade flows and pressure on balance sheets are making treasury operations more complex. Banks have a crucial role to play and will need to work with their clients to address the operational and technology challenges around embedded FX management. This depends on strong technology foundations, including API first platforms that seamlessly connect banks and corporates and support the adoption of agentic AI.”
Embedded FX, meaning execution integrated directly into corporate systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Treasury Management Systems, is forecast to more than double its share of corporate treasury volume from 12% to 26% over the next five years. User-triggered API execution is expected to rise from 6% to 16% across the same period. Multi-dealer platforms are projected to move from 34% to 37%, single-dealer platforms from 14% to 11%, and manual and voice execution from 34% to 10%, a fall of 24 percentage points.
We believe FX execution will become 100% automated 24/7, according to our internal policies, to benefit from the best rate at the moment an exposure is clearly identified.
Multi-national corporate, Asia
On the sell side, client API trading was cited by 36% of banks and financial institutions as their single most important channel today, ahead of multi-dealer platforms at 32%, voice and chat at 17%, single-dealer platforms at 10% and ECNs at 5%. Asked which channel would grow most in importance over the next five years, 53% named client API trading, ahead of multi-dealer platforms at 25%. Eighty-two percent of bank and financial institution respondents agreed or strongly agreed that embedded FX services will play a significantly greater role in their distribution strategy.
Over the coming years, FX trading distribution is likely to become increasingly automated and data-driven, (with) greater use of APIs and deeper integration with client treasury systems.
Middle Eastern Bank
The survey identifies a divergence between sell-side expectations and buy-side readiness, which Integral terms an "API maturity gap". While 53% of banks expect direct APIs to dominate distribution, 83% of corporate treasurers report significant barriers to full automation. Those barriers split by company size. Among large corporates and multinationals, 56% cite legacy architecture, fragmented domestic systems and complex treasury technologies that prevent them from importing real-time API feeds. Among mid-market and growth firms, 43% point to bank API infrastructure that smaller treasury teams find overly complex and non-standardised.
What the market needs is true interconnectivity between systems, with banks fully integrated into their customers' workflows.
Latin American Bank
Technology budgets on the sell side track existing channel orientation rather than projected demand. Among banks and financial institutions that primarily rely on voice execution, 67% prioritise short-term cost reduction as their top technology priority, and the report notes that the same pattern holds across every channel group surveyed.
On artificial intelligence, 60% of surveyed banks and financial institutions expect AI to have the greatest impact on their distribution strategies over the next five years, and 49% expect agentic AI to be among the most impactful technologies for distribution. Underlying data maturity varies widely: 27% of banks remain limited to historical data analysis, 54% have achieved real-time data ingestion, and 19% possess advanced predictive capabilities.
Corporate adoption remains at an earlier stage, with only 8% of corporate respondents running active pilots of AI capabilities within their treasury functions and 67% in the monitoring or conceptual exploration phase. Fifty percent of corporate respondents nonetheless expect autonomous agents to handle more than a quarter of their FX workflow within five years.
Trading distribution will become more automated and data-driven, with AI and APIs dynamically routing flow across liquidity sources. Electronic market makers and internalisation will further reshape how liquidity is accessed.
European Bank
Progressive treasurers who leverage machine learning, predictive analytics, and automated execution gain around-the-clock coverage, heightened risk management, and measurable operational efficiency.
Multi-national Corporate, North America
It will definitely become more automated. TMS will be implemented in most cases and will use the shared reporting; repetitive work will be performed by AI or systems.
Multi-national Corporate, Poland
Treasurers surveyed advocate a "human-in-the-loop" architecture, in which AI handles data analysis, trend identification and transaction formatting while human operators retain veto power and execution authority, particularly for capital-at-risk decisions.
We don't believe in agents deciding for our corporate and treasury strategies, AI must assist, propose but not ever make decisions.
Multi-national corporate
Execution is one thing, but more and more, management wants data driving the decisions behind hedging. That's the real frontier.
Upper-mid market Corporate
The report links automation to a reallocation of treasury resources rather than to cost reduction alone. If financial institutions deliver the programmatic features required to automate FX execution, 65% of corporate treasurers said they would reallocate internal resources toward broader corporate risk management strategies, 29% toward liquidity optimisation, 19% toward strategic funding decisions and 12% toward counterparty optimisation. The question allowed multiple responses, so totals exceed 100%.
All transactional risks should be covered automatically to free up time for analytics and strategy optimization and a more dynamic hedging approach.
Mid-market Corporate
The report frames the longer-term structural outcome as a two-part architecture, with lighter customer-facing interfaces embedded into corporate workflows and treasury systems at the front end, and automated algorithmic engines handling price discovery, risk aggregation and execution improvement at the back end. One survey respondent described the result as a highly efficient but "hollowed out" middle, a position previously occupied by the "classic broker sitting between buyer and seller."
Integral is a currency technology partner to financial institutions including banks, brokers and cross-border payment companies, which embed its technology into their workflows and client-facing services. Its cloud-based SaaS solutions and global liquidity network provide trading technology for FX, digital assets and precious metals.
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