The Case for the Second Treasury Hire

You would rarely find a finance function with a single person in it. Treasury gets run that way all the time. It’s less about the size of the business than how complex it is: unless things are genuinely complicated, most CFOs see no reason to go beyond one mid-level manager to run the whole thing. I’d like to make the case that they should.

The job has grown. The team hasn’t.

Treasury is being asked to do more than it was. KPMG’s 2025 Global Treasury Survey found that 68% of respondents now describe treasury as a strategic partner to the business, up from 51% just two years earlier. That’s good news, and it matches what I hear from clients. CFOs want forecasting, funding strategy, risk advice, and a view on what’s coming.

Here’s the catch. The same survey found that almost one in three centralised treasuries still depend heavily on manual inputs for cash forecasting and reporting, and fewer than half said their operating model was fully fit for purpose. PwC’s 2025 survey of 350 treasurers points the same way: 52% of mid-sized firms (revenue between $1bn and $10bn) still rely on manual data collection to build their cash forecasts, and PwC flags rising complexity and leaner headcounts as the reason more teams are looking for help to free up capacity for strategic work.

Those are businesses with revenues in the billions. If that’s how much manual work is sitting in their treasury teams, I’d be surprised if the single treasurer at a smaller business is doing any better.

What actually happens to the one person

When one person runs Treasury, they do all of it. The easy, repetitive dogsbody work takes up a surprising amount of the week, and then there’s the cash pooling and the daily admin on top. The forecasting, the funding conversations and the risk work, which is the part the CFO actually hired a treasurer for, get whatever time is left over. Often that’s not much.

I think this feeds the problem I wrote about in Why Treasury Doesn’t Get the Recognition It Deserves. If your only treasurer is buried in operational work, the CFO sees an operational function, and concludes that’s all Treasury is. The recognition gap isn’t only a perception issue. In a lot of businesses it’s partly a capacity one.

At the sharper end, I’ve spoken to businesses carrying serious debt that still don’t have a treasurer at all. They split the treasury work across six or seven accountants. That makes absolutely zero sense, and it’s the logical end point of never asking whether the function needs more than it has.

The risk side that CFOs tend to miss

I’m a recruiter, not an auditor, so I’ll leave the detail of controls to your internal audit team. But there’s an argument for a second person that has nothing to do with efficiency.

An ACT panel looking at small treasuries back in 2011 made the point that operational risk tends to be magnified in treasury departments of three or fewer people. They shared two real-life examples: a disgruntled employee who changed trade data just before leaving, and an interest rate swap that was never recorded. In the second case, a change of treasurer meant the company didn’t realise it owed the bank money until the swap reset. Both, the panel said, could have been spotted quickly if dealing had been properly separated from confirmation.

That’s a 2011 example, but I don’t think the principle has aged. One person who deals, confirms, settles and reports is a single point of failure, whether through error, illness, or someone simply handing in their notice. A second hire doesn’t solve every control question, but it’s the first step towards the basic idea of having more than one pair of eyes on the cash.

The numbers

Here’s where it becomes a straightforward conversation. If you bring in a treasury assistant, you’re typically looking at somewhere in the region of £30-35K. Take the low-value admin off your senior treasurer’s plate, and what’s left is the work you’re paying them for.

I’d treat that figure as a guide, not a quote. Location matters. Morgan McKinley’s salary data puts treasury analysts in London with up to three years’ experience at roughly £33-45K, so if you’re hiring in the capital, expect to be at the upper end of my range or above it. Our UK Salary Guide 2026/27 has the wider picture for Treasury and other finance roles.

It’s also worth being realistic about who you’re likely to meet. Salaries at the senior end haven’t moved much in the last two to three years. Back around five or six years ago, senior treasury manager salaries jumped from a £60-65K base to £80-85K, because so many people were moving jobs at once, and they’ve largely stayed there since. At the junior end, I regularly meet candidates with a single year’s experience who expect £50-55K, which is junior manager pay for someone with three or four years behind them. The right hire exists, but you have to brief it at the right level and manage expectations from the first conversation.

How to make the case internally

If you’re a CFO, you don’t need a business case from your treasurer to find out whether this applies to you. Three questions will tell you quickly:

• How many hours a week go on routine admin that doesn’t need a senior treasurer?
• What isn’t getting done because of it? Forecasting? Funding work? The review of policies nobody has had time to look at?
• What happens if your treasurer is off for three weeks, or leaves?

It’s an easier hire than most CFOs assume

When I tell CFOs it’s worth hiring a second person, the usual response is that it will take months. It usually doesn’t, for two reasons.

First, Treasury hiring is still very sector agnostic. In 17 years of recruiting, it’s very rare for a client to ask for someone from a particular sector, because cash is cash. Someone with the right fundamentals from retail can work in pharma, or the other way around. That makes the pool far wider than in most of finance.

Second, the market is candidate-rich right now. If a CFO tells me they’re struggling to hire a treasury professional, my first question is how, because there are plenty of people out there. Usually the answer is either the pay isn’t right, or they haven’t gone to a specialist treasury recruiter.

CFOs have a habit of going straight to a search firm, often because that’s how they were placed themselves. I understand why. But for most hires it means paying money up front and waiting months for a shortlist, when the people on that list have often been sitting on specialist recruiters’ books the whole time.

A specialist can have a shortlist with you in 48 to 72 hours, in half the time and probably for half the money. And because I work this market every day, I usually understand what you’re looking for after one phone call or an email, without having to map the market first.

One practical tip: never use more than one treasury recruiter, two at the absolute most. It’s a small market, and if you brief several agencies, every treasurer in it hears about your vacancy twice. It’s your company’s name on the roles, and that’s not the impression you want.

Before it becomes a bigger decision

A second hire made early is a small, contained decision. Left for years, it turns into something bigger: a stretched treasurer who has stopped doing the strategic work, a function the business doesn’t take seriously, and a hiring problem that’s much harder to solve under pressure.

If any of this sounds familiar, I’m always happy to talk it through. I’ll tell you honestly whether what you need is an assistant, an analyst or something else, what it’s likely to cost in today’s market, and how quickly it can realistically be done. Get in touch with me directly at [email protected]

Sources

• KPMG, Global Treasury Survey 2025, as reported by CTMfile: ctmfile.com
• PwC, 2025 Global Treasury Survey (350 treasurers), as reported by CTMfile: ctmfile.com | PwC summary: pwc.com
• The Association of Corporate Treasurers, The Treasurer, June 2011, “Small Treasuries”: treasurers.org
• Morgan McKinley, Treasury Analyst Salaries in London, 2026: morganmckinley.com