Multicurrency Cash-Visibility Architecture Director

The mandate

The group’s reported cash combines bank balances, port-agent collections, voyage advances and restricted customer or regulatory funds without consistent ownership or availability. Currency positions change after local cut-offs, agent statements arrive late and value date is often inferred from ledger posting. The defined problem is to create decision-grade visibility that distinguishes cash the treasurer can move today from accounting balances, expected receipts and funds encumbered by law, contract or operations.

The deliverables are a cash-domain model, account and restriction taxonomy, source-to-decision lineage, intraday and forecast control design, bank-and-agent connectivity blueprint, exception operating model and phased investment case. The design must cover beneficial owner, legal entity, currency, location, value date, availability, restriction reason, sweeping eligibility, voyage context, sanctions screening, counterparty exposure and reconciliation to treasury and accounting records.

Four milestones govern five months: by week four, accept the account, agent and decision failure baseline; by week ten, approve target cash semantics and control rules; by week sixteen, complete a shadow daily-liquidity cycle across three regions; and by week twenty-two, deliver connectivity priorities, operating ownership, benefits, residual constraints and the executive implementation dossier. Each invoice follows milestone acceptance.

Acceptance requires regional and central treasury teams to produce the same available-cash position from governed sources, reconcile sampled balances to bank and agent evidence, explain all material restrictions and identify late or stale data before a funding decision. The design must survive a weekend currency cut-off, a delayed port remittance and a sanctioned counterparty hold without silently treating expected or inaccessible funds as liquidity.

The client provides bank account inventories, statements, host-to-host feeds, agent agreements, voyage and collection records, restriction opinions from counsel, forecasts, sweeps, intercompany arrangements and access to regional treasury owners. The consultant does not move cash, approve bank access, interpret sanctions or tax law, select a bank, execute connectivity, negotiate agents or own daily liquidity. Client officers retain those decisions.

Why this is external work

Local teams optimise operational access, accounting teams optimise reconciliation and group treasury optimises funding, so each uses a different meaning of cash. Previous technology workshops began with dashboards and preserved those semantic conflicts. Independent treasury architecture is needed to trace cash from external evidence to an authorised decision, challenge assumed availability and design controls before the group invests in another visibility layer.

What you will own

• Catalogue bank, agent, collection, escrow, margin and restricted accounts by owner, currency, purpose, access and authoritative source.
• Define available, book, expected, trapped, pledged and operational cash with value-date, cut-off and confidence rules.
• Trace balances through bank feeds, agent statements, voyage systems, ledgers, forecasts, sanctions holds and treasury decisions.
• Design reconciliation and freshness controls with thresholds, exception ownership, ageing, escalation and manual-evidence standards.
• Run a shadow liquidity cycle across contrasting regions, testing weekend, currency, remittance and restriction scenarios.
• Prioritise connectivity using decision value, cash materiality, volatility, data quality, implementation effort and control consequence.
• Deliver the domain model, operating cadence, ownership map, investment sequence and unresolved legal or commercial assumptions.

Candidate qualifications

• Has designed global cash visibility for shipping, commodities, logistics or another agent-heavy multicurrency operating model.
• Understands value date, cut-offs, restrictions, sweeps, intercompany liquidity, sanctions holds and counterparty concentration.
• Has reconciled bank and third-party agent evidence to treasury decisions without equating general-ledger cash with availability.
• Can specify cash semantics and controls independently of a preferred treasury workstation, bank portal or integration vendor.
• Has tested a target design through live shadow funding cycles across multiple legal entities and time zones.
• Produces an operating model central and regional treasurers can apply without consultant-owned spreadsheets or daily intervention.

Non-negotiables

• Can work the Singapore hybrid cadence and complete both regional residencies and all shadow-cycle sessions.
• Will disclose relationships with banks, treasury vendors, shipping agents, connectivity providers and maritime counterparties.
• Brings decision-grade cash architecture in a complex multicurrency group; dashboard delivery alone is insufficient.
• Will not classify expected, restricted or stale balances as available cash to improve reported visibility.

1. 49 words maximum. Which shipping cash balance most often appears available while remaining operationally or legally trapped?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you prove the value date of an agent-reported receipt before funding against it?
3. 49 words maximum. What shadow-cycle exception would most challenge the target cash taxonomy?