“Banks that understand that good intraday liquidity management is both good risk management and good business move faster.” — Q&A session with Joel Feazell, Head of Liquidity

What surprised you most when you moved from managing liquidity in a bank to building technology for it?

Honestly, how similar everything is.

When I was on the bank side as a business sponsor, I worked closely with tech teams to build liquidity and risk systems. The process is pretty much the same with the tech team being outside. The collaboration, the back-and-forth, the problem solving, is the same. I’m just sitting on the other side now, although in reality I still act as a bridge.

What’s more interesting is that instead of solving this for one bank, I now see the same challenges across many. That gives you a much clearer view of what actually works.

What are the most common blind spots banks uncover when they begin preparing for ECB ILM compliance?

I wouldn’t call them blind spots — banks are generally aware — but the scale becomes real once they get into it.

Data consistency is always one – different systems, entities, and formats. It’s expected, but harder in practice to solve for. The good news is that it’s solvable. We can take large data sets, harmonize them, and make them usable pretty quickly.

The bigger surprise is actually on the positive side. Two things come up again and again:

1. Automation: banks expect this to be harder than it is, but that’s what we do, and we do it well and effectively. It completely changes processes and credibility of outputs.
2. Moving from monitoring to actually managing liquidity in real time. This is a huge functional leap, and changes both liquidity and risk profiles in a substantive way.

Both are usually solved faster and with much less friction than expected.

In reality, how close are banks today to having a true intraday liquidity view?

It varies, but no bank is fully there yet.

Most have decent monitoring. Reporting is often still a challenge. But where the gap really shows is in managing flows.

Banks are not consistently using real-time, harmonized data to make decisions during the day. They’re still reacting more than managing. That’s the real gap — and it’s a little surprising and very, very fixable.

From your experience, what separates banks that get this right from those that keep struggling?

It comes down to culture, especially risk culture.

I remember a US bank back in 2010 that told me they had invested $10MM just in data harmonization. At the time, that seemed like a big bet. But they saw the long-term value of managing real-time cash flows.

Today, they’re ahead of the curve and saving millions because of it.

The banks that get this right think long term. The others tend to focus on short-term cost and stay stuck.

Beyond compliance, what are the other levers that make a case for an ILM solution?

The efficiency and insight you get are huge.

We have a client using our Fioneer ILM solution mainly for forecasting and intelligence. They saved millions across their nostro network just from better visibility and timing.

And that’s before you even get into operational efficiency. Once you see the data clearly, the value becomes obvious.

What does a realistic first step look like for a bank that wants to improve ILM?

Half joking — the first step is admitting there’s a problem.

But seriously, it starts with mindset. You need a balance between business and risk. Banks that understand that good intraday liquidity management is both good risk management and good business move faster.

From there, focus on getting visibility first. You don’t need to solve everything on day one. Just get to a point where you can actually see what’s happening intraday. Everything builds from there.

Interested in learning more about our product for Intraday liquidity management? Connect with Joel:

Joel Feazell, Head of Liquidity Management at SAP Fioneer
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