KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian treasury professionals are increasingly confident in the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital currencies to transform treasury operations, although integration challenges, costs and cyber risks remain barriers to wider adoption.
According to HSBC’s Redefining Treasury in Asia Pacific 2026: Voices of Treasury report, 76% of Malaysian respondents expect AI to be extremely or very useful to treasury functions over the next three years, compared with 72% across Asia Pacific.
A further 21% said AI would be somewhat useful, pointing to broad expectations that the technology will play a greater role in treasury operations.
Despite the optimism, 82% of Malaysian respondents said treasury is not keeping pace with AI adoption across their wider organisations.
Integration with existing systems emerged as the biggest obstacle, cited by 69% of respondents. Cost was the second-largest barrier at 45%, followed by a lack of expertise at 36%.
HSBC Malaysia head of global payments solutions Anand Mukati said there was strong interest among local treasury teams in exploring new payment instruments and AI-enabled tools.
“However, treasurers recognise that the challenge is often less about the technology itself and more about how it is integrated into existing, fragmented legacy and ERP systems,” he said in a statement.
Malaysia also stood out for its willingness to adopt digital currencies. Half of Malaysian respondents (50%) said they were very likely to use digital currencies within the next two years, significantly above the regional average of 19%.
That interest comes despite concerns over risk. Some 42% of respondents in Malaysia said digital assets in treasury were high risk, broadly in line with the Asia Pacific average of 44%.
The main reasons cited for adopting digital currencies were greater treasury efficiency, at 73%, and enhanced liquidity management, at 50%.
Mukati said the findings showed Malaysian treasurers were considering both the risks and potential benefits of digital currencies, including greater efficiency, improved liquidity management and new payment models.
“The challenge now is for market infrastructure to catch up to the demand,” he said.
At the same time, cybersecurity remains a major concern as treasury functions become more technology-driven. Malaysian respondents rated the threat of cybercrime and fraud at 8.4 out of 10, higher than the regional average of 7.78.
The HSBC report is based on quantitative and qualitative insights from 680 treasury and finance professionals across 11 Asia Pacific markets, including Australia, the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
It examines how treasury and finance functions are being reshaped by AI, digital assets and currencies, as well as the changing risks posed by cybercrime and fraud.
