Corporate Treasury Career for Chartered Accountants: What the Desk Does and How to Break In

Corporate treasury is the part of finance that deals with money as it actually moves: bank balances, borrowings, foreign-currency receipts and payments, surplus investments and the controls around every rupee that leaves the company. For a Chartered Accountant who enjoys cash, banking and markets more than period-end reporting, it is a strong career path. This guide explains what the treasury desk is responsible for, the three calculations you will be asked to do in almost every role, the rules that shape hedging in India, and how to decide whether treasury fits you better than FP&A or controllership.

The five questions a treasury team answers every day

Treasury work is easier to understand as questions than as a job description.

1. Do we have enough cash, in the right place, for the next few weeks? This is liquidity management: daily cash positions, rolling forecasts and a buffer for surprises.
2. Which bank, which account, which limit? This is banking: account mandates, working-capital limits, guarantees, letters of credit, payment channels and fees.
3. How do we fund the business, and at what cost? This is funding: term loans, working-capital facilities, repayment schedules, covenant tracking and refinancing.
4. What happens if the rupee, interest rates or commodity prices move? This is financial risk: identifying foreign-exchange and interest-rate exposures and hedging them under an approved policy.
5. Can we prove every transaction was authorised and recorded correctly? This is control: maker-checker approvals, deal confirmations, reconciliations, hedge records and reports to management and the board.

A forecasting error, a breached covenant, an unhedged exposure or a weak payment control can hurt the company before month-end. That immediacy is what distinguishes treasury from most reporting roles.

What ICAI's own treasury course tells you about the scope

ICAI treats treasury as a specialist area. Its Certificate Course on Forex and Treasury Management (FXTM), run by the Financial Markets and Investors' Awareness Committee and open only to ICAI members, is split into two modules. Module I covers treasury organisation structure, process, domestic operations, forex, treasury mathematics and technology. Module II covers accounting, taxation, types of treasury, risk management, regulation, supervision and compliance, auditing and new developments. The course runs as online classes over 10 days with a project presentation and evaluation on day 11, requires 75 percent attendance, and carries 30 CPE hours. Assessment is two 100-mark papers and a 150-mark project, and the fee is Rs. 5,900 (Rs. 5,000 plus 18 percent GST).

You do not need the certificate to get a treasury job, but its syllabus is a sensible checklist of what an employer will expect you to know.

Three calculations you will be asked to do

1. A 13-week cash forecast and the lowest point of headroom

A company starts a quarter with Rs. 12 crore in the bank and wants never to fall below Rs. 5 crore. Its expected net weekly cash flows, built from collections, payroll, taxes, supplier payments, capital expenditure and debt service, are shown below (Rs. crore).

The balance dips below the Rs. 5 crore buffer in weeks 5, 8 and 11, and bottoms out at Rs. 2.7 crore in week 8, a gap of Rs. 2.3 crore. Treasury's job is to see this weeks in advance and arrange a response: a drawdown on the working-capital limit, a change in the timing of a large supplier payment, or faster collection from a key customer. A static bank-balance report would not show the problem until week 8 arrived.

2. A foreign-currency receivable and a forward contract

An Indian exporter expects USD 1 million from a customer in 90 days. Using illustrative rates, suppose the bank quotes a 90-day forward rate of Rs. 88.55 per dollar. If the company books the forward, it will receive Rs. 8,85,50,000 on settlement regardless of where the rupee trades.

• If the spot rate on settlement is Rs. 86.50, an unhedged company would receive Rs. 8,65,00,000, which is Rs. 20,50,000 less than the hedged amount.
• If the spot rate is Rs. 89.50, an unhedged company would receive Rs. 8,95,00,000, which is Rs. 9,50,000 more than the hedged amount.

The hedge removes uncertainty in both directions; it is not a bet on the rupee. Before booking it, treasury confirms the amount and timing of the receivable, checks for natural offsets such as dollar payables, and follows the company's approved risk policy. After booking, the contract is recorded, confirmed and monitored until settlement.

3. The cost of a floating-rate loan when rates rise

A company has a Rs. 50 crore term loan at a floating rate. A rise of 50 basis points in the benchmark adds Rs. 25 lakh a year to interest cost (Rs. 50 crore x 0.5 percent). Treasury tracks this sensitivity, reports it to management, and evaluates whether fixing part of the rate is worthwhile under the policy.

The hedging rules every treasury CA should know

Currency hedging by Indian companies is regulated by RBI. RBI overhauled the framework through its A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 13 dated 5 January 2024 (RBI/2023-24/108) on Risk Management and Inter-Bank Dealings: Hedging of foreign exchange risk, effective from 5 April 2024. Four points matter most in practice:

• Contracted exposure is currency risk from current or capital account transactions already entered into.
• Anticipated exposure is currency risk from transactions permissible under FEMA, 1999 that are "proposed to be entered into in future."
• 2024 USD 100 million threshold (reduced on 10 October 2026): Authorised Dealers "shall permit users to take position up to USD 100 million equivalent of notional value (outstanding at any point of time), across all Authorised Dealers, for hedging contracted exposure without the requirement to establish the existence of underlying exposure." The exposure must still exist; the relaxation is about documentation, not speculation.
• The notional amount and tenor of a derivative contract must not exceed the value and tenor of the exposure.

Current rule from 10 October 2026: RBI has reduced this specified contracted-exposure documentation relaxation to USD 5 million equivalent of outstanding notional across authorised dealers. It has also reduced the corresponding INR-linked exchange-traded derivatives facility, which is measured across recognised stock exchanges. Genuine larger hedges are not automatically prohibited; the authorised dealer must check the underlying exposure and other applicable conditions. The change is set out in RBI Circular No. 25. Cancellation/rebooking restrictions and the separate dealer reserve for certain qualifying derivatives are explained in the 10 October RBI forex update.

The circular also defines non-retail users, which include resident entities with a minimum net worth of Rs. 500 crore or turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore, along with financial institutions, NBFCs, insurers, pension funds and mutual funds. A candidate who can explain these rules clearly stands out in interviews, because many applicants know products but not the regulatory boundary around them.

Treasury, FP&A or controllership?

In smaller companies one person may cover all three, but the centre of gravity differs, and so do the skills that get you promoted.

What a CA already brings, and the gaps to close

CAs arrive with cash-flow logic, financial-statement understanding, accounting discipline, audit awareness and taxation basics. The shift is in the question asked: instead of "has this been recorded correctly?", treasury asks "what cash will move, when, in which currency, through which bank, at what cost and with what risk?"

• Banking products: cash credit and overdraft limits, term loans, bank guarantees, letters of credit and cash-management services.
• Market basics: spot and forward rates, fixed versus floating interest, and how a hedge links to an underlying exposure.
• Working capital: how receivable, inventory and payable cycles drive liquidity.
• Excel: reconciliations, scenario tables, ageing, cash bridges and dashboard-ready data.
• Controls: maker-checker, payment approval matrices, bank-account governance and segregation of duties.

Building a portfolio for interviews

Instead of a generic study plan, prepare four pieces of work you can show and talk through:

1. A 13-week cash forecast for a sample business, with the week of lowest headroom and your proposed response.
2. A borrowing schedule showing opening debt, repayments, interest and closing debt, with a 50 basis point rate sensitivity.
3. An exposure register for a mock exporter-importer, with natural offsets identified and the net position to hedge.
4. A one-page treasury dashboard: cash, forecast variance, debt, unused limits, major currency exposures and upcoming obligations.

Be ready to explain a liquidity problem in two minutes: what happened, why, what action is needed and what risk remains. Also expect questions on the difference between profit and cash, what creates an FX exposure, and which controls you would want around bank payments and deal confirmations.

Mistakes that slow down a move into treasury

• Studying derivatives before understanding the business exposure they are meant to hedge.
• Treating a bank-balance report as a cash forecast.
• Ignoring controls because treasury feels market-facing.
• Learning products without their documentation, settlement and accounting consequences.
• Assuming the CA qualification alone replaces practical Excel, banking and communication skills.

The strongest entry-level candidate is not the one who knows the most market jargon, but the one who can link a real business exposure to its cash effect, risk, policy, accounting and the action required.

Updated on 27 September 2026: replaced the templated 90-day plan with a question-led structure, added worked cash-forecast, forward-contract and interest-rate examples, ICAI FXTM course details and RBI's January 2024 hedging framework.