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There’s a workforce problem brewing in corporate treasury departments, and it has little to do with finding the next generation of finance executives.

It’s about the people who have spent 20 or 30 years making sure invoices get processed, receivables get reconciled, accounts get opened and payments move through the business without a hitch. They know which systems don’t talk to each other, which exceptions require a workaround, and which processes depend on someone remembering what to do next.

For companies that have relied on these employees for decades, the question is becoming urgent. Who’s going to do the work when they’re gone?

Katherine Weislogel, head of Commercial Payments Client Success at Fifth Third, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that this is becoming one of the more practical reasons businesses are looking seriously at artificial intelligence (AI).

One client described a back office where employees had spent an average of 30 years in their positions. They were approaching retirement, and the company wasn’t confident it could find people willing to take their places.

The question wasn’t whether AI could make the treasury department more innovative. It was whether AI could help keep the department running.

That distinction matters. Much of the conversation about agentic AI in financial services focuses on what machines might eventually be trusted to do with money. But for businesses facing the loss of experienced employees, the immediate opportunity may be about getting the work done.

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