Amid ongoing economic uncertainty and following the collapse of several regional banks in 2023, Jiko’s recent Corporate Cash Confidence survey, conducted across major treasury conferences and capturing insights from nearly 200 seasoned finance professionals, revealed a stark reality: only 27% of respondents are fully confident in their current approach to safeguarding cash in a financial crisis. The survey findings paint the picture of a system misaligned with treasurers’ intentions.

The T-bill paradox

US Treasury bills (T-bills) have long been viewed as a safe haven for cash, a sentiment famously echoed by Warren Buffett, who wrote in his 2022 Annual Report, “Berkshire will always hold a boatload of cash and US Treasury bills.” Even in the near-zero rate environment of 2021, Berkshire held $144 billion in T-bills.

That sentiment is echoed by treasury professionals, who largely consider T-bills a secure place for corporate cash. 66% of survey respondents said they would feel safer holding T-bills directly in their name, free from counterparty or redemption risk. But here’s the twist: only 12% actually do. The rest? Spread across accounts and instruments exposed to counterparty risk. Not by choice, but by friction.

The real bottleneck: Operational complexity

It’s not that treasurers don’t know better. It’s that the current widely-used approaches to accessing T-bills make them difficult to reach. According to our data, just 5% of treasurers describe purchasing T-bills as easier than accessing money market funds. That complexity translates into inaction.

The reality is harsh: managing cash at Warren Buffett’s scale typically requires a full-scale liquidity desk. Treasurers need bank accounts for payments, brokerage accounts for securities trading, and internal teams juggling wire cutoffs, rolling schedules, trade confirmations, and reconciliations, all while under pressure to avoid mistakes.

Treasury professionals who are sharp, disciplined, and often up before dawn, don’t just think about yield but also about safeguarding liquidity for payroll, taxes, vendor payments, and contingency planning. And yet, they’re still forced to operate within legacy constraints that make access to the safest asset, US Treasuries, a multi-step, manual process few teams can sustainably manage.

Could autonomous agents and cloud-scale simplicity provide a turning point?

What if that complexity simply… disappeared?

Imagine each account, whether for operational cash, reserves, or a specific business unit, having its own digital agent. Each acts as an autonomous entity that safely invests in T-bills, monitors balances, liquidates positions, and supports payments, 24/7. That’s the power of a T-bill agent-based architecture.

These autonomous agents live in the cloud, operating at scale like millions of invisible cash managers. They buy and sell T-bills in real-time, process payments instantly, and stay compliant. No manual rollovers, no middlemen, no timing risk, just safe, direct, secure access to the “risk-free” rate. Solutions like Jiko Pockets give treasuries the functionality of a bank account with the yield of a T-bill.

With the potential introduction of autonomous T-bill agents handling mechanics with unprecedented precision, corporate treasury teams may soon be able to rethink how they organise, route, and deploy cash altogether. Agent-driven accounts could serve distinct purposes – from payroll and vendor payments to M&A escrows, tax reserves, or capital calls, and even large, secure after-hour settlements – each earning yield, each directly invested in T-bills, and each fully liquid.

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What once required multiple accounts, multiple intermediaries, and manual coordination is now programmable, unified, and transparent. This isn’t just a better way for clients to hold cash. It’s a new way to strategically segment and orchestrate it “à la Buffet” with a certain elegance that comes from the sheer simplicity and safety suddenly made possible to everyone.