By: Eleanor Hill
As younger practitioners question whether treasury associations still represent them, Evaldas Balkys argues that their future depends on something the internet can’t reproduce – useful dialogue between people who trust one another.
It’s the end of the coffee break at (yet) another treasury conference. The bell interrupts conversations mid-flow, but the chatter continues, and only a few people start to slowly move back into the sessions. The rest stay put, wanting more time for an in-depth catch-up with their peers.
When the Baltic Treasury Association was planning its first annual conference last year, Co-founder and Vice Chair, Evaldas Balkys, argued for longer breaks. He knew how much of the event’s value would be created away from the stage. “People start having great discussions, and then you hear the bell inviting you to the next session,” he says. “They don’t always want another panel session, they often want proper, private chats. And more conference organisers – especially treasury associations – need to cater to this, in my view”
That inaugural gathering has since led to a second Baltic Treasury Conference, taking place in Riga on 11 September 2026. Its return comes at a fairly pointed moment for the wider profession, as talk within the community becomes less polite about whether every treasury association is still delivering for its members.
To be fair here, not all attract the same criticism. Some are widely lauded. But whispers among practitioners in their 20s and 30s suggest that others are perceived to have become too large, too commercial, too old school (run by retiring generations, not incoming ones) and even too pleased with their own status.
What’s more, conference programmes can seem designed around sponsorship packages. Or familiar senior figures dominate the stage – and younger practitioners aren’t always convinced the organisation is meant for them. A member body might continue growing in revenue and visibility while drifting away from the community it was created to serve.
Nevertheless, Balkys remains convinced that associations are relevant. Their continued existence, however, doesn’t prove their value, he says. They definitely still have to earn it.
What doesn’t make the cut
Information used to be among the strongest reasons to join a professional body. Qualifications and technical guidance offered access to expertise that was otherwise difficult to obtain. Today, a treasurer can search online or ask an AI tool for an explanation of cash pooling or FX policy in seconds.
“There’s so much information out there that it’s easy to get lost,” Balkys says. “You get a lot of generic input, but the important questions are: how long does it take? What are the pitfalls? How much does it cost?”
Those are the details people need before committing money and credibility to a project, yet they rarely appear in polished conference presentations. Companies are happy to discuss successful outcomes. Fewer want a permanent record of the system that disappointed or the timetable that doubled.
A trusted room also allows for more honesty. Balkys recalls younger treasurers responding particularly strongly to presentations at previous events he’s attended that went beyond broad principles. “They gave us the entire roadmap of things we need to consider and things we need to do, which was amazing,” he says.
During a particularly memorable session on obtaining a credit rating, the audience quickly moved past the theory, he recalls, with the first question going straight to how much it cost. “These practical insights are very important, and we need many more of them,” Balkys believes.
In other words, if an association can’t offer anything more candid or specific than material already available online, its proposition begins to look thin. And another glossy programme filled with familiar themes won’t compensate for speakers being discouraged from saying anything difficult.
Community vs. clique
Elsewhere, strong treasury associations create professional friendships that last for years. But others sometimes mistake those friendships for the community itself.
Established members enjoy meeting people they already know – but somebody attending alone might feel they’ve walked into another company’s reunion. In fact, some younger treasurers say events are geared towards group treasurers and recognisable multinational names, with influence circulating inside a relatively closed group even when the marketing promises a community for everyone.
Balkys has seen associations drift into what he calls an old friends’ club. “In my opinion, that’s the end of the association,” he says. “New members aren’t joining, and the old ones are maybe not so motivated or enthusiastic to continue with the promotion and drive.”
That end might be slow. An association with a respected name and strong sponsor relationships can continue attracting delegates long after its membership has stopped evolving. The warning signs appear at the margins – younger practitioners who don’t join, mid-level professionals who never reach the stage and smaller companies that see little of themselves in the programme.
“An association should be the opposite of an elite club,” Balkys says. “Everyone is welcome. It’s not about whether you’re senior or not. In an ideal world, more experienced people come to share the knowledge they have and bring their expertise to the wider public – but you also need people in the audience who want to listen.”
Openness requires more than allowing junior professionals to buy a ticket. They need routes into committees and working groups, with a genuine chance to influence the conversation. Otherwise, inclusion becomes just another buzzword in the brochure.
The careful balance of sponsorship
Money is perhaps the most awkward part of the argument around all of this. Associations need funding – banks and technology providers help make events possible and they hold expertise that treasurers want to hear, since they work with so many different companies.
Problems arise when sponsorship stops enabling the community and starts determining its experience. For example, speakers are often selected because their companies paid for visibility, while corporate treasurers become the respectable wrapper around a vendor-led conversation. In that case, practitioners can leave feeling that they were invited into the room partly to provide an audience for the people financing it.
Asked what treasurers want from an association, Balkys gives a direct answer: “Quality time to network – maybe with fewer sales-side participants in the room – and really practical case studies.”
Corporate delegates don’t necessarily object to meeting providers. But they absolutely notice when almost every informal exchange is treated as a sales opportunity or when supposedly educational sessions turn into product pitches because conference organisers don’t push back enough.
Of course, there’s no shame in an association making enough money to operate securely and employ good people. Concern begins when profit and institutional growth start looking like the purpose rather than the means. A member body can describe itself as community-led while making decisions that suggest otherwise.
The Baltic Treasury Association has drawn the boundary clearly, says Balkys. Its second conference is free for corporate treasurers, CFOs and finance professionals working in treasury, while vendors and service providers attend through separate commercial arrangements. That establishes who the event is primarily intended to serve.
Preserving the balance could become harder as the association grows. New bodies need sponsors, but commercial success creates pressure to expand packages and hand paying partners more of the programme. Plenty of associations begin with a community-first ethos. The real test arrives when protecting it involves turning money down – and whether integrity can be retained.
Starting where companies are
Keen to stick to its roots, The Baltic Treasury Association emerged because Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia didn’t have such an organisation. Balkys describes its origin without embellishment: “I don’t think the Baltics needed something different. They just needed something.”
A combined association made sense because each country has a relatively small treasury population, while companies across the region share enough concerns to learn from one another. Many are still establishing dedicated treasury capabilities, so their questions begin earlier than those heard at more mature industry events.
“Nobody is talking about how to replace the system,” says Balkys. “It’s more: which systems are out there? We really need to start from the beginning.”
While that might sound basic to an association intent on filling its agenda with fashionable subjects, it reflects what members truly need. And relevance sometimes means resisting the temptation to look sophisticated (or run yet another session on the theory of AI in treasury, rather than practical application case studies).
The Baltic Treasury Association eventually hopes to give practitioners a collective voice in discussions with banks and public authorities. But its immediate priority has been more personal: getting people into the same room. And remote working has made that feel less incidental.
“People lose social touch, and they need a community where they belong,” Balkys says. “The most successful associations I’ve seen are the ones where people come together like a bunch of friends. They make jokes, they laugh, they’ve known each other for a long time.”
But the difference between a community and an old friends’ club is whether or not that warmth extends to a person who has just arrived.
Relevance has to be continual
With those new members in mind, Balkys’ advice for early-career professionals is emphatic: “Network, network, network. It’s never too soon to do that.”
Someone joining a treasury team learns how the function operates within that company. Without exposure to peers, local choices can begin to look like universal rules, he cautions. An association should widen that view while giving younger professionals somewhere to contribute, rather than asking them to wait until they’re sufficiently senior or well known.
“With the right mindset and the right people, any association can grow, change and develop,” says Balkys.
Naturally, some will choose not to. Commercial momentum can disguise a waning community for years. Delegate numbers and sponsor income might remain healthy while people outside the established circle conclude that the association has little to offer them.
The parting message, though, is that treasury associations have no automatic right to the profession’s loyalty. If they become too expensive to enter, too cautious to say anything controversial, or so commercially crowded that practitioners themselves feel like the product, treasurers will find other places to meet.
They might already be doing so – somewhere beyond the conference room, continuing the conversation after the bell.
