Corporate Treasury & Employee Benefits

We work with proprietors, partnerships and closely-held companies on short-term treasury deployment, employee benefit structures, and coordinated founder wealth planning that keeps business and personal balance sheets in step.

What we do for you

• Short-term corporate treasury deployment options
• Group insurance and employee benefit structuring
• Founder and promoter personal wealth planning
• Coordination with statutory auditors and legal counsel
• Documented governance for board and family review

How we work

1. 01Understand cash-flow cycles and treasury horizon
2. 02Design deployment and benefit structures
3. 03Coordinate with auditors and counsel
4. 04Review quarterly with the leadership team

Treasury, benefits and the owner's balance sheet

Work with a business owner rarely stays neatly on one side of the line between company and family. Surplus cash in the company, employee benefit obligations, key person exposure and the owner's own portfolio all interact. We look at them together, because decisions taken in isolation frequently work against each other.

On the corporate side the typical requirements are treasury management for surplus funds, structuring employee benefit provisions, and protecting the business against the loss of a person on whom it materially depends. On the personal side, the owner needs a portfolio that is genuinely independent of the business, because the business is already the largest position they hold.

Corporate treasury: safety, liquidity, then yield

The ordering matters and is frequently reversed. Corporate surplus exists to meet obligations — payroll, creditors, tax, capital expenditure — and its first duty is to be available in full when required. Yield is the residual objective, pursued only with capital genuinely surplus to those commitments.

We map the cash flow cycle and ladder instruments to it: operating float in overnight and liquid schemes, near-term commitments in ultra short and low duration instruments, and only genuinely long-dated surplus considered for anything with duration or credit exposure. Board-approved investment policy limits, authorised signatories and reporting requirements are respected as constraints on the design, not adjusted to fit a product.

Employee benefits and group cover

Gratuity and other retirement benefit obligations are liabilities that accrue whether or not they are funded. Where a company chooses to fund them, we help evaluate the available structures and their implications. Group health and group term cover are also part of the picture, and are frequently a more efficient way of delivering value to employees than an equivalent increase in salary.

We also encourage owners to be honest with employees that group cover ends with employment. Encouraging staff to hold personal cover alongside the group policy is good practice and costs the company nothing. Investor education sessions for employees are something we are glad to provide where a company would find them useful.

Key person and succession exposure

Many small and mid-sized businesses depend materially on one or two individuals — for client relationships, technical capability or operational control. If that person is suddenly unavailable, the business faces both an operational problem and a financial one. Key person cover addresses the financial dimension, providing the company with capital to absorb disruption and recruit.

Where there are multiple owners, the question of what happens to a departing or deceased owner's stake deserves attention before it arises. Buy-sell arrangements funded by insurance are a well-established mechanism. The legal structure sits with your counsel; our role is quantifying the requirement and arranging the funding.

Separating the owner's wealth from the business

The most valuable long-term advice we give business owners is usually the least welcome: build a portfolio outside the business, consistently, before it feels affordable. Reinvesting every rupee into an enterprise that is performing well is rational until the year it is not, at which point the family has no independent balance sheet to stand on.

We work with owners to establish a systematic transfer from the business to personal investments, structured tax-efficiently with your chartered accountant, and sized so it does not starve the enterprise. Over a decade this quietly produces a second balance sheet that is uncorrelated with the first, which is what makes a subsequent sale, transition or setback survivable.

Risks & important considerations

• Corporate investments must comply with the company's board-approved investment policy and applicable provisions of the Companies Act.
• Debt and liquid schemes used for treasury are market-linked and are not assured-return products.
• Tax treatment of corporate investments and employee benefit funding differs from that of individuals; consult your chartered accountant.
• Buy-sell and shareholder arrangements require legal drafting, which CONFI does not provide.
• Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks. Read all scheme related documents carefully before investing.

Frequently asked questions about Corporate Treasury & Employee Benefits

More questions are answered on our general FAQ page and in the Knowledge Centre.

Who this typically suits

Not sure where you fit? Our seven-step process begins with a discovery conversation before anything is recommended.