The 2028 debt wall: why timing is what matters

Heading into the back half of the decade, the path for interest rates is still far from settled, and a large share of corporate debt is about to run into it. The borrowing wave of 2020 and 2021, taken on when capital was cheap and plentiful, is now approaching maturity in a market where money costs considerably more. It forms the leading edge of what markets have started calling the 2028 debt maturity wall. Capital markets can absorb a refinancing wave when it's spread over several years. The difficulty is that most treasury planning still assumes debt will refinance on the calendar, when in reality the market sets its own terms, and that gap is the refinancing risk underneath the 2028 peak.

What the $2.95 trillion number doesn't show

The treasury teams I've spoken with this year know their 2028 maturities down to the date, but they can't always say which of those dates actually have room to move. Most teams can manage a single maturity that's isolated and flagged well in advance. The 2028 peak is a different kind of problem. $2.95 trillion of global rated corporate debt matures in 2028 alone, the largest single-year total of the next five years, and every company with a maturity in that window will be competing for the same refinancing appetite at the same time.

That figure tells you how big 2028 is, but not how the pressure inside it is distributed, and the distribution is what really determines the risk. While total rated maturities peak in 2028, speculative-grade debt has already pushed its own peak out to 2029 as lower-rated issuers refinance early to avoid a worse market. Debt rated B- or below, however, remains concentrated in 2028 despite that shift. Because the pressure keeps moving between segments and years, teams that track only their own contractual dates will miss where it lands next. The advantage goes to those who already know their real refinancing window, as distinct from the contractual date stamped on the debt.

Rebuild your maturity ladder around cost

Most maturity schedules are organized by date, because that's what the debt documents say. Cost sensitivity is a separate question, and most schedules never answer it. A maturity refinanced six months early into a better rate window can end up cheaper than one that waits for its contractual date and lands in a worse one.

Three habits help close that gap:

• Model refinancing cost by rate window. Group maturities by when you would actually go to market for them rather than by the date on the paperwork.

• Flag which maturities have flexibility to move earlier or later, and by how much, so you have the answer before you need it under pressure.

• Connect the debt calendar to the forecasting cadence you already use for cash. A maturity schedule reviewed once a quarter can't keep pace with a rate environment that moves every week.

Treat debt exposure like a control system

It's time to stop treating debt exposure like a covenant report and start treating it like a control system. A covenant report tells lenders and rating agencies what has already happened; a control system tells you what's happening now, early enough to act on it. Most treasury teams have built strong covenant reporting and skipped the control system, and not without reason. Covenant reporting is what auditors and lenders actually require, while a live control system takes time and resources that few teams have earmarked for it. Still, a covenant report only proves compliance. It was never designed to prove readiness.

Readiness shows up in the numbers. As of Q2 2026, Kyriba's benchmark of US Fortune 1000 companies shows Kyriba customers running a cash conversion cycle 20.7 days shorter than non-customer peers. That can mean more cash available and better visibility heading into a higher-rate environment, helping teams prepare for refinancing pressure. That's what a live control system delivers. American Tire Distributors, a Kyriba customer, moved its treasury operations off spreadsheets entirely and gained real-time visibility into its borrowing base, along with consolidated tracking of debt and interest payments. Infrastructure like that turns debt exposure into a live, continuously updated input. The operating habits that get you there are straightforward: real-time visibility into fixed versus floating exposure, a named owner for refinancing decisions, and decision rights agreed before the window opens.

Build your refinancing playbook before the market forces your hand

Planning for the maturity itself is the easy part. The harder part, and the one most teams skip, is planning their response to the rate environment they'll actually face when it arrives. Kyriba's CFO Risk Radar research puts a number on that gap: 67% of finance leaders globally are already concerned about interest rates, and 64% say a rate shift would directly disrupt financial performance. In the United States, those figures are 70% and 68%. In Mexico, where refinancing is landing in an especially costly market and LATAM treasury complexity adds further strain, concern rises to 81%, with 74% expecting real disruption.

Concern without a plan is just anxiety with better data. What turns concern into readiness is agreeing in advance on two or three plain-language rate scenarios, the specific response to each, and the trigger points that move you from one scenario to the next. The time to build that playbook is now, while you can still think clearly. If you wait until the weeks before a maturity, the market will already have made the decision for you.

Some treasury teams resist agreeing on scenarios ahead of time, worried that committing to a response in advance will cost them the flexibility to react to whatever the market actually does. That concern has it backward. A pre-agreed scenario doesn't lock you in. It gives you a starting point and removes the slowest part of any crisis response: the debate over what to do first. Real flexibility comes from having done the thinking before the pressure hits.

The stress test

If you can't answer the following questions in the time it takes to read them, you're already behind the teams that can:

• Do you know which maturities in your 2027–2029 window have real flexibility on timing, and which don't?

• Do you know your refinancing cost at today's rates compared with your original issuance rates, across every tranche, including the smaller ones?

• If rates move against you before a scheduled maturity, do you already have an agreed response, or would you be building one after the fact?

The edge

The 2028 peak will arrive whether or not anyone is ready for it. The teams that come through it well will share three things: a maturity ladder rebuilt around cost, debt exposure treated as a control system rather than a compliance document, and a response agreed before the market forces the decision. Timing is the edge. Prediction never was.

Liquidity and payments complexity are rising just as fast. See the full picture at Ride the Waves.