Diamondback Energy Achieves Simplification via Virtual Accounts

This article was originally published in Treasury Today in September 2026. In May 2026, Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking received Highly Commended recognition at the Adam Smith Awards: Harnessing the Power of Technology, for its nomination of Diamondback Energy. The writeup describes how Diamondback Energy was able to combine TxB’s Products and Services to specifically meet its treasury needs. The below represents a particular client’s results and the client use cases remain subject to Bank review and approval prior to implementation.
 

The Challenge

Prior to this transformational project, Diamondback Energy, a highly acquisitive oil and gas company with a lean treasury operations team, faced significant operational inefficiencies and vulnerabilities.

Following aggressive M&A, including an acquisition doubling its size, Diamondback managed accounts across seven banks, resulting in extensive manual processes and critical lack of real-time visibility into its cash position.

The challenges included the management of 69 physical accounts required to support Diamondback’s treasury function. This was resulting in burdensome reconciliation, high bank fees, and significant administrative efforts, impeding the productivity of its lean treasury function.

Royalty payouts required a structure able to support disbursement and reconciliation of checks. While legacy technology created issues such as multiple ABA numbers and time-consuming manual journal entries for each account.

A provider outage proved to be the catalyst for change. The small team was burdened by high check volumes and complex, time-consuming reconciliation, underscoring the need for a modern, agile banking partner with advanced technology to help streamline operations, mitigate risks and enable scalability.

The Solution

Diamondback’s highly acquisitive model required technology that could support its complex cash concentration structure across all payment rails to streamline and automate its treasury, providing a real-time, consolidated view of liquidity.

Goldman Sachs TxB’s Virtual Integrated Accounts (VIAs) offered enhanced flexibility, streamlined KYC and rapid implementation, crucial for addressing Diamondback’s aggressive growth.

TxB’s Online Web Platform, Treasury Hub, offered an intuitive platform to manage its accounts, payments and reporting across all available currencies and rails, reducing administrative burdens.

Implementation showcased exceptional collaboration, completed in only 10.5 weeks for the two public companies under Diamondback’s umbrella (Diamondback Energy, Viper Energy Partners) with a multi-department team of seven – typically requiring six to 12 months.

Rapid deployment was achieved without falling behind schedule, including a thorough RFP process. TxB’s Digital Onboarding helped streamline the process, providing a smart, fast, transparent process. The complex, multi-layered cash concentration structure was overhauled with multi-layer VIA structures and virtual-to-virtual account cash concentration, ensuring operational continuity and routine reporting.

Best Practice and Innovation

The judges commended Diamondback’s tremendous simplification of bank account management by applying virtual accounts.

Transformation and centralization of virtually enabled account structures exemplify best practices, including significant account rationalization – reducing physical accounts while managing numerous virtual ones. Reduced administrative burdens, manual reconciliation and bank fees enabled the lean team to support its growing portfolio.

The breadth and speed with which Diamondback onboards new entities required innovative thinking. VIA’s self-service account opening and closure enables self-service agility for same-day account opening and closing, crucial to supporting growth. TxB’s VIAs offer an end-to-end solution that uniquely supports various domestic payment rails, including checks for royalty payments, effectively mimicking physical accounts.

Speed to market was critical to ensure Diamondback didn’t experience another operational delay. Digital onboarding allowed Diamondback to customize onboarding based on business needs, leveraging previously provided data to automate information gathering efforts, reducing administrative burdens.

Key Benefits

• Cost savings.
• Process efficiencies.
• Risk mitigation.
• Number of banking partners/bank accounts reduced.
• Exceptional implementation (budget/time).
• Future-proof solution.
• Improved visibility.
• Increased automation.
• Increased system connectivity.
• Manual intervention reduced.
• Reduction in errors.

Diamondback sought to achieve a centralized banking infrastructure that could support unparalleled efficiency and strategic agility. Diamondback required a solution that could mirror its complicated cash concentration structure while solving operational inefficiencies to support its lean treasury team.

Benefits included significant cost savings by virtualizing almost 30 accounts, streamlining operational maintenance through native cash concentration within a single DDA infrastructure. VIA structures provide a granular view of transactions through sub-ledgering while delivering a centralized liquidity balance. This ultimately helped streamline accounting, reconciliation, and improved payment processing. 

Maria Crist, Global Co-head, Goldman Sachs TxB® Coverage, says "Diamondback Energy’s treasury team proves that lean doesn’t mean limited – it means relentlessly innovative. By consolidating 69 physical accounts across seven banks into a multi-layered Virtual Integrated Account structure with Goldman Sachs TxB, Diamondback achieved significant account rationalization, real-time liquidity visibility and streamlined ERP integration – all in just 10.5 weeks. This digital-first approach reduced administrative burdens, allowing a lean team to support a massive, acquisitive portfolio. Their ‘work differently’ ethos exemplifies innovation at its best. We applaud Diamondback’s vision and are honored to support their transformative journey."

Transaction Banking services are offered by Goldman Sachs Bank USA (“GS Bank”) and its affiliates. GS Bank is a New York State chartered bank, a member of the Federal Reserve System and a Member FDIC. For additional information, please see Bank Regulatory Information.