AI, Cybersecurity, and a Fast Track TMS Rollout with ABB Capital’s Felix Meyer

So in this week's show, delighted to welcome back my good friend Felix Meyer, the Corporate Treasury Business IT Manager, ABB Capital. ABB Capital is wholly owned subsidiary of the ABB Group that acts as the primary in-house treasury and corporate finance center for the multinational conglomerate. Now, the fact is that Felix and I, you've heard us before, we're tagging this on to, well, this is my third catch-up with Felix. We're mates. We've been swimming at midnight in Barcelona, but that we'll tell you about that separately to the show. But in actual fact, Felix was just telling me before the show that things have evolved a little bit. He's added, bolted in some extra bits with his title. And well, Felix, if you can bring us up to date briefly and what else have they given you to, as if you weren't doing enough, over to you.

Absolutely. Well, they've given me a lot of opportunities. I'm really thankful for this and thankful for the support. Actually, my title is Treasury Technology and IS. So I look after a team that also looks after key applications within Treasury. also then plays a role in reviewing the landscapes that we have internally, as well as looking externally for what opportunities are on the market from systems, from ideas. And that's really the starting place that I have in my career.

So that's got an internal and external focus. Why is that so important?

Yeah, the internal focus is to know really what you have, to be able to review what processes do you have, what are the demands that are coming from the internal stakeholders, because those are the ones in the end whose process you're trying to automate. Plus, the external view is extremely focused and important to know what's out there, what's even implementable. Is it something just here today, gone tomorrow? Or is there something with substance really you can say, I think that's exactly a solution or an opportunity that we should be able to consider, take, and implement this within our organization? In our business, things rarely stop, right? We go through a lot of cycles. And definitely one of the bigger topics that Cannot be ignored is the AI topic has come up very strong during end of 2024, 2025, all 2026 now as well. So I'd say that definitely was a very strong wave that's hit us. And many treasuries or treasurers are now also being asked the question, how can we optimize? How can we leverage this whole AI wave that we're on right now? This coming off of a wave earlier, kind of the tail end of the blockchain topic, like where is that going to go? Where is that going to take us? Everything related to really money, the speed of money was also a wave that kind of was picking up pace, I would say 2023, 2024. So a lot of interesting topics, developments, I would say, moved by technology, moved by regulators as well, by banks, by other parties. And that's where we are in this big ecosystem. And my role as Treasury Technology and IS/IT, what I'm doing is To keep an eye on these things and see which of these elements make the most sense for us in treasury and also from a technology perspective, actually then to grasp and take the move to actually implement internally.

And have you seen that relationship has evolved or changed certainly in the past, I don't know, 12 to 18 months? Because, you know, I'm at these conferences talking about it and people are going, oh yeah, oh my God, IT, I've got to get this. But then we did our roundtables recently and everyone's like, this is great over here. But what about today? You know, and like people were a bit more about, okay, what impact do we need to think about today in today's business? How do you see that as a relationship between the two of you?

Yeah, I mean, I think when we put our foot on the ground, I mean, there are always continuous topics that we have to be concerned about also in the technology space. And one of them is just asking yourself, are we fit for purpose, what we have right now? In other words, we're sitting in a landscape of systems. Are these systems actually still adapted or designed to actually what we intended them to do when we implemented them maybe 5 to 10 years ago, for example? That's one key question you've got to take a look at. Another key question is to look at, for example, the data that you're sitting on. Is the data that you're sitting on— because this obviously is a foundation for a lot of these kind of these more topics that are further out, like AI— is the data that we're having and sitting on right now, is it up to date? Can we harmonize this data across systems? Can we make something useful out of it? Are we all kind of sitting in our little silos and this system is doing this, this system is doing that? and not really pulling things together. So I'd say that's another piece that's already now on the plate. Another topic is, as we discussed previously, topics like cybersecurity. You can say, is this a treasury topic? Is it not a treasury topic? Is this something for the information security guys? I would say it's definitely a topic that's absolutely relevant for treasurers and the treasury community, because I would say those who hold or sit on the cash are those the ones who are most likely at risk. So I'd say those are a couple of points where I'd say Those are topics kind of to be addressed now that aren't really like future. They're out there in the future as well, but they definitely are topics that need to be looked at today.

And you and I were just talking, you're chairman of the SWIFT Corporate Group in Switzerland. You meet twice a year. You're just saying that get a cyber guy in there giving you advice. What pieces of advice would you give to treasurers about the cyber threat, if you like?

Yeah, I'd say just very important also kind of as my last comment, as I said, is that It is a real threat. It is a complete marketplace. This is an organized setup, right? They are there to hit a return on investment, just as we are as corporates as well, trying to get a return on investment. So they're looking for weaknesses. Unfortunately, it's reality that your employees within treasury are targets. And so that was definitely one area that we focused on. Another is that, sure, there's a limit to what you as a corporate treasury can cover. And at a certain point in time, that if indeed there are certain events that take There are professionals out there who can also assist in this process to negotiate with the criminals, do further investigations. But I'd say most importantly, also assistance to make sure that your people are trained and ready to prevent that because I think that's really a key pillar in the whole cyber discussion is the strength that you have in numbers within your organization. And if it comes down to things like organizing training or, as we did recently in ABB as well, organizing training, sending out targeted phishing mails, Those are the types of activities which I think bring a lot of value to the organization, which we'll also discuss then at this forum.

Yeah. And when you and I caught up the other day, which triggered this catch-up call, if you like, you were just on the back of a massive project and then you've got another one coming along. You know, without going into too much detail, we know because ABB and things like that, public company, but you can still talk about that. Talk us through what's been going on.

Absolutely. So really exciting. I mean, April last year, as you know, I mean, we're a large corporate. It's normal M&A activities, buying and selling. April last year, we announced the sale, or at the time, a spinoff of a division, robotics, fairly kind of forward-looking, I'd say, an exciting division to be working in. And kind of riding off of that as well was the need for them to become independent, also independent from a technology point of view when it comes to treasury management systems. So this is really exciting. So my work on this, in this area, got started beginning of July, and it was Super exciting because it was extremely fast-paced. We started in July at ground zero. We didn't know what TMS provider we were going to go with. We didn't know who was going to implement this. And it's really about building up the momentum between July to end of September. And by that time, we knew who was going to do it, who our implementation partners were going to be, what system we were going to be running with. And from that period on, October until May, Really going through the cycles of the implementation phase, the requirements, design, implementation, testing, and rolling out. And this is what I think is especially cool, rolling out a full-fledged, I would say, mid-tier TMS solution to this robotics division that has presence in 40 countries, 45 countries. So we're doing salaries, global salaries over this solution, and integration with 4 banks. So it really was a very nice solution that enabled this division, this robotics division, which now in the final stages before it'll be actually— it's been actually bought by SoftBank before it'll actually be separated from the ABN Amro Group. And so just kind of nice and nice being involved in such a project that touches all the points from the banking world to everything required in the TMS to everything that's required downstream, the P2P, O2C, R2R. All these different process owners had to be involved. So It was a big project, but really a lot of fun.

And what are the top 2 or 3 takeaways for someone listening today that if you look back across that, what were the dos and the don'ts? We did this, it worked really well. We did this, it didn't go quite so well. Or, you know, someone listening is going, actually, I should have a checklist, the Felix checklist of do this for your TMS or don't do this for your TMS. What are you thinking?

Yeah, very good questions because actually kind of now that we're at the tail end of this project, this lessons learned piece comes in and kicks in. And so just off of those discussions, so I can tell you just a couple the key winners on this. And I think a couple of the key winners are that really have your key stakeholders on board from the beginning. And I know this sounds very generic, everyone is telling us this, but what's really special about this project is that our key stakeholders joined 2 months before we went live.

Wow.

So you can imagine it's kind of like moving into a house and, or you're buying a house just kind of blindly, and then you move into the house and you're like, ooh, really? I don't like these shaggy carpets, or I don't like these walls. I don't like pink walls, green walls, whatever. And it really— the structure was there, but we got into then quite intensive discussions 2 months before go-live, kind of in a period where things should be set in stone, the concrete should have been really frozen, which had then quite a few impacts on the ability then to deliver. And I'd say the tension in the project just shortly before go-live. Now we're a month, month and a half, 2 months after the 1st of May. things are settled. But I'd say that definitely was one piece— stakeholders' involvement really, really early. We did our best bet, best guess, I would say, based on having working with qualified people within ABB, took that as a template. But still, one key takeaway: really make sure that you have your key stakeholders on board. Another key element I thought coming out of this project which was key is, as always, make sure you work with experienced partners. Technology comes always down to the same thing. It's like Do you have people that understand the system and the processes, can provide input as well on the processes to kind of maybe reshape the processes and reshape and have that dialogue on the processes so that also your system can adapt to it if possible? And having the competent people who then can actually do the implementation. And so I think those are really key elements as well, competent partners to work with. Try and think 2 or 3. Time. Time is always wonderful. In this instance that we had right now, unfortunately, in this implementation, we didn't have time on our sides. It started, as I said, being in July. We knew the fixed deadline was 1st of May that we set for this project. So for the scope that we had, the number of banks, the fact that we integrated some 45 countries also on the HR system side, and having a global treasury that was being built here, the scope was significant. And time was just small.

Yeah.

I mean, normally you think you do a project like this probably in a 12 to 15 month period. So, but it just put additional pressure on the team to work, work, get the job done. And I'm happy where we are right now.

And you're talking there about treasury professionals implementing IT and the system and everything else. For those, you know, when I meet lots of the treasury professionals at conferences now and things, they're going, you know, what skills do I need to build? What should I be doing? How should I be doing this? What are you telling your teams or what advice are you giving someone when you bump into a conference and they say, Or, you know, should I get to know, you know, AI? Can it be ChatGPT? Can it be Claude? Or can it be this? Or are there other areas? Or what should treasury professionals be thinking about?

Yeah, I think it's a very valid question. And I know we had the discussion last time. I was kind of getting on topics about really education, continuous education, seeing that your team stays hungry. And I'd say some of the skill sets are definitely on the technical side. I think we're seeing this shift more and more. I mean, we've seen this over the, probably the past 10 years, just the need for treasurers to step up their technology knowledge and interest, for example. The AI piece is one, but around that, as I mentioned as well, topics like cybersecurity, just at least getting it on the plate. They don't have to become the professionals and the specialists in this area, but seeing that it's on the agenda. And I think those are some skills that kind of should be slowly built up. Another one, which I think is absolutely important, is project management. And even if you can say it's kind of a soft skill, But it takes a lot to bring people together from various departments, internals, externals, and motivate them to deliver, you know, an end product. And we've got our day job, you can say. We don't always have dedicated people working on these projects. A lot of them are specialists. They're working in their day-to-day work, but in a normal situation. And here you're coming in as a project manager and you've got to orchestrate the whole thing, communicate, all these other soft skills like that. Because that's in the end what delivers value. Having people that can— the individual, sure, he's a specialist, he can drive value to some extent, but I think getting the people together to deliver something bigger really takes a project manager who has that skill set to be able to do that. And I think that's another, I'd say, really key kind of area where skills should be sought, where we should have more experience, I'd say, in the treasury space.

And what advice would you give to some treasury professionals, if you like, who are slightly nervous about the pace of technology change at the moment. Again, when I'm talking to— and it's actually all levels, you know, when you, whether you like it or not, you talk to a treasury manager, they're like, wow, all this stuff's coming at me. But then, whether they say it or not, there's a lot of treasurers doing the same, going, goodness. How would you advise them? How do you reassure them? Or what should they be doing?

Yeah, I'd say maybe the first thing is that technology is always evolving, right? And we go from one wave to another wave to another wave. So Technology is always evolving. Don't panic in this situation, right? Also, what we're seeing now, AI is actually with these large language models is actually making a deeper penetration into what we do into treasury. Absolutely. At the same time, there are still some fundamental topics that haven't been answered around AI, which are kind of forcing us to take a step back. I mean, we still have some key areas like key topics like traceability, right? That's something that you don't hear that much about is that Okay, my model spits out this number X, and then the treasurer will come and say, okay, well, you gave this number X. Well, where did this number come from, right? If you're not able to provide this traceability and kind of use your brain how this thing actually got to where it's gotten, then you're in a difficult situation. And so that kind of limits the ability to kind of roll out that technology more and more. Maybe it's just a question of time, but I'd say traceability is a big piece. Another piece as well where I see a lot of investment on the AI side and kind of like Saying that, yeah, yeah, it's gonna really take our jobs or whatever is, have you ever asked yourself backups? Do we have backups of these great agents that people are developing? For example, Mm-hmm. if you don't and the humans aren't around to kind of who developed this, who understand it, then you've got a real problem because we back up everything else. We back up our servers, we back up this and the other. But if these tools, for example, these AI tools aren't being backed up, And if that's not taken seriously, then, hey, then, then we have an issue. So there's a lot of, you can say, mushrooms popping up with individual solutions left and right. And I think it's important that treasurers shouldn't be panicking, but I think they should just have a healthy approach to this, as with other technology changes that are happening, and just ask the right questions.

Yeah.

And ask these questions as well about traceability, about backup, and a slew of other questions, as you would for any other technology that's coming And you talked about this project you're just coming to the end of and things like that.

You've got some exciting new ones, which I don't know how much you can talk about them, but tell us what's happening next if you're able to.

Absolutely. And I think one of the, let me tell you a couple of exciting, I've got 2 key ones at the moment. One is related to data. And this is something that we've seen, something that I referred to as well just a few minutes ago that indeed, I mean, treasuries either, either all sitting on one stack, one solution, and that has massive advantages in some areas, maybe disadvantages in others. In our situation, we've got various systems fit for purpose, which also have positive negatives. But one of the negative sides about that is that you have a legacy and you have potential issues related to data, right? And every time we come back to this topic about, you know, what is the next step with AI and with data analysis, it comes back to the reality of having containers where you can normalize your data and then do something with that data. And so right now it's a project to create a treasury reporting database where we're extracting out of multiple systems this data. And it's a really exciting project that's ongoing. And part of this as well, I'm hitting limits in my knowledge. In ABB, we started a program 2 years ago, which I'm really, really excited about, that the treasurer and my boss also support of this, that we hire an intern to come in straight out of the university 1-year complete crack on the AI side, as well as a lot of knowledge on data, data modeling side to really to take this to the next level. And so that's one project that's ongoing right now. Another is actually a really interesting project it's doing related to insourcing. So insourcing of actually specialized skills, which we over the past years actually had outsourced, but for various reasons. And again, this is all a knowledge game. Let's be realistic, right? For various reasons. Also, I'd say also because the application owners, the people that really want the results, the returns, they're saying, we're not getting our information quick enough. We're not getting the results, the fixes and everything around these applications quick enough. Let's see if we can't insource these skill sets. And it's an interesting topic to be able to insource, you know, and we've always heard this in the past. The first reaction is that it's expensive. It goes against the grain, but then you just say, think about it for a second. Knowledge in general, some stuff is very generic, some stuff is very specialized. In a lot of these systems that we have in treasury, there's a lot of very specialized knowledge.

Right.

You don't find the resources out there who can actually contribute and deliver value on it. And in our case, we had the business case that for a couple of our systems that we have, it makes sense to insource this. we can then deliver quicker, quicker results, quicker value. And like that, our stakeholders are happy. And so that's a really interesting project that I'm working on to build up then that team that we just hired.

Fantastic. Now, I know we've not got too much time left with you, but, you know, next few years, I was asked again at the UK conference, someone said, oh, what's happening in 5 years? I went, no, no one knows in 5 years. I didn't know what was happening 5 years ago. How can you say what's happening 5 years in the future? But The future, where do you see it going next? What, you know, as you look in your crystal ball?

Yeah, I would say, again, I can't reveal too much, mostly because I don't have a perfect crystal ball. I'd say one key area, one thing that we'll see a lot more of is that with time, as, for example, AI matures, we'll see a lot more depth in the existing solutions that we're buying off the shelf, a lot more depth and maturity of these models. Which will allow then treasurers, for example, more quickly to be able to extract data, extract information, doesn't have to run a report, wait for an analyst to analyze the result. You'll see a lot quicker returns in that area. And so I'd say that's something really exciting that's happening, the depth of these AI models within these applications. I mean, we hear about Joule in SAP. I think it's Trusted AI in Cariba. I mean, everyone's got their area. So that's kind of on the technology side in the systems. Another area which I'm really excited about is the payment space. And as we move more and more to, as consumers, kind of real-time payments, I think it's really interesting to see the bigger adoption by corporates as well in this space. It's a little bit slow moving, right? Also, we have regulators that are also, you know, asking certain questions and etc., etc. And the banking system maybe isn't quite ready for it in some areas, but I think that's going to be, that's going to be a game changer across the board for all corporates to see to what extent we can finally not only talk about real-time treasury, but actually have a real-time treasury.

And with yourself, you know, it's amazing. We'll do a summary of all of your takeaways each week. You know, the advice has evolved over time. So we, you know, I was just looking there. So 2020, then 2022, and now we're at 2026. I like this. What are the takeaways for someone listening? You've given some advice there already, but You know, early stage, mid-stage, you know, what are you going to give us takeaways today?

Yeah, it's interesting. I did take some time this morning to listen to some of the older podcasts. Like, ah, it's all out of date. But no, it's like when I listen to it, it's like just some key takeaways. It's like I saw as well just this topic about staying hungry, staying ahead of the curve, taking the time to see what's in the market as far as new technologies, new solutions, Also, educational opportunities, as I mentioned last time, as well. If it's internal or external, there is so much good— even YouTube videos. Exactly. There's so much good stuff out there that even if you don't understand what are the nuts and bolts of AI or what exactly is happening in a cybersecurity attack, you can educate yourself out there. And it used to be going to the library, getting a book, and then, and like digging through it, for example. But now the stuff is at your fingertips. And I think that really—

Yeah.

It's a lot of power that we have and really power that's concentrated to specifically what we're doing. And that kind of, that gives one new ideas as well. And so I think that's, that was a tip that I gave a few years ago. And I think that still, still remains. Stay hungry, stay ahead of the curve. And I think those are 2 good takeaways.

And I think, and I agree. And what I would add to that is the podcast is, I never knew, as we said, we're coming up for 8 years old. It's like, I thought we'd do 10 or maybe 15. We've done 430 plus, but 280,000 downloads. Yeah, but that's also people listening and getting that knowledge, and that's what I think really makes a difference. As you say, people are going, actually, this is a way that I can listen to it, listen to it, get my CTP credits, but also actually listen to another treasury professional, you know, looking at it as if they're sitting next to you.

Yeah, exactly. And I think part of that is actually engaging yourself. So staying out there, talking to people, going to conferences, exchanging ideas, and I think that And then you're like, oh, that's actually a neat idea. Let me take that home and see if that works in my setting, right?

Yeah. Fantastic. Superstar as always. Looking forward to it. We'll see you in Barcelona, but hopefully we won't go to Midnight Swim. We will put a link to that in the show notes. But mate, you're an absolute superstar and I can't wait to see you later this year.

Thanks so much, Mike. It's always a pleasure being on your show.

Thank you, sir.