Embracing Treasury Technology with Felix Meyer

So welcome to this week's Treasury Career Corner podcast where I interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasurers about how they've built their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession going to next. In this week's show I'm delighted to be joined by Felix Meyer, the business IT manager and treasury technology expert at ABB Capital. Now, Felix is based out of Switzerland, but ABB itself is a global treasury technology leader that are driving digital transformation of many industries. Now they've been going for over 130 years, four main customer focused businesses which Felix will explain a little bit more later on in the show. But you know, again, operating globally, over 100 countries, 147,000 employees, so truly a global multinational. That aside, Felix has a real passion and he and I have met a number of conferences. We were at the Treasury Leaders Summit where we spoke earlier this year and a lot of that. Now he's got a real passion for technology and financial systems and everything else which we're going to really dig into today but not make it just an IT geek out if you like, but actually where practically intersects with Treasury. But going back a couple of years ago now, perhaps we'll get Felix to talk through his career today how he first started in finance, discover treasury, treasury technology and whether that's an interest. Felix, Enough from me. Mike, shut up. Let's get Felix. Have a go. Over to you sir.

Thank you very much, Mike. And I think the journey probably even starts before I got my first job. I really was looking for the direction to go to university. I was feeling in between, a little bit lost but my background was really always stay hungry. I know I'm repeating the, maybe repeating this from other well known people that have said this. Stay hungry, stay energetic, be interested in many topics. I really had a liberal arts background. I came to, came to Switzerland in 1994, was looking for a job, saw that really in Switzerland, mostly finance. Finance interest me. I had some economics background but I said this is an area I'd like to get involved in. And they had a two year trainee program where then they hired me on. After that they showed me the different parts of the bank and they got me really hungry on the finance side, deepening my knowledge also on the asset liability management side. And it really was a time when technology started picking up in the finance sector. So this was an area that I was like, ah, this is a nice mix between the finance area and the, and the technology area. And that that really was a start of my, my career path. So at a, at a small private bank which then later got bought up by, by Credit Suisse and with that.

Sort of, that shift if you like from as you say, and I noticed this as well, that you were liberal arts master of arts and everything. And then now a number of years later, 20 odd years later, you've got this real IT treasury path. Talk me through that or talk us through again. There might be someone listening today going actually, oh, I like that IT side but actually, oh, this financial engineering and things, how did that attract you? What was it that gave you that help sat in your brain as it were.

Yeah, maybe. I think the big reasoning behind that is just seeing the potential of automation and seeing how at some things and seeing waste and seeing how people are suffering because they're having to, I don't know, do the valuations of these bonds with their HP calculator. For all the people who remember back to those days saying that wait a second guys, there's a lot better ways to do this. And again, I'm not the super geek, but I see these, I see the potential in some of the process automation. And for example, I'll take this back to the middle 90s when we're doing asset liability management. I was working for a group of people and they were at least in Switzerland, they claimed one of the first groups of people to actually have a mark to mark valuation of the balance sheet of all the bonds and all the, all the loans and deposits. And this only possible through a couple smart, smart people. I at that time wasn't one of them, I was more of a user. But I appreciate the work that was done saying this is great, this is really cool stuff that can be done by the efficient use of technology. And it gives you a new insight, it gives you quickness and okay, quickness. There was letting things run overnight, which now we laugh at. That kind of was something that sparked and said, yeah, I like this, I like that people can then benefit from this instead of having to do like meaningless tasks.

Well, I was going to say, and then from that automation bug, if you like that bit, you, you then went into a more systems focused role. Or was that sort of a natural progression or how did that work?

Yeah, I'd say it was a natural, it was a natural progression because for example, when I went in later to work for Traymo, which became Wall Street Systems, there you are, you're sitting as a consultant in front of the custom. The customer wants to have certain processes. He says, and, you know, a big system like that, like a Treasury system, treasury management system can offer you tons of possibilities. Well, it's great when you can go to the customer and say, well, I mean, you guys used to be doing this with paper, but if we implement this tool or certain steps in this tool and get some super geeky guys, which I'm not one of them, do a little bit of coding, you can do in a fraction of the time what it took you a longer time to do in the past. And that's the kind of stuff where I'm like, that's kind of. It's nice to get that feedback, ultra feedback from the customer who then actually was happy seeing what, you know, the value that you're bringing in. And so that was kind of an additional driver for me. And I shifted then also a little bit of the roles, as you mentioned, starting first more on the financial side, then also as a consultant. I saw myself, oh, gee, I don't want to have to type in these thousand pieces of static data talking to the techie guys and say, hey, how can we do this better? And just making my life as well easier. That's also part of it.

So, and then you, so you're with assistance provider Wall street, you know, tremor that became Wall street and things like that, then the move to sort of, you know, ABB and if you would describe you, and I know the company, I know very well from some of the people that perhaps describe for the listeners who you guys are and then your role at abb.

Yeah, so when I first joined, I joined and then in a position as an analyst. And I was pulled on to the company by a techie actually that worked here who was one of the really, I would say inspirational in that sense because he also was a driver of technology within the company. He was like automation, Automation. Automation. Really in a time also when things weren't automated at all. And joining then as an analyst, it was interesting back then at the time that we still are a mix between a decentralized company in some areas and a centralized company in other areas. But when I joined treasury, for example, was super decentralized. We had country treasury centers around the world. We also had, because of this decentralization, we also had then from a system side also systems around the world. So almost every country had its own treasury management system. And one of the first projects that I got actually was then slowly shutting down some of these country regional treasury centers. With my knowledge then of Wall street systems, I became really an asset to abb. Then to be able to bring in this automation to show that through the configuration of the system itself we can cover these other guys just with this one tool, so bringing in the value on that side. And yeah, ABB is a big company. To answer your other question, I mean, we're, as you said, 147,000 people. Electrification, industrial automation, motion robotics, discrete automation, power grids, which is going off. So it's a conglomerate, various different areas that we cover. And clearly my focus in moving through the treasury organization was then to work on projects that would bring value in the automation area within treasury itself.

And why bother? I mean, treasury technology. I joked with Felix before the show because I'd asked this on another show to one of my friends who's very harsh into his technology and it threw him a little bit because I just said, look, treasury technology, why bother? You know, and it was more about, you know, there's a lot of investment return on, you know, investment, if you like, of your time and everything else. Now there are some obvious benefits. You know, you've got compliance, you've got automation, you've got that. But why go through a lot of this effort? Maybe perhaps, you know, you've been through a 20 year journey and seen it from start to finish, you know, maybe again for the listeners, why have you seen it evolve and things like that? Maybe describe that if you would.

Yeah, I mean, I think you can see it from various angles. I think one of the key reasons is that you look at, for example, this whole shareholder holder value concept. There is pressure on the treasury organization, like it or not even I'm sure these guys are holders of the cash, but there's even pressure on these guys, you know, to reduce costs, to increase efficiency, to be compliant with SOX or whichever area of compliance there that's applicable. There's pressure that says, oh guys, we need to deliver with less people. That's kind of a general theme. I know very few companies that are saying, oh, we need to deliver with, let's hire a lot more people so we can deliver the same amount. You never hear that. And so because there's a pressure from above that the automation and the technology piece is for me really just an integrated piece in so much of what we do, but also particular in Treasury. So this is then, if you look then at a big part of what I'm doing now is taking a look at the different systems we have at local level, at regional level, country level and at group level in figuring out how can we put these pieces together, what pieces can we get rid of which pieces can we integrate into existing solutions. Cost saving also a big part of this and just to drive a more efficient treasury. And I can tell you another area where this whole automation piece comes into play is that, you know, companies aren't just companies these days that it starts whatever 100 years ago and it's the same company. There's so much dynamic in the company itself. And when all of a sudden come be like Hitachi comes and buys a quarter of a quarter of our company. Well, you have to have technology around to enable even a divestment like that. So there's technology everywhere we look. I don't go as far as, and this was really interesting at the conference that we were both at, I don't go that far in propagating, for example, the newest and greatest technology like bots. And people are always asking about bots and artificial intelligence. I'm not that geeky of a person and I'm not that far on the wave. I'm more, I would say hands on. It's about rationalism.