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 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 it'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 that the journey probably even starts before I got my first job. I really was looking for the direction, 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 interested 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 that 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 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 else. And then now a number of years later, 20 odd years late, you know, you've got, you know, this real IT treasury path. Talk me through that or talk us through again some. 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, you know, attract you? What was it that gave you that, you know, 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, you know, looking at some things and see 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 were 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'd laugh at. But that kind of was something that, 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 gonna 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 and later to work for Traymo, which became Wal, you are, you're sitting as a consultant in front of the customer and 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 the 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 also 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 see you 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 decent 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 then had, because of this decentralization, we also had then then from a system side also systems around the world. So almost every, 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, 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 high 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, 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 when 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 navigating 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 rationalization. It's about finding out what pieces fit nicely together, what pieces on the market even bring value that are out there where we just had our eyes closed. We haven't realized it's out there. But hey, it's great this opportunity, let's jump on it, let's make the move. And I can make an example. Really, just really a project that I just pushed through very quickly was for me almost a no brainer. We have in house a netting solution from a recognized netting provider. We had this hosted in House since 10 years. Well, they offer as well a software as a service solution. We as a company are under pressure. There's various areas in which the company is being put under pressure. One of them is for example on the ISI to reduce cost. Well, you reduce costs, you reduce your ability to service, for example. Example. And I'm like thinking, well, thinking ahead, wouldn't it be clever if we just took this existing solution, we moved it to the specialist who are doing this 24,7 get a software as a service solution. The risks are still there, but a lot of the risks are mitigated because they're taken by the, by this specialized service provider. And at the same time we actually save on hosting costs. So this is kind of a no brainer. And for this you don't really have to be a technology geek. You just kind of have to have your eyes open and say this Makes sense. This is a great idea. Let's grab the opportunity that it's here.

Do you find this is criticism, but this is more. A lot of the time I've seen that company will bring in a new system, you know, they will integrate it. They might then be given budget to bring in a consultant maybe to do some of the heavy lifting, get some of the integration work done. They start to roll it out and they say well that's great, you've effectively replaced those two people, so you need to lose headcount. And the people hang on. So I've done all this hard work and you know, we were a team of eight and that was great with a team of eight because it meant that by bringing the system it freed up and gave us some, some slack time if you like, to do the other projects, to do the other value adding things as well. And this isn't to say that people are being replaced by robots. I think that's just a fallacy. When I talk to people, you still need intelligent people. And in fact I think the work of treasury has gone up in intellectual capacity and things and to know, you know, what to interpret from the big data and everything that comes out. But more have you then seen maybe internally, externally, other people at conferences that sometimes bring in a system switch on and then the treasurer under. Well now maybe you could get by with six people rather than eight. Do you see that yourself? Have you seen that around?

Yeah, it's a very good point and I haven't seen it on my side. I've seen actually, especially when you bring in new systems, almost the opposite, that when you implement a new solution, as you said, you have these experts that are providing the advice, you're almost blindly accepting their advice, but you're working together with them. But the reality is that until the system, especially we're talking about bigger systems, treasury management systems, until the system gets up and going and you will actually sometimes need more people to actually run this thing than you initially envisioned and then it starts to drop off after you realize the efficiency gains out of this implementation. But to answer your question that actually jobs are being so replaced by putting in new technology. I'm of your opinion as well. I think I'd say not if anything, when those systems reach a certain level of maturity, you can take those users and put them in other areas, like you said, put them on data analytics or fraud prevention or even better because again, technology is an investment. You invest in the next. What's the next generation this tool going to be? Maybe the Next module's already coming out, you can get more insight, more gains. So a basic component is that people are super important. The intellectual capacity, as you mentioned, is at a very high level in treasury. And I think the technology part of that intellectual capacity, it's got to be there, the appreciation for technology. And that's what brings you forward under the job front. I wouldn't say necessarily that jobs are going. If anything, jobs will be transferred. That's definitely a topic. Maybe you won't have them onshore, you'll have them offshore there. I think that's definitely a tendency. But that you'll get rid of people because of technology, I see that's less of a. I haven't witnessed that.

And you recently posted an article, a Pulse piece up on LinkedIn, where again, we were saying that many treasurers are hesitant to become early adopters because they've got again. And I totally agree because a lot of people have got lots of other stuff on their plate and, you know, looking for other people that have, you know, done the hard yards and great, can we see what we, you know, how did that work for you? Okay, could that apply to us and everything else? What was your discovery from, you know, talking to lots of people in the room and things like that? What did you find?

Yeah, I saw that. Really, in general, I see that, that treasures by definition are fairly conservative crowd. You know, it's by their nature, they're not the risk takers, which is clear. It's also not their mandate to be taking the risk. And because of that also, when applied to technology, they want to invest in things that work. They don't want to be the first to jump on the bandwagon. And indeed, we've heard a lot about fintechs, we've heard a lot about blockchain bitcoins. Good heavens, the word blockchain. You hardly hear it these days anymore, strangely enough. And you hear other words like bots, names, AI. And a lot of these, I think these fly by, the treasures that come in and come out. And I remember distinctly in a room full of treasures, that last year was, for example, that there was only one person that raised their hand that said their company is actually doing investment in AI and robotics. And the rest are kind of more cautious, more waiting. They're waiting for a certain level of maturity. They're waiting for others to take the first lead, which I have nothing against, which is quite okay. And it's also feeding a little bit to this risk of. So I don't feel that treasures are missing. The show. By not investing in this emerging technology, I would say they're missing the show. If they're not investing, I mean, in what I'd call just basis technology, automation pieces, things that make, you know, things that are the norm, the standard. And if they're not on that level, then I'd say they're behind the wave. If they're already on the next. On the next generation, I'd say they're a little. They're definitely ahead of the wave. I don't know how much value add it's going to bring those. Because a lot of those projects are also. They're laced with a bit of risk.

And with yourself, you know, why do you enjoy it so much? Why is it that, you know, we've talked about how you like the idea that you came in the next day, a lot of the stuff, and then that's changed and evolved and things like that. You've, you know, with your role, if you like, you're driving the strategy and sort of, you know, sitting between sort of business, it, treasury, that sort of triangle, if you like. But you on a personal level, and you mentioned that at the beginning, you came from this sort of different background, you weren't always an engineer as such. But why does it give you such a. What gets you up in the morning? Why do you think, actually, this is great. I can make a real difference today.

Yeah. Because I see that. I think it comes back to this part also about strategy, understanding what's out there in the market and knowing that there's opportunities you can grab with not all that much risk and fairly large savings. And those are the types of things that. And also feedback from the people and seeing that the people are happy with the decisions that you've made on this technology front. That's the kind of stuff that gets me up in the morning, I must say. I also like drawing pictures. I mean, coming back from London on the plane, it's like I drew almost like a kid's picture with three containers, saying that these are the pieces that are still outstanding, where we really could work on. These are things that we're working on and these are the things that have already been accomplished. Saying that there's so much work out there that it's nice seeing pieces move from the one box to the next box. And that's also a piece of my satisfaction, knowing that things are moving, it's not static, that there's action and with.

Yourself and looking at that, where do you see it moving towards? You touched on there that a Year or so ago, one person was talking about the bots and all that stuff and don't worry, they're not taking over the world and all that. But where do you see that sort of again? I've sometimes talked to some of the treasury professionals I talk to. The CFO seems to be pushing them out to the forefront. So look, you be the pathfinder for me and then just filter it through and tell me the good bits. But is that what you're seeing or what are you seeing from the role of treasury with that coming up? And what's the future that you can see where it's going to add value?

Yeah. And here I have to tell you, realistically it's as we mentioned at the beginning, before we started the show, realistically we dream a lot about this technology and innovation, but the realistic part is that we're stuck in a lot of day to day tasks. I mean I as well, I look in the priorities of what ABB is working on. I mean we're carving out a quarter of the business. You can only imagine that is a big exercise. And Treasury ULTA plays a big role in that. And so a large part of the resources are focused on that. They're not focused on these really fun, sexy things, they're focused really on these day to day activities. And another, a parallel topic that we're very much focused on where it's a reality. We're focused on internal control stuff, resolving IT related internal controls issues. We're almost working day and night and we don't even have time to enjoy the light at the end of the tunnel that some of this technology might offer us. So I'm not sure if I answered your question on that one, but I think that's very much a reality that we see also within the treasures that we don't have time to explore to make that big leap. We're trying to get through day to day and we hope then at the eighth hour, the ninth hour of the day that we have just a little bit of time to think about what could help us out more tomorrow.

Looking back just for a moment over the. Let's just take a snapshot of the past 20 years and things like that. What not mistakes have you made in that time? Because there would be two personal questions, but if you look back over that time and again you're talking about AI, we're talking about stuff. But if you were to sort of summarize that, which of those initiatives or things like that would you say, do you know what? That was a Bit of a waste of time. You know, that was, you know, I think afterwards, the value add and do you see it repeating itself or when people again are listening, they, you know, you're saying, right, guys, you need to be thinking about this, top priority that, see how it goes. That might be something that comes up, but we'll see. Have you seen that at all?

Yeah. I can tell you one of the areas where I feel like I've wasted my time is in the area of doing upgrades, treasury management system upgrades. We have a business model. The business model doesn't change. We're required by our supplier to move from version A to version B. Business doesn't really give you the buy in because they're like, why are we doing this? And so your stakeholders kind of like only half worm on the topic. You need their engagement. And at the time I was acting as project manager and that's one of those things where it's difficult, I mean, it's difficult then to be positive in the morning when you get up because you know your stakeholders aren't behind you. They're asking, what is the value added of this? And so that even exists in the technology. Technology isn't all rosy. There are some pieces where, like there's mandatory stuff and this is the type of thing where the market is slowly adapting and I mean, especially when you go more and more direction and software as a service, it's a topic that you less and less have to worry about. And these physical upgrades are your end of life. You've got to move up. That's kind of the dredge work and that's not fun. They're expensive. It requires a lot of resources and effort and the value gained at the end of the tunnel isn't all that massive.

If someone is being told they have to do with it, you know that you have to do this or this is a pressing issue. How would you, how should they approach it?

I mean, the reality is that is that you have a, you're using a technology that obviously has some value and you know, you can try to negotiate with a vendor, but the reality at the end of the day is that your software runs out and you have to do, you have to do an update. So you, your hands are, your hands are tied. I mean, I think that they say software is a drug, right? So in that reality you see that, that part, that there is a flip side to it. So there's nothing much you can do except push ahead. Clearly you can say, do we want to go with this vendor? Are there Other options, however, again, it's easier to do an update on your iPhone than it is to switch software vendors for your treasury management system.

And again, one of the other things that we've seen is a consolidation and a couple of larger names coming in and sweeping up a raft of these different companies and providers. Do you think that's been positive, negative, or no comment or what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I would say I'm neutral on it. I've seen some bad things and some okay things come out of it. I mean, my advice, and I think this is just something in general for the treasures that super advisable that on a periodic basis, especially if you know that such a painful upgrade is nearing you on the horizon. Take the time to do an analysis or get an external to help you out with analysis because it could be that your technology doesn't fit what you need. Could be that your business case has changed. What your treasury used to be a huge treasury and now you're small. One small treasury, but you're still sitting on a fat system. Could be that there's a misalignment there. Take the time and do the investment in a study like that to see that you're implementing the best fit. And I think that the best fit is so important these days. If it's not a good fit, you'll have unnecessary number of people doing things. You'll just have a system that's over the top. And so I think it's very important to make sure that you're using technology that's fit for your purpose.

Yeah. And works for you as a group. And so again, we're approaching sort of, you know, getting later on in the show. We're not quite at the end yet, but when people are, you know, looking back over a lot of the things you've done, you know, what would you say is next? What's the next evolution? You know, we talked, Aaron, about, you know, treasury technology, why bother? And that's a key thing with yourself. But, you know, where do you see it going to? What's the sort of. Of the next. You know, you're certainly sitting in the sort of that in the middle of that triangle balancing all the needs. Is that where you see other treasurers? And again, you know, without harking too much into the article, we sort of said about, you know, treasurers not being early adopters a lot of time because they simply don't have the time. But, you know, with yourself, what are you seeing coming down the road?

Yeah, I'd say I'd Say from my side as well. I mean when my time then gets freed up a little bit when we, when I move from, instead of the ninth hour, thinking about treasury technology more, the sixth or the fifth hour, then I really see more adaption of these newer, what I call newer technologies. I mean again, using these tools that are out there, some pieces like advanced analytics, I mean I see already benefits. That's just it. I can already start to think about these benefits now, but it's not the right time to be implementing it. I mean again, you're working with people, people are overloaded, they're in X, different projects, you can automate things quite a bit. And then at a certain level you see that there's actually more potential if you do things on top of it. And that's for example, where there's solutions out there which could bring us a lot of value. We simply don't have the time right now to work on it. But we can at least think about what these things are and plan them for the future when we can implement it. And I can tell you, in fact, you looking at the roadmap that I have for the next two years, I don't have advanced analytics on there. It's really, it's full of ensuring that business continuity is number one. That's like the top piece. But I know at some point in time the time will free up and then I will have time then to implement some other technology. And here I must say also I mentioned this piece about talking about technology the whole time, but there's also kind of derivatives coming out of the technology like everything related to Bitcoin or Ripple, which actually you would think should be, would be adopted by the treasury community. Because I see the benefits of doing same day settlements for same day settlements, which is, which is obviously possible in many currencies, but cross day, cross day, same day settlements, these types of things, you think you would have this, you'd think you'd be seeing this a lot more. But maybe it's symptomatic that treasurers, they just don't have time to think about oh, how are we going to work with this?

Why is that important, you know, in saying what impact does that make?

Well, I mean again it's, it's, I would say a big piece is staying ahead of the curve. If, if you as a treasurer can for example, on the cash management side really square out all your books instantaneously, I'd say that's a big gain. You're not sitting on cash unnecessarily. You're able to provide really a full overview of your liquidity. I think those are definitely from definite gains on that side of the coin. On the other side of the coin is really what happens on the consumer side, is that when you start to get in these discussions about same day settlement, that's maybe also something that's super interesting to your suppliers and your consumers as well, that you can introduce new value propositions or maybe not new value propositions, they already exist, but you can adapt these value propositions into treasury and then treasury really then becomes an advisor. They become the partner to your business. And that's clearly our goal also at abb, to become the partner to business. And we're partnering in many areas, but we're missing some pieces on the whole chain, I would say.

And key to your success, as in you, as in Felix success, what's your ethos? And that will link into as we wrap up today's show. There are perhaps the tips you would give people if they say, oh, I like his background, I want to follow in those sort of footsteps. But what would you see as the key tips or the key, you know, the trunk of your experience, the real core of your success and everything else. What would you draw out? If again, someone's listening, thinking, do you know what that sounds like A sort of career path I'd like to, you know, be similar to. What would you say?

Yeah, I would say in my area it's really, it's about staying open for new ideas, remaining open for new ideas, staying hungry. You know, again, my background, I didn't go into really a specific area of finance. I was a very generalist. Maybe on the one side someone say, well, Felix, you're waffling around, you're not focusing on any, on any particular area. I think, however, that has a lot of benefits. And those benefits I can prove my depth through, for example, doing specialized coursework. And I think that's super important. Regardless what you studied way back, it was 20 years ago or so, ensuring that your knowledge is up to date. For example, before, like last year, I did this cyber security certification. Well, it could be you're like, what does that have to do with Treasury? Well, it has a lot to do with treasury if you think about the money that's sitting around. But that gave me really a new insight into, wow, this is something actually my job right now, I should see about how I can implement this. Right. And another type of, type of certification I did was, was related to databases. Okay, well, coming out of liberal arts databases is Kind of off the wall. My point is simply is that super, super important staying up to date with education even if your time is limited now the opportunities that they have with online learning are amazing. What's even out there that you don't always have to physically go to class. You can do coursework all over the place and like that you stay hungry, you really, you stay adaptable and and when someone comes say Felix, what do you think about this topic? You regardless if it's from a technical or business side, you already have a basic understanding. You have a level of respect with your counterparty and that's what keeps the ball rolling.

And would that be your summary of today? That sort of being open and hungry to learning or any other areas that you think yeah, that's the other thing you need to think about?

No, I think those are super important. Hungry, being open, hungry, learning. I mean and obviously there's a of piece skills side. At the end of the day we're only as good as the people that we work with. You can implement whatever system you want but if you don't have the capable people around you, if you as a manager don't have the skills to go around and invite your guys out. Now we're getting near end of year taking your guys out for lunch if you haven't gone out with them. Just having open discussions. I feel people skills get so lost in our day to day business. People in the end are assets of our company and by keeping people people motivated you stay motivated yourself. So I think that's also a super important element that that really bring in the people skills.

People skills stay open and hungry to learning. Well, brilliant. All that remains for me to say is we'll put your LinkedIn profile in the show. Notes Felix as always, guys look out for Felix. He and I see each other a number of the conferences and everything else we'll put also links to the treasury leader summit that we did this year and and some of the others. Again we talk about learning. They're great places to sort of expand your knowledge. I know that Felix really engaging when I've seen his speeches and some of the questions he asked people. I think that's again another big key thing that a lot of people can learn from that learning piece. So Felix, it's been great to talk to you and thanks for your time today.

You're quite welcome. Great to be on the show.

Thank you sir.