How to Network and Grow in Treasury with Remco de Vries

Foreign. 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 build their careers, where they are now and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next this week's show, joined by Remco Devries, the group treasurer at Experian now for Experian plc. It's an Anglo Irish multinational consumer credit reporting company. Sure, a lot of you guys out there know Experian. It's a global brand, as it were. They collect information on over a billion people globally, businesses right the way across the world. But actually Remco is based in Dublin in Ireland and the company operates in 37 countries globally. I'll get Remco to describe it a bit more. You know, we've known each other for many years, but suffice to say Experian are listed on the London Stock Exchange, so they're one of the FTSE 100 REMCO we've already talked about in this pre show. He's got a great microphone because one of his hobbies is very much in the sound and music and things like that, which is brilliant on today's show. But more than that, we were just exploring his background before, unusually, I say, I had to discover your history in finance and then Treasury. You started your career in a tank, so maybe you could explain that for the listeners. So over to you, sir.

Thank you very much, Mike, and thank you for having me on your podcast.

Pleasure.

Delighted to be here. I started my professional career, you can say, on a tank, in a tank battalion. I was one of the last Mohicans to come out of university in the Netherlands to be called for national service. So I tried to sort of make that the best opportunity I could by applying for the accountancy part of the army. And they interpreted to say, oh, you can be an administrator. So I was trained to be an administrator and served in a tank battalion. But it was, in retrospect, lots of fun, lots of good things to be taught there, but moved on fairly swiftly after that into my chosen profession of accountancy.

When you say you made that move into accountancy, you joined Coopers and Live Brand. And we talked about this because some people come in, they qualify as an encounter, that's it. They're straight off the day after they get their ACA or whatever it might be. You did longer periods sort of thing. So talk us through how you qualified, but then continued, why was that sort of. Or give us that starting to your career?

For me, it was a very deliberate choice. Mike Wanting to be an accountancy was a decision I had taken at the end of senior school and I went university doing business economics with a view as I want to end up in accountancy. At that point, it wasn't quite fashionable. But when I sort of got into my third year, fourth year university, it turned out more students had that same idea. I was very attracted by, you know, numbers was the thing I liked, sort of the precision, the variety that I heard about in accountancy. So was deliberate with that and also decided that I wanted to have a career with an international aspect. So when I applied for jobs, I was looking for a job in one of the. At the time, it was still the Big five. The big five accounting firms went to all of them, sort of had their open days, joined their open days, seeing would I fit the wallpaper in this organization? Do I have a click here? Do I feel a click with the people here? And made the choice on that with at the time, Coopers and Lybrand. That was one of those. With that international outlook started in Arnhem. That was for me also a deliberate choice. As I grew up in the north of the country, I want to go somewhere. I want to live and be somewhere out of where my normal territory and go somewhere else. That was a good time there. When the opportunity came to go abroad and I was, in a way, vocal about it, I graduated to what you call the ACA papers after two years, then said, okay, I've done that. Is there an opportunity for me to go abroad? And that opportunity came relatively innocent, sort of in a away weekend with the business unit to Paris. On the way back in a bus stop, chatting with a partner with my wife and sort of saying, we'd really like to go abroad. And then a few phone calls were made and a few interviews were arranged, or that ended up with me going to Birmingham three years later, or at least three years into my career with PLVC to do a second for two.

Years there and there you were sort of focusing on some of the large corporates. Did you encounter treasury at that stage? Or was it. Was it probably before that stage really, wasn't it? Because you then worked there and then did audit and stuff like that for what, seven years? So what kept you in that? There's quite a long period to stay, you know, within professional services firm, you know, why did it keep you that long and what were you doing sort of thing?

I truly enjoyed it, Mike. The variety. You have different clients every week, you have different Problems. You learn an awful lot in an accounting firm. I still think that is a very good, good starting experience in a career for me. I didn't have, other than a particular client in Birmingham who was a. It's a big PLC as well, who had their treasury function partly in London and partly local, where, because I was the secondee and the borrowings side of the balance sheet was the complicated one, because this particular client was actually doing quite a lot of fancy financial instruments, you know, hybrid bonds and everything that was new they tended to do at the time. So Remco, you can order that, which. Which was also a great experience for me in terms of, you know, filing out. I heard about interest rate swaps in university, but how do they actually work and how, you know, do people actually use them? But that was pretty much the only experience I had. So when in a career in an accounting firm, you're meant to be partner, you know, that's what you sort of are supposed to be aspiring to. It was pretty clear for me soon that that was not really for me.

What was that decision point? Because there'll be people listening today in exactly that position and you go, actually, that's not for me. Why? Because. Is it because it's more towards the sales and client side or what? Because, you know, you've got very good at relationships and everything else, which we'll get into later on in the show. But, you know, why was that then?

Yeah, for me it was. I don't see myself as a commercial person and I had a very strong idea of. I don't really want to be on Saturdays on a golf course, you know, talking to clients, because that's part of my job. I just didn't see that fitting with me. But. So there is a point where you have to. If you transition out of an accounting firm yet, you don't want to be too senior. You don't want to be too junior either. But finding that sweet spot, as in landing in a proper role and whether that's. We're talking about treasury now, but whether that's controlling or somewhere else, you need to pitch your level, right, to get into that. And for me, I therefore took my time. When I decided I was about to go into the senior manager role in the accounting firm, that would be too senior, I thought, I need to start doing something else. I took my time, took about, well, I don't know how long, maybe about the guts of a year, nine months to have various job interviews, ended up not turning a few opportunities down. And funny enough, for Me how I went into treasury was a phone call by one of the recruiters, say, remco, we've got this job here, it's in the treasury, we really think your profile is good. And I said, well, doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because I don't have any treasury experience.

Yeah, I remember you saying that you didn't even know what Treasury. You did know Treasury a little bit, but you didn't really know it sort of thing.

No, other than the experience I just outlined with that particular client in Birmingham. I had no experience in treasury, but I'll have the jets and that sort of. There was things there that I thought, this is interesting, I don't know much about this, but I'm willing to take the plunge here. I remember in my job interview I was being asked, what are the three types of hedge accounting under ias? I could only mention two. So I thought this is pretty much a failure already. But no, I was hired for the job and at the start this was treasury accountant type of role, or finance manager, so looking after the accounting and the back office, because there was quite a heavy side to that. But when I joined, there was already. This was even before signing the contract, the discussion. Remco, this group is going through a strategic review. It might be that we might move somewhere else, out of the Netherlands. And I thought, well, that wouldn't be too much of a problem. I have really enjoyed living in Birmingham for two years. This group is listed in the uk. Fair chance they will go back to the uk. So I'll see what happens. So that didn't turn out to be the case. So one year into the job, or a little bit over one year into the job, the question was, Remco, would you like a job in Dublin? We're going to split this group up because just, you know, for the listeners, G OS was the company I worked for and G OS had a number of big businesses underneath it. Argos, Experian, Burberry and Homebase.

I know those businesses, but some of our, you know, a lot of our listenership are in the US and they're like, oh, gosh, what do they do? You know, just. Can you just explain, just overview of what those, some of those businesses are for?

GOS was essentially a retail business. It started this life as a catalog business. Argos is also a retail business with shops and glass windows to sort of look at products and order them from the. From that and essentially also from a catalog. So very, very close related. Homebase is a diy store, Burberry, I think most people will recognize as the luxury brand. And Experian is the company I work for today. The information services business, which originated from that very catalog business as the very seed of it came from, if GWS knew which people were paying and which people were not paying. So there was a database and that sort of morphed into, you know, a credit services business. Long time ago, Experian demerged out of the us which was essentially a new listed company on the London or Stock exchange being born, having to deal with being a listed company on its own and choosing where its head office needed to be and making sure that all of the legacy structure it sort of inherited from being part of this bigger conglomerate needed to be dealt with. I got the question, do you want to come to Dublin to work in the treasury of Experian? Because Experian needs a Treasury function, doesn't have one. We would like you to come to Dublin, please. For us, it was. I've never been to Ireland. We were planning to take a holiday as typical Dutch people. We had a caravan which we were planning to take around Europe. I said, well, can I put my caravan on a boat and just drive around Ireland then? And that was fine. We holidayed around Ireland. We like the UK and Ireland is pretty much the UK with euros in kilometers per hour. We're up for it. Let's go.

So you went across, but just. I just wanted to go back more into the functional side of things for a moment because I spoke to Roshan Tolkien's recently and he started, well, funnily enough, his role before he went to Burberry, a common brand, but he started in the back office at Wrexham. And I said to him that. He said it was great because he gave me an idea for the controls, the processes and everything else. And sometimes, you know, when treasury professionals, they start their careers and go, I want to be in the front of where the action is and doing this, or, you know, maybe analysis and stuff. Oh, no, not the back office and stuff. And it's got a bad rap. But actually, you know, there's so many people, when I'm looking through a lot of the cvs that I talk to, when I'm talking to treasurers like yourself, the starting in the back office really gives that foundation. Did you find that? Because you did the role sort of in the Netherlands and then transition that across into Ireland, were you always overseeing that? What was the driver behind that, would you say?

First say. I totally agree with that. Yeah. My starting role was that I had to oversee the back office. So I had two direct reports, an accountant and a back office person. Back office person in a Treasury team sees everything coming over their desks and whether it's an acquisition, whether it's just settlements of derivatives. So on a back office desk you see a lot and you need to understand it as well, you know, to put things in the right place, to put the right confirmations, to put the right paperwork, whatever it is. So I have also seen in my team that the people that did that back office role ended up progressing through a Treasury career in the direction they wanted. So I've seen people in that role going into a Treasury dealer role to just go to the other side of the desk or if you like accounting in the accounting world more to go into treasury accounting. And I've also one in the team who actually transitioned from a back office role into a Treasury system support role. So I agree there's lots of opportunity or lots of, if you like, roads that you can take from a back office job.

So you did the Netherlands and then you'd never been to Ireland, but you suddenly fell in love with Guinness and you thought the land of Guinness and thought, right, yeah, let's do it. And did you go over there as Treas or senior role or what was the sort of the structure when you arrived and things back in 2007, the.

Job title was pretty much the same. So Treasury Finance manager looking after accounting and back office. The scope had somewhat changed because there was a series of Dutch holding companies to look after in the Netherlands. And when we arrived in Ireland there was a bunch of Irish holding companies and still the same Dutch holding companies to look after as well as Experian plc. The scale of operations extended and there was a lot of setup work to be done. We were coming essentially from a Treasury function that was running its treasury management system on a server behind the kitchen in our own self supported office, to bringing that treasury system into the proper Experian data centers and figuring out how that will have to go through the networks, how we would need to set that up. Recruiting a team in Dublin, that in itself was fun as well, because when we arrived In Ireland in 2007, how many people will be familiar with the term Celtic Tiger? But Ireland was going through an enormous economic boom at the time and that was very noticeable if it has fired back into the banking sector as well. But it was difficult to recruit people in a sense that if you were having a first interview with someone in the morning and you hadn't Offered them a job. By the afternoon they wouldn't be available anymore. That was sort of the type of environment we were in.

It was a bit wild west, wasn't it? I remember recruiting and, but also. And then I saw the flip side when sort of it changed. There were lots of guys coming from Dublin and I said, oh, how did you get into Treasury? And they said, well, I had a financial background. I walked into this office, they said, oh, you can do Treasury. And that afternoon they get offered a job and they were like, right, what's treasury again? It was just. Yeah, a bit crazy.

Yeah, it was. And that has had its collateral damage as well. We've had to make fast decisions. That original team that we recruited was good to a certain extent and we had good people that, you know, we had with us for a long time. But I also had to say goodbye to someone after I think two months because that person that was happened to be a back office person who just couldn't see that if you've got eight and minus two, you know, on your treasury system and you've got plus six on your bank statements, that those two could be connected and that.

Just joining the dots.

Exactly. And just that didn't work. So just plain case of lovely person, you know, great team, fit otherwise, but just not a person for Treasury. And since then we have also decided to put testing into our recruitment process and that is sometimes seen as a little bit intimidating because candidates don't like it. But I always explain that this is also for your own good in a sense on protection, that just to make sure that, you know, we don't do sort of the highest level academic tests but just to make sure that you have the basic skills that we need for this job otherwise, you know, things won't work out. And that was the lesson learned from, from, from those recruitment days and identifying.

The gaps maybe as well. You know, that's what a couple of clients I've, I've got who put that in place and they say, look, it' and it's not about pass or fail, it's about identifying the gaps and knowing how much input we need to give to you and help. Because that's what they want to do as well.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think that that's important. It's a recruitment process is always a two way thing as well. It's not just us deciding whether we like you as a candidate.

Yeah.

But also, you know, do you feel like you see a future in the team that we're running and the company that we are that's an important thing to make and also give candidates there for the opportunity to have that sense of what is this organization, what is it like? I try to make a point that when we come a little bit further down a recruitment process of inviting, you know, getting one or two extra team members to just have a 10 minute coffee chat with a candidate after a second interview or just something so that there's a bit more of an idea of. Yeah, I like this.

I'd recommend that to all our clients. In fact, I were just talking about the recruitment of a Treasury manager position for one of our clients. Although we're going to, what, we're going to title it. I think we're going to title it because again they said treasury manager role. And we then discovered it's actually not a Treasury manager role. It's much more focusing on sort of the dealing aspects with some cash management in there. And I said, well, why are we calling a Treasury manager role? I said, you don't manage anyone. It's actually just this role. So let's focus on just calling a Treasury dealer and they're all right. And I said, but when you were hiring this person, make sure. Because they were talking about three rounds of interviews. And I said, right, when does the candidate get to ask the questions, get to know you guys? And they were like, oh yeah. I said, yeah, I think this is a new way of recruiting that you need to think. It's not just a one way thing. It's about, you know, particularly in this new world of making sure that they want to work for you as much as them, you know, you being in charge of it. So I think as well, quite different.

Exactly. And I have to say Experian as a brand, and particularly in Ireland is not something in Ireland people don't really recognize Experian unless you, you know, work in financial services. You, you may know the name. People in the UK and the US tend to know us very well, but the same thing in mainland, mainland Europe is the same thing. But for me the Irish context is that just needs a little bit more work.

Yeah, we'll go through your progression experience, but could you describe the group for the listeners today? I've talked about information services, you talked about where it came from, which was great. But you know, what is it now? And then, you know, we'll sort of deep dive into your role as treasurer if you like. So you go through that if you would.

Yeah, of course, yes. Sometimes I regret, Mike, that I don't work for Coca Cola or It's quite easy to explain. You know, that's fine. What they do. Experian is quite. We sell information and information in on credit of most of the biggest part of consumers, mostly in the uk, the US and Brazil. And. And that is because these economies are quite. Credit is quite extensive in those economies, but we do a lot of additional information services on top of that, that is business information services. So the same type of credit information about businesses and you can also apply that in various sectors like automotive, so the whole. And in the us, again, particularly, where a lot of cars are bought on credit, so you have dealerships, you have information about cars. One of the things the listeners in the UK may not be aware of that if you're an auto trader, you can find the history of a car, you can put a license plate in, it goes into an Experian database to put the information out. So there is lots of, if you like, information services relating to giving assurance around credit and, you know, ancillary information. That's how I would describe it. And on top of that is a whole suite of software products that organizations can use to properly identify people. Like if Mike Richards applies for a credit card, how do I make sure that it's actually Mike that clicks, that I'm seeing through Internet or that it's not a fraudster?

Yeah, verification and all that stuff.

Exactly. So fraud products and identity products are therefore also a big part of that.

So you made the move to Ireland and we talked then about you sort of starting as Treasury Finance Manager and you've had a very successful career there. Talk about your progression and how you made those steps and again, for the listeners, they'll be thinking, oh, right, so he was in there, he made this progression. Was it just people left and you got, you know, you got promoted or what happened? You know, I know it wasn't. That's tongue in cheek, by the way. What did you do to put yourself in that position to get the promotions?

I think the thing I would put it to, Mike, it's always not 100% scientific to. To puzzle that together in retrospect, but it is about looking a little bit beyond your own job and over the fences of where your responsibilities lie and how it interfaces with others and perhaps therefore starting to collaborate, interface with other people to get problems solved or to move things forward in a certain direction. That I think was for me expressed in the promotion from Finance Manager to Head of treasury operations, effectively me becoming the team manager for the Dublin treasury team. Because there's always in treasury this sort of Complicated thing about front office, back office and segregation of duties and all those good things. So responsibilities and line manager needs to be careful how you do those in that context. But I became a team manager for the treasury team in Dublin. It had in somewhat to do, Mike, with some people reshuffling and the organization matured as well. Remember that, you know, Experian, the corporate side of Experian, started its life in 2006 and therefore there was certain amount of growing up with the organization to do as well.

So the role now as treasurer, how many in the team, you know, what's it like? What's the structure?

I have seven people in the team PA that helps both the Tax and Treasury teams and then six treasury professionals split three, three across back office and front office. We have a relatively, still a relatively high focus on accounting in the team because of all the top side of the Experian group. Partly that what I talked about earlier, the Irish and the Dutch holding companies are all done by my team and that includes also things like the share administration. All the, if you like, the admin that goes around being a listed company is also handled in my team and then back office treasury systems person, a deputy treasurer and a dealer. That's the setup.

Looking at those professional team, are you keen for them to all be accountants or keen for them all to be qualified Treasuries? What's your ethos around that? Team development, if you like, how do you coach them or help their careers, as it were?

There's a limitation. If you've got six job roles in a team, that is the limitation on what you can do. But the opportunities are there for people that want to switch into other roles. And what I talked about earlier was the back office role that can switch into a front office role or in an accounting role. And that depends on preferences. So we're having those conversations with where do you want to go with your career? What direction do you want to take your career in? And that I think defines quite a lot of what people want to do. Having said that, if people want to move on in a career outside of treasury, which is of course perfectly possible as well, you and I might not imagine that, Mike, but there's no, there.

Is no world outside the Treasury. How dare you.

Increasingly, we are also able to do virtual working. You know, if we were having the same conversation ten years ago and we were still all in offices and wedded to offices, then that would be regarded as a bit more problematic because people were expected to be in a certain location. I think There is now much more scope and opportunity. And even before the pandemic and Experian we, we do a lot more with call it virtual working or people having managers in another continent or being part of a team that's spread across three continents that is becoming much more normal and therefore working for another part of the organization, while you may still be based in Dublin is a possibility as well.

You've talked about the team there and stuff like that and this is a big thing that we both discussed as well. You see, one of the keys to success is doing that networking, you know, as being wider than just. We know we joke there about just being treasury focused and things, but you've become increasingly involved in associations and things like that. You know, maybe talk through how you've expanded your network. You know, you arrived there in Dublin a number of years ago with zero network, as it were locally. How have you grown that? And then you were the president, el presidente, as we know and things. Maybe if you could you touch on that or explain to people why you think that's important, they should be doing the same sort of thing.

I do think it's important and I can't claim that I've been extremely deliberate about it, I have to admit. I think it comes naturally. It's something that you just have to do if you want to, if you want to progress. We have felt as one of the two treasuries in Dublin that are FTSE hundred treasuries that we have a certain responsibility towards progressing the profession in Ireland and supporting this and also supporting this as you know, as a Treasury team. So I am very encouraging towards my team. I even nagged them to a certain extent to become a member under the corporate membership of the local Irish act, if there are events to attend them, if there are webinars to attend them. Because thing when you work in treasury is that we are all small teams working in big companies with big problems and big money usually as well. And in order to learn you need to sort of cross pollinate with other people that are in similar roles and face similar problems. And that gives you a lot of perspective. Equally. You get that from conferences. I do like, you know, I make it a point to attend a conference a year if I can because you take time out of your schedule to think about what's happening in the profession, what is going on, what do I need to do about this, what does that mean for the priorities that I have with my team, for anyone that. And that's relatively easy. Becoming a member of an association is usually not an awfully complicated job. You need to put a little bit of effort into attending events and once you start doing that, you bump into people and the networking sort of almost takes care of itself. And. And that, in a way, is perhaps how I rolled into this, exactly doing what I just described. And at a certain point the question came, remco, would you like to become a member of the Committee of the Irish Act? And say, yeah, that's fine. And somebody joked at the time, oh, Remco, watch out. Before you know it, you'll maybe ask to become the president. I said, well, surely not. But lo and behold, a year later, that very question came. I took that opportunity, of course. If I can do that and if they want me to do that, I've done it. And that is. It's a great experience. I think it's another. It's different. There is other dimensions to being. We'll call a chairman or president of a Treasury Association. It's a learning experience. I would recommend it to everyone.

You say it's a learning experience. A lot of treasurers, treasury professionals, are very natural networkers. You know, they get out there and everything else and know that this is. You do Toastmasters and you're, you know, very eloquent and we've talked about this and we had a really great pre chat before, but for some, it's not perhaps their default setting and they have to push out of their comfort zone to be out there. I spoke to Karen many years ago about mentors and the power of that. You know, maybe we do that. Similar with yourself, what would you say is the power of that? Networking and getting involved in professional associations? I've got a call coming up with the President of the UK Act, Caroline, and, you know, we'll talk much more in depth with her. But you, you're a Treasury professional, you're busy, you've got a job to do, you know, stuff, why bother? Why get involved in those associations? What's it given you?

Partly because I feel a responsibility to do that. You know, I'm a treasure, I have got experience in this. I have things to say and perhaps things to help people with, to take the profession forward. And I feel a sort of moral duty to do that. So it's two ways. It is. It feeds me because I am in touch with other people. I get. So I learn from things, I hear from others, but it also gives me the opportunity to share and help, help with what I can bring to the party and in this case, you know, help. Help Bring forward the Irish treasury profession.

And have you, you know, have you seen actual fiscal results, if you like, Are there things that you've done that, oh, actually that saved us money, or that's helped with my role, or that's helped me recruit someone or, you know, are there any direct, directly relevant, you know, that you thought actually that was a direct result of me, the presidency or something else? Anything you can point to, you know, that you would say to people.

It's very hard to measure reputation, I think, in terms of what, what it does to you and therefore which people are contacting you. How are you sort of part of something because people may know you, but there is an element of that and there is also an element of will people pick up the phone to you if you ring them, or will they sort of answer your email? All very intangible aspects, but I think, you know, those are important ones and you have an opportunity to make impact in a way that may always be visible to you. And give you one example on the keynote address I had to make for the annual dinner of the iact, I chose to sort of have quite different topic for that keynote. And someone sent me a message that saying it was one of the bankers that attended one of the best keynote speeches I've heard. And I thought that was very moving for me to sort of see that because it goes, you know, you go out of. I took a risk with that. And it links back, in fact, Mike, just to. You mentioned Toastmasters earlier. The reason I joined Toastmasters was because I had to do a speech for the Irish act dinner because I didn't feel confident about that at all. And for me, I thought I need just to do something about, expose myself, learn this. Because a lot of things doesn't come natural in the sense that you have to sort of practice these things. That's with a lot of things in life. And I figured I just need to, you know, do something about this. And therefore joined the Toastmasters Club and continued that journey afterwards. I didn't stop it when I have done the speech.

Yeah.

But the theme that I would perhaps give the listeners in that sense as well is try to get out of your comfort zone every now and then because it's important and it actually, it actually motivates you as well. When you discover that the thing you were afraid of or the thing that you thought you weren't very good at, that other people actually say, oh, I thought that was really good.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And actually I interrupted my last live speech In Chicago two years ago. I will come back to Chicago. I love you guys. And I was giving this new one about some of the lessons I learned from podcasts just like this, and some of the things we'd extracted from the first year, if you like, of podcasting. And I suddenly paused the speech and I said to the guys in the room, I said, do you know what? I really don't enjoy this. They were like, what? They were looking at me because, you know, I felt comfortable enough to say, look, I don't enjoy public speaking. I didn't think, right, let's get on a plane, go across there, stand in front of. I didn't have 300. I'd have been really quick. I've done 300 before. That's really scary. But, you know, it was a hundred people in the room and I said, I. This is not my default. I don't. Yeah, come on, let's get. They said, oh, you're good. Yeah, it's practiced, you know, and actually, I knew that it would be good for me, my presentation skills would be, get better, I could talk to clients more, hopefully, you know, push our brand further, make more money because we make more placements, make more treasury professionals. All the added benefits. There are no stage going back to it. Did I think, oh, I want to do this? I don't. It's out of the comfort zone. But I think every time you do that, you then become more comfortable out of it, you know? You know, I'm never going to say, yeah, yeah, I love this. You know, not. Not going to jump on a stage anytime soon, I don't think. But the fact is, it does really help. And it sounds like, you know, you've got those benefits as well, you know, through professional connections and as well. So sounds like it's a really positive thing for you.

I'd say I can recommend a Toastmasters Club to anyone on the podcast. There will probably be one close to you at home, whether you're in the UK or the US it's great for your communication skills and your leadership skills.

So we touched on team, we've touched on, you know, your presentation things and, you know, presidency and professional associations. I'm just going to just come back to, well, really the real world, this horrible real world, but it's starting to improve over the past unprecedented year. We all heard this and everything else, but how have you guys coped and how's it affected your treasury team? So if we go two and a half years ago, I'm imagining all back in the office and everything else. We talked about this before the show about how you've supported some of the team. Maybe you could just give us a quick run through of how you were affected by Covid, what that's then brought for you guys and you know, without putting too many things in your mouth, I'll let you explain what it's been like.

Yeah, I think a lot of people can probably relate to the same experience we have had to go through. So when in March, the pandemic got serious, we of course needed to all pack up and work from home. And your initial thought was, oh, that will take a few weeks. Just guys, grab from the office what you need, don't forget your bank tokens, make sure things still work for you at home. With the idea of we'll be back in a few weeks time clearly didn't happen. We're all still working from home. From a Treasury point of view, the world started to melt down because the financial markets started to be seriously disrupted. For us in Experian, our year end is 31st of March, so we were a few weeks away from our year end. March typically is the best cash month for us in terms of cash coming into the business. So we had stacked up a whole series of commercial paper maturities, short term borrowings to deal with all that cash coming into the business. And the commercial paper market started seriously wobbling with if we wanted to roll paper, there were no investors to take it and dealers were struggling and we sort of had paper going away very late. This was a US commercial paper. So working in the US time zone, I would call it panic. But there was certainly a heightened tension, as in, we want to present our balance sheet at year end in the best possible way. We don't really want to draw bank facilities. We've got a commercial paper market that is seriously disrupted. Let's go out and fund ourselves with a bond, let's just do a bond. We were planning to do a bond a few months later anyway and we said, well, we're going into a closed period, let's just get it done. So we went quickly, we put a bond paperwork together, put a syndicate together and we issued a bond on 31 March, literally on the last day of the financial year. In retrospect, it wasn't the cheapest one we've done given the market dynamics, but it gave a lot of comfort around. Balance sheet is short up. Whatever now happens in this pandemic and if the business starts suffering from this, because at that point we also didn't know what would happen to our operating cash flows? As Experian, we are a company that has very cash generative. We convert about 90% of EBIT into cash. So as a treasurer, I'm counting on that cash to come into the business. What if it doesn't? And so we will need to think of all those type of things at the same time. The board was asking all sorts of questions of. In the same vein, what if this happens? What if that happens? What if that happens? Can we have different scenarios? So there was a tremendous amount of activity happening in the sense of making sure funding happens to make sure the team is operational, working from home and getting things still together and answering all, if you like, CFO questions, Board questions around, how are we doing with liquidity? You know, what is happening here? What if that happens and what if the year ends up in this way? Well, I guess we all worked that through in a good way, but it was a pretty intensive month.

I just want to go back into that. You talked to me about supporting staff and about the need for empathy. You've got a real. That's a real side to personality, which I think is brilliant. Can you just talk us through again? Because I think I was interviewed by Treasury Today magazine just recently and one of the things I talked about later on in there was. There was a paragraph and I was saying, one of my clients, actually, they, they, you know, he was, oh, yeah, we've implemented this new Treasury TMS throughout lockdown. Aren't we amazing? Well, not so much. In actual fact. I know two or three of the team are just completely exhausted. They've dealt with all this, they've got through it because they, they feel they needed to. But at the end of the day, they, you know, they are very much, as the pandemic finishes and everything else, they're going to be, you know, it's. It's time for a change for them. And it's not that they're. They're the opposite to lazy, but they've been a bit broken by it. You and I talked about this before, about how you've, you know, really tried to look after and step up to that. Can you just talk to the, again, the listeners about what they need to be thinking about how you've done it?

In our team, we have. I have quite a few team members with young children. The situation in Ireland with the pandemic was that at certain points schools have been closed and also crashes have been closed for people that, you know, that live in an apartment with two young children. It Is, you know, that can be hard work. And we as a team, and I as a manager need, need to be conscious of the pressures that that brings and that there is flexibility needed to, for people to work around it to make sure that things for them still work at home and they can still do their job. And at times that could just mean that things may just have to take a little longer to get there or that we have just to sort of arrange something differently to make it work. And that may be the response to something. Actually, you know, if, if an email then comes at 11 o' clock at night, it may just not be a sign that it's that somebody is completely overwhelmed, but somebody has just sort of taken a choice, as in, I need to sort of take care of the kids in the afternoon, I'll do my work in the evening. That's flexibility. I think, as managers, I think that has been a particular challenge for during the pandemic that is important to make sure that your teams feel that and also that they can, you know, they can discuss these things.

We talked about the support and, you know, without going into the confidentials, but really impressed me when you said about some of the things you've done. And I think in our business, you know, we've been very flexible around it because it's just a weird world. Remco, amazing show and you've given some incredible insights and I've really enjoyed it, as I knew I would anyway. And we could keep going, but we try and keep this to the. What used to be called a thing called commute time, where people used to go to and from work and sometimes an hour on the train or something like that. Now they go to and from the shower to the kitchen to the home office. Okay. But hopefully they'll still listen to this and maybe in the lunch hour or something like that, I don't know. Remico is going to perhaps wrap up today's show. We'll put his LinkedIn details in the show notes. As always, if you were to sort of look back and someone's looking, say, you know, that's a similar background I'd like, or, you know, that's how I want to get on in Treasury. What. What would you say, what the top tips you would give?

Most important things, I would say, Mike, is take the opportunities that come on your path and they are different for every one of us. And when you take those, do the things you do, you know, with heart and soul and give it your best shot and show people you're open to learning. Most importantly, I would probably say, measure your success by your own standard. Not just what your job title is, of what looks on your business card or how good it looks on LinkedIn, but what you want, what you want to achieve and how it fits into your life and your ambitions. And take gratitude from that as well. Because it's not only about becoming group treasurer in a FTSE company, because that is, if that's the goal, then what is left for me there is much more to think about and much more to achieve. So I think, yeah, those are the tips I would give.

Amazing. Be open to opportunities and on top of that, learning as well. And then I love that, setting your own standard, if you like, and maybe your own frame of reference about what success is and everything else, and measuring not against everybody else, but also in your own terms about measuring and improving. Would that be right?

I think the example for me is Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He's an ex treasurer. Sorry. Many people know this. Nobody, I would think would have of becoming Archbishop on their list as ambitions. So it's not universally measurable as to where your ambitions lie or where your heart is in terms of going somewhere. And that, I think is the important part.

Yeah, different frame of reference. I don't want to be the Archbishop, but, you know, we'll keep going about taking over the world of Treasury. Yeah, Recruitment. That is amazing. Remco, thank you for your time today. I know that people are going to get lots of enjoyment from today's show. As always, thank you for your time, sir.

Thank you very much, Mike, it's been a pleasure to be on your podcast.