Mastering Treasury Interviews with Eddie Trahearn

Foreign.

Show. We bring you an update episode. We're going back, way back into our archives and I meet and talk once again to Eddie Trahan. When I spoke to Eddie, he was the director of Treasure at Belmont Green. His career's moved on since then. You'll be able to see that and hear that if you connect to him on LinkedIn. He's a great guy. We have a really nice catch up. We last spoke in January 2019 and a few things have happened. Remember, he's moved out of London. Lots of different changes as well, different role, new company and things are looking very bright for Eddie and I'll let the episode speak for itself and hope you enjoy it. If you've heard it before, you can jump all the way through about 32 minutes in and then it. That's the new episode. But enjoy today's episode with Eddie Trehearn.

In this week's show, I'm delighted to be joined by Eddie Trehearn, Director of Treasury at Belmont Green Finance. Based in Staines in just outside London in Surrey. Belmont Green Finance are a team of experienced mortgage professionals who created Vida Home Loans Residential Buy to Let mortgage lender which now distributed over a billion pounds of product exclusively via their intermediaries. Eddie's recently come on board to redesign and implement a bank grade compliant treasury function as Belmont Green look to diversify their funding and bring in increased risk management. But just a quick overview for Eddie's background. He's got over 13 years of treasury experience from trading through implementation of bank processes and controls. Initially starting back in the day at alliance and Leicester which we'll go through back in those days, the good times of banking, but then through the financial crisis and some challenging times before, you.

Know, we do that.

And then Eddie moved on Charter Financial Services, lendvest. But you know, that's enough of all that. Let's get Eddie to give you some more of the details.

So Eddie, as a regular listener to.

The show, you know a little bit more, which is great. Why don't you take us through your story from the dim distant past over to you.

Thanks. So I originally fell into treasury like most people who I speak to. So I joined the alliance semester graduate scheme to do marketing quite quickly. Got fed up at making all the posters that go through your door. I wanted to do a presentation on another area of the business, the rest of the graduates. I chose the Treasury. I chose the treasury purely because I thought there would be a safe full of gold bars and it so happened that there wasn't. But I Never really left. They did a bit of a rotation program.

And then you sort of progressed through that role.

And how long were you there at alliance and Esther?

I was at alliance and Esther for three years, like you said, through the good times to start with, where raising capital, raising liquidity was. Peter, Kate I worked across capital markets, money markets, derivatives, asset purchasing, foreign exchange, a range of products, all within the very loose regulatory system at the time. What we then found quite quickly as the financial crisis hit was that our liability base started to disappear. So we have to think on our feet, think quickly. And I was lucky. I was one of the younger members of the team that didn't have as much riding on it. So I could actually sit back whilst everyone else is going through the process and is absolutely stressed that they may lose their houses. We were keeping nine and a half thousand people in a job we essentially. I could learn so much. And that that phase of that three years of my career is actually sort of completely underpinned everything that I've ever done since.

And when you say underpinned, what is just giving you the broad breadth of experience to rely on or broad depth.

Of experience and actual my approach to risk management. So back then, back in those days, treasury functions, especially in financial services firms, were seen as profit centers and they had to be a profit center. What quite quickly evolved through that was that they that weren't making profit, that you wouldn't make a profit. But what you were there to do was manage the wider risk, financial risk within the business. And that stuck with me ever since all through the rapid change in regulatory environment, through the smaller institutions where I've been bought in to implement that in some instances, in the first instance at Weatherby's bank, there was nothing there that wasn't a Treasury, it was a old and still is a very strong private bank. Having been the only person that was brought in with any treasury experience, had to drive through a lot of that change, regulatory change, implement the reporting that was required and just prepare different reports for the executive team and ultimately the board.

And then you were up outside of London. The bright lights of London sort of beckoned. You were drawn down or what happened?

Well, unfortunately, yeah, there wasn't a lot of bank treasury opportunities around the Midlands. I pretty much exhausted it going through alliance and then Weatherby in my local vicinity. And the opportunity came up that when they did come up to head up a Treasury function which the boardside was ready for at that point, we're all based in London.

So you joined Ghana International and then A few different moves within, you know, a relatively short period. But, you know, a couple of different moves. Do you want to just talk us through those?

Yeah. So I didn't set off to move very, very quickly between jobs. I took the head of the treasury role at Ghana International Bank. It's fascinating institution. It's an offshore bank for the Garnet banking sector. It's owned partly by the Garnet central bank but actually learning a lot about different products again. So variant battery finance. Really short term commodity deals. And yeah. Another wide range is sort of story of my career is that I've always been open to taking on different products and never wanted to get stuck just looking at the same thing day in, day out. Yeah. And then from there, you know, it's put in for sure that the regulatory change again for Ghana and then I got headhunted into a bank called B Bank AG Zurich. They were having some issues and where they just needed people to modernize what was going on in that institution. So I worked very closely with the CFO and also the. So the group Swiss company. The group risk function just to bring the treasury out of sort of the 1990s and up. Right up to date didn't involve any system implementation there. But it did involve going back through check in, almost doing auditing liaison with clients again, which is something that I hadn't done for a while doing foreign exchange deals with clients and I really enjoyed that role. Um, but CFO left, the bank of England pinched him.

Right.

And the change became a lot harder. There was a lack of communication that we suffered from. Which is one of the things that I've always, now I've taken forward is you need that line of communication as the treasurer into the CFO and also the CEO because there are certain times where there's risks and any activities that need to be undertaken that you need sponsorship on both. You can't just do it. The CFO is back here. And that's not to say you just go around them every single time. But there is points where you need both in a room.

Yeah. You need a good, good line of communication when you're talking, getting stuff done and things.

That's exactly. Yeah. If you, if you don't. Do you want to open and honest. And it's one thing that I've taken through my entire career and I think it probably stems from working in a dealing room to start with that we were quite open to shout and ball and reconcile with a hug and this high five and making good and bad decisions. But what we Always had was no air, no underlying or undertones of negativity. At the end of the day everything was cleared, everything was aired and everything. Yeah, we came in the next day and worked. Really? Yeah, yeah. And that open and honest communication is, is paramount within Treasury.

And then you made the move to Charter Court. Talk to us. You know, obviously international audience listen to this as well. So they might not know some of these, some of the banks they might understand but then Charter Court and Invest give us a quick run through of those roles.

You sort of shop. Charles Court Financial Services was an opportunity that I didn't think I'd ever get again. And so they were. I was approached as they were applying for a banking license and they needed an experienced treasurer who understood the regulation, liquidity, market risk, everything else that goes with the bank treasury sector. So I spent a year with them. Initially when we were in the desired build out phase, we submitted our application and we're implementing treasury systems, we were implementing new risk management policies, we were implementing new payment methods, new payment systems, driving through an enormous amount of change. It was a brilliant team effort and just people were again all pulling in the same direction. And we took it from a balance sheet to about £100 million. When I joined to when I left September 17, we had a balance sheet of about 6 billion, 1 1/2 billion.

You talk about the team there, the Treasury. How was the team structured when you started or what did you know? What are you like as a. That's a key thing a lot of people listen to is you want to know what you're like as a boss and how you create your treasury team around you. So what was it like when you first walked in January 2014?

There was no treasury team. When I walked in there was a lady that submitted paperwork for the backers to give us funding for the mortgages. By the time I left, we had a Treasury team that stretched across at front office execution, middle office, treasury operations, LLM, Prudential Risk, the second line of defense. Not all reported into me obviously, but we had a team of close on 25 people. Yeah. So I was responsible there for the front office, in the air, liability management and overall I had six people that reported into me and I always go for the premise that I want the best people. I try not to scrip and save pounds by thinking small, mate. Do I want people that I know I can trust that when it all goes wrong, they're going to be there for you, they're going to back you up, they're going to understand the concepts that are coming out and sticking fast.

Yeah. Hiring. Do you mean hiring a higher level perhaps than you might instead of recruiting a senior treasury analyst, might recruit a Treasury manager or instead of an assistant, you might recruit a deputy treasurer sort of thing.

That's it. What I always find is that actually the long term, the better the people you get in, the less people you need.

Right.

I don't abide by the rules that you just have people and they just sit and they just program on spreadsheets and they become a robot. I want people to be engaged. I want people. I tried to operate with a pseudo really flat structure, so I won't sit in with my people. I don't like sitting away from them. I want everybody to come to me, from an analyst through to a deputy. I want everyone to come to me if they need me. But hopefully by putting together a high performing team, they should be able to resolve most issues themselves. What I've always tried to do as well is implement the best systems. So you actually get the systems to do the current work and you have highly skilled people that can think strategically and make very good risk management decisions.

And you work yourself out of a job in a way, in a good way, because as you say, they're taking on the responsibility whilst you take it forward. So I think.

Well, I think that the key to being a good treasurer is being able to act as that sponge between the board and the executives and the rest of the team. In my experience, boards can be up and down in their behaviors, but I don't find that treasury teams necessarily respond that well to being shouted at. You sometimes have to take the, you have to take the roof from above and then it just looks smooth and a nice easy transition and message spread into the rest team.

Yeah. And then, you know, you're nearly four years at Chartercore before you made a move, you know, why move on from there? Very successful, you know, head of treasury, really enjoying it, great team, you know, what happened next?

And the change had stopped. We'd just been through an IPO process, so the treasury doesn't take a back seat in that instance. But we weren't looking to do anything new because we needed to be stable, we need to manage the risks within corridors. And so we had full time jobs doing that. And the attitude in a way became a bit stuck in that they didn't then want to push on and do some of the other things that I thought at that point needed to be done. I'd also always had a burning desire to move and Try a corporate non bank environment. And the opportunity came up at LendInvest and I took it. Well, I was fortunate enough to get it and then took it.

Lendinvest you'd find again.

So Lend Invest is very interesting. It's a fintech company and tech company. So it's a mortgage lending platform where it's not peer to peer. It's where borrowers and investors have an ability to match funds against each other although it's within a fund structure on the platform. They also have more traditional funding lines given through banks. But what they're developing is a very clever technological platform that allows them to intermediate the market in a different way. The lending market, mortgage lending market in a different way. But when I joined it become apparent they've done close enough to a billion pounds of lending as well, but through no centralized treasury function. So they needed someone to come in, have a look what was there which wasn't as easy as it sounds and then form a Treasury function and then pull the bits that are being done elsewhere in the organization to centralize a lot of the tasks. And that ranged from actually hedging deals or hedging the main thing that's going on an interest rate risk perspective through funding payments and getting a structured method funding loans and as they're going out the door in certain timescales, et cetera and SLAs for the rest of the business. So it was interesting. I enjoyed my time there. I wasn't there that long but it was a period where we got a new cfo, we started to build out a lot more technology in terms of where loans are sitting and recording which funding line is only loans moving a lot more away from Excel into systems based approach. And you know I did enjoy it. It's just that the opportunity at Belmont Green came along and it appealed to me a lot more. I've learned a lot of lessons building chart holds into Fairbanks and I wanted to apply them again and try to avoid the mistakes we made the first time around.

Again trying to you know, Belmont, you know someone always in. You know you look up some of the stuff on the web and everything else. But if you know, explain in your words.

Greener a mortgage lender, especially small lender we lend into the buyer to let and the owner occupied sector. But it's people that won't necessarily straight through on a side street lenders criteria. So it needs a bit more of a manual underwriting. People need to look at it need to understand cases better. So it's instead of a Computer says no environment. We have people looking at cases and making an informed credit decision in line with credit policies that we've got in place.

At the moment we're funded by the.

Wholesale markets so we're a non bank lender. And then hopefully within the future we will be moving to a more diversified funding base, hopefully across deposits, hopefully wholesale funding and any other access and channels that we can find where we can raise again specialists liabilities that we can deploy into more specialist areas of mendit.

And what's it like going in? You know, you've, you've obviously enjoyed this niche banking startup sector. What is it that you know, obviously there's a buzz you must get out of it or you know, why bother again? You know, you're doing it again and you know, coming in and it's brand new, it's fresh, you know, do you just, you know, is that the thing for you or what?

Yeah, well, I won't lie, it's going to be brutal again but I quite enjoy that it is. You can see you're making differences nearly every single day. You don't have any day that's the same. You get to find talent, you get to employ talent and you get to build that talent. And I think some of the, the positives that I've taken from my career is whenever I've moved on the majority of my team have always wanted to come with me or followed me and I like that, I like that sense of camaraderie that you can get in a smaller institution. But yeah, you also have to accept them up with this move, you can't hide as much in a smaller institution as well. So you get, you get back what you put in and if you can implement something very sensibly, you can bring boards, execs up the learning curve to the right level, then you get the patterns on the back and everyone every now and again likes to get at least one pat on the back. That's the sort of nature of the business fees within especially a small bank or small institution, corporate startup, treasury environment.

And you, you say, you talk there about recruitment obviously on the. As you hear before that you're on the podcast hosted by the treasury recruitment company. What's your ethos around?

What are you looking for when you recruit?

You know, where are you looking? Is it right, you know, I've got a cv, it's right the qualif qualifications number one or what have they done or what are the different, you know, things that jump out of you.

I may sound a little bit out of order here. But I don't put much stop by qualifications. I find in the startup environment the qualifications can actually hinder your thinking process because it feels sometimes like they become very, very blinkered in their approach that it has to be like textbook said, that's not true, that's not how it works out sometimes and sometimes you might find that you have to do something outside of your remit startup. Yeah, yeah. And I generally you have to review the cv. There has to be the relevant skills in there. But what I enjoy more or find more stop by, especially in the startup area is their personality. Can they handle the change? Because you can have someone that is brilliant on a cv, they can do absolutely everything. You put them into somewhere where they can't just get the data delivered to them and they just put it into a spreadsheet and then they can compute it but they actually have to go out, find the data, meet the right person in the institution, get their own report built before they could even get the part of calculating it in the spreadsheet, they. They just melt all away.

Without giving people, without giving too many.

Interview tips, how do you assess that, you know, from someone's, you know, okay, you've got the cv, you got them in front of you, but while you using it, you know, are you then just having conversations with them or their. What evidence are you basing on? What sort of, you know, how do you go through it? Is it out over a coffee or how do you do it?

Exactly that.

I prefer not to do a formal interview in the first instance, but more of a sit around the table and have a chat. Our office is in the shard so we are quite lucky to have a nice biscuit to sit and it sort of relaxes people a bit. And the most expensive for someone. Yeah and we, what we actually, you know, what I actually do is take them through, you know, just see how would you do this? Like have you ever thought about this sort of thing before and have you had it question that you asked on about how do you calculate interest rate risk or how do you calculate liquidity report? It's more around. Have you ever had a trouble getting your data for your reports and let. Let the person who told you through it and you. Yeah, again it's just my opinion but I think you can form that view quite quickly and I think in a small team you need. In a larger team you can take the skill set. You don't necessarily all have to get on. In a smaller team personality is key because if you don't all get on. It becomes incredibly difficult to get anything done.

But also that interviewing style is more evidence based slash scenario based. You know, interviewing as we've. We've called it, where you're actually, you know, it's taking it further on from, you know, tell us about how you've dealt with a difficult person is like right, you dealt with a difficult person but what happened next or then how did you deal with it sort of thing is that much, you know, it's actually, you know, the reaction and you know, as you're saying, if you're doing it in more informals sense, although it's not informal for those of you who are out there, you know, guys, it is an interview. Do you remember that? But actually it sounds like you can then get that much more so from the people as well.

You know, I always think people have hours and hours and hours to write their cv.

Yeah.

And they're going to give you the most perfect view of them ever. If you can get people thinking off the call in your first 20 minutes of chatting to them, you actually get to see how they behave in a changing environment. Can they actually cope with randomness? Can they cope with not interrogation style questioning but rapid questioning which. All of which you are going to get in the environments I've worked in the last eight, nine years. Yeah.

But if you look back over your.

Perfect cv, Eddie, and just doing that, you know, just putting that turning around 180, you know, what things would you have changed or you know, not necessarily what mistakes but what sort of things. Okay. I love doing that or you know, if I was recommending that someone walks in, I'd like to be. Follow your career path. You know, they're very junior or something like that. What recommendations would you give to those guys?

I'm not one for believing in having regrets. Everything I did I've always chosen on almost good feel for the roles that I've taken.

Yeah.

Not all of them have worked out. Probably wasn't the best one for me. But that wasn't to do with the bank. It was just an individual feel.

Yeah. I have as a person.

Yeah. But what I did and I've always done is gone into everything with my eyes open and sometimes opportunities have arisen where other people go. I don't think that that's really right right now. So for instance, I joined Charles of.

Course.

When I had two really small kids and that was a business either flourish or eventually go worse. So it was, yeah, it was probably a risk but at the same time I Felt it was a risk that was worth taking, progression of my career and it was interesting work. I think as long as you find the work interesting, you'll enjoy going to work. If you enjoy going to work, that generally means the business is going to succeed.

And you talk there about, you know, sort of, you talked earlier rather about sort of systems and you see the, the industry developing. What are you seeing, you know, where.

You know there's a lot of stuff.

Coming at you guys and I'm border talking at various comments about, you know, AI and automation. You know, fast score is going to take out routine. We know this. All right, get over it. It's more what are you seeing sort of coming down the line that's going to help yourself as a treasurer or you know, what are you thinking about for the future as you progress?

I'm going to sound a bit like Philistine, but I'm not all sold on AI yet.

That's right.

But yeah, I think this machine learning will help. So cash flow planning, clearly there's going to be an element that it can start to help. There's risk management. We've already got systems out there that can calculate and then essentially tell you what hedging to put in place. There are plenty of various systems now for comparisons on FX prices, bond prices, whatever it may be, whatever products we're working within, within the treasury. And it may just be in my sort of my small, smaller institution world, but that actual base time catching up time, going to lunch, going for dinner with brokers, some of the investment banks, some of the other lawyers and people that are in the wider treasury family, they without that and that little insight raised little bits of knowledge that you're not picking up elsewhere your wider network, you know, so staying in contact with ex colleagues, always managing to keep up time for meeting the people that you used to deal with sort of being, you know, I think sometimes treasurers can be a CFO's worst nightmares. They're very analytics driven and they have to have everything on a spreadsheet because you know, I'm a firm believer that 75% of what we do is a science that then claimed by said that it's an art and that's just a good field. Sometimes it's like we can see the macroeconomic economic situation. It's looking like a certain way and rate should move a certain way but you sometimes just get a sense that actually I don't think it's going to play out like that. And you might take a contrarian view to the Market but your AI, unless you can program it to be that clever and have got to feel then I don't think you, you know, that's where I still think there is a human element to treasury that would frustrate the day.

Trust your instincts and you got. So yeah, so someone you know to sort of wrap up today and just, you know, look to the future again. Someone looks back at your sort of your LinkedIn profile and, and that's one of the things we would say is to you know, connect with Eddie. I checked with him before the show that it's a good way to connect, you know, look at his background and stuff like that. We'll put the link on the show notes as well. But if someone does look over your career and they say actually that's what I want to do, what advice are you going to give to that person you know or what you know, to people out there? What are your overall thoughts?

I think it's a good question. I think overall my career again like I said, I put into the treasury and I've never shut any door if someone's giving me an opportunity to learn, I'll grasp it with boat hands and through doing that you get a reputation for being able to handle change, being solid, being dependable and being able to deliver the results that people want to see. Some of the processes I've paid institutions through been pretty complex. I mean I've not had a huge amount of support throughout the institution because there's not been that understanding. So there's two end of which are actually implementing and bringing people along. And I think if you can be very much a people person, thankfully I said it earlier, I'd rather always be employing people who are far more skilled than I am in their specialist areas than having to be the most knowledgeable person about every single thing in my treasury. I think the treasury is definitely one of the areas where somebody's greater than the parts and if you get the parts right then you can deliver a great function, a very efficient function, a function that people actually within the rest of the organization don't mind doing business with because essentially we are. Wherever you work you are always probably the gatekeeper to the, to the players and you know, I, I've built my career on trying to have. Yes as my first instinct to, to a question and I'll only ever turn it down if I find there's no other new for me to manage this Amazing.

Wow, that was a revisit to blast in the past. So that was just January 2019 that I last spoke to Eddie. I've spoken to him since, but that's when we did it on the podcast. At the time he was the Director of Treasurer at Belmont. Green Times have moved on a couple of things in between, you know, just a pandemic. But since then, Eddie's moved roles. I'm gonna get him to explain it. We're gonna talk now for the next 15, 20 minutes, catch up with Eddie and his story. A lot of stuff has changed, which is great. And then he's going to give us some final takeaway. So, Eddie, we pick up your story. Wow. Three years later. Mentor over to you, sir. What's gone on since we last spoke?

As you said, there's a lot has gone on, not just for me, but worldwide as well. Lots of challenges, lots of exciting things, lots of opportunities. But currently I am the treasurer at, in the UK's newest bank, GB Bank. It's a bank that's focusing on SME property developers and supporting them throughout their journey and their different products that they require in different life stages or life cycles of projects that they're doing. Brings lots of different challenges, lots of different areas for us to explore as we move forward as well into this new world and facing into a recession. But you know, the story very simply was that the move from a non bank lender into a bank seemed a sensible one to me. Felt like a great opportunity to once again set up another Treasury. Thankfully, I've got a great team around me within the bank. So yeah, we've moved it forward. We got through all the way through the regulatory process, we've got a very solid cornerstone investor and yet we're now fully functioning. We're taking retail savings, we are getting money out the door for loans and supporting that developed sectors, hoping and wanting and really striving to help build communities with a wider, a wider focus and a bit of a social purpose as well. We don't just want to build luxury executive homes, we're looking to support green building, eco projects, affordable housing, social housing, you know, the wider remit. So that can actually really support the entire public as a wider, as a wider sense. And that's what really pulled me to the role. It's, you know, banking with a purpose, which I think is going to become a lot more prevalent in our society. I think businesses with purpose, businesses that support and advertise to the wider world what needs to be done in order to look after the wider world. Not greenwashing, but actually doing the doing rather than just talking the talk. We're going to start flourishing and being where we need to be. We need to all get behind them.

And move forward at pace and without being too controversial. You and I were just talking before already and we both noticed that. And again I was going to say about doing a post during pandemic and as we came out of it we've seen a lot of people sort of promoted from within and sometimes not over promoted but promoted to a level where in, you know, easier times and calmer times when you're just getting on doing the job. Even during pandemic, you know, a lot of things, stuff was quieter, you know, there were, yes, there were demands on you and everything else but actually we come out of this and I mean then we're into challenging times globally and stuff. And I was talking at the Dublin Treasurers Conference in Ireland just recently and again we were exploring that. You know, there were lots of different things. There's working remotely on people's minds, but also the, the scale of the challenges that people are facing. How are you guys facing that yourselves? And you and I talked about or maybe broaden that. You had to comment about that as well, didn't you?

Not wanting to be outspoken or too controversial. But there are plenty of roles within treasury that have been formed and people's skill sets have been built during a benign market environment. Been lots of cheap money. Everything moves one way. It's been relatively simple to plan and, and understand what's going to happen. Now just going through a financial planning exercise, we, during that sort of eight week period we, we managed to have I think three changes of government, three chancellors and a massively different economic outlook from when we probably started that process. And it's that you can only really deal with those things through the experience. Shouldn't be too controversial to say that actually you can't just buy that experience that you have to have lived it, you have to have been through it, you have to have had a good grounding and learning in that. So you know, I was way back when in my career was at alliance and Leicester when we went through the global financial crisis, that was the experience gained, you know, a rapidly changing environment within the market, rapidly changing liquidity situation, rapidly changing capital situation from a banking perspective say. And you learn to work within those remits, you learn to work to pace, you learn to work to pace with accuracy and you learn along the way. You just learn different techniques or things that a book can't teach you. You know, they, they are inbuilt and actually, you know, a Lot of them had been buried a long way down into the ground and actually only come to resurface when. When these things erupt, it's a bit like a volcano. Your knowledge has to erupt as the, you know, as the event occurs. So it's been crazy. There's been a lot of. Throughout the market, there's been panic that some treasury functions maybe lacked the relevant experience. Not skills, but just the relevant experience. It was almost an age thing.

You.

You just. Unfortunately, you can't speed up time or slow down time. Time is just time. And if you're under the age of probably 35, then you've just won't have seen this type of market condition.

So you can't actually.

It's not back to the Future. You can't jump in the car and get back to the time to live through it. And I think that now is a big thing.

Yeah. Again, Eddie and I were just talking before the show and we get on very well. We've been mates for a number of years. But you talked about sort of transition a little bit for yourself as well, with its move and everything else. But also personally, you know, we were just talking about the fact that I. I try and avoid drinking during the week because, you know, business is great business, really busy and it's something that I've looked to do and then, you know, not failed during weeks, you know. This week I've been at two conferences. One of our own, Treasury Career Corner Live, which we'll put a link to in the show notes. We've done the Irish association, so a couple of nights, but I've had to pace myself a little bit. You know, I'm not, you know, no spring chicken anymore. But. But Eddie, you've. You've also embraced that a little bit, and I. I wanted to sort of bring that onto the show because I think I wasn't going to do it. And then I thought, you know what? I think actually for some of the listeners, it'll be an interesting one because we're not extolling the virtues. You know, I've seen a lot of people say, oh, one year, this and one day, you know, and I'm thinking it's not like that. But can you maybe just, if you feel comfortable, we'll just discuss what you've done to, you know, make some other changes, if that's the right way to put it.

More than happy to talk about it, but don't want to come across again.

As also not preaching.

Don't worry, we're just talking about it we're mates.

I just figured around seven months ago I wasn't getting 100% performance and I could actually get more out of myself. So on a bit of a whim decided that I was going to just stop drinking for a little while and then it's just carried on for the seven months, you know, and I look now and I see what's happened and during that time I've got a lot physically fitted.

How does that affect my work?

Well, it means that I can now work for longer or more intense bursts. I can get more done. My mental clarity is better. My, just my decision in my personality, just the way in the approach, remaining calmer in situations. It's been brilliant over this last sort of volatile period, you know, because you can cut through a lot of things and you know, they're just slightly fuzzy.

And I think actually within treasury and.

Especially the old school treasury working in the City that there was a drinking culture and I think it was expected of you and I, you know, and it's stepping away and being prepared to be yourself and say, no, I'm fine and I'm. And I'm, I'm done. And actually that then builds your own confidence and self confidence being around and I think you get to move into being trusted area and I think, you know, I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't, you know, it's just for me it seems to have worked out really well. Lots of positive things are happening, things are moving forward at pace and it's just given me the, the ability and the clarity to, to keep pushing forward and striving and you know, that's why I want to make GB Bank a huge success. Sure, we will be. But it's probably came across a bit preachy. It's not supposed to.

Yeah, I don't think you do. And I think, I think for the listeners today, you know, I met so many of the podcast listeners last night, so big shout out to you guys if you're listening. You were at the event and things like that, but we not only recorded it so come up as a podcast. Oh yeah, we were very focused on, you know, it's obviously very work related. We only an hour on stage with these amazing guests but then afterwards talking to people and there was, you know, a couple of Rajiv, he was there and he was sort of saying, oh, I've listened to you for the first time. Another guy was saying, I listen to you once I do my workout. It's great way to bit like you in the morning. Eddie, you know, you're doing your workout stuff, but he said, oh yeah, I listen to you when I'm pressing my weights up in my loft and I'm like, right, okay.

Bloody hell.

And it was, it was just really touching that, you know, people have integrated my podcast into their lives. You know, I listen to things like I've got my first million. I really love that show. And there's a couple of others that I listen to whilst I am swimming, you know, because I've got with AirPods and. But I think it's interesting and this is where, you know, podcasts can go and I don't. You, you know, on the podcast show, a lot of the time I'm just spending my time interviewing you about your treasury career. But I think it's then about the next stage and I think this is exactly why we do the show. So it's like where do you see it sort of say about it, you know, GB bank developing, where's your. Also your, you know, you're doing bigger within treasury worthy. So we were just talking about the wider remit of treasury per se itself and how you've embraced that. It sounds like you're really, really enjoying it. You know, it's the next level, if you like. Is that the right way to describe it?

That's exactly it. And I think things that have come across my desk are looking at things like social impact strategy, ESG1 and the same equity raising, looking at just helping elsewhere around the business, being trusted and asked for opinion. This is where qualifications are good because they give you the technical skills, but actually life experience gives you the ability to work around the business. And I think across the remit, that's where it's everybody who's listening. If anyone wants to reach out, reach out. I'm more than happy to have a chat, have a guide through. And I think that we never seem particularly great in treasury at supporting each other through difficult transitions. But I again, like I say, I'm more than happy to have a chat with anyone. You drop me a LinkedIn or, or, or go through Michael or whatever of it. The remit of treasury is growing and it will grow. Why would it continue to grow? Because we end up being sat in.

The middle of every organization and every.

Organization is going to go through a massive period of change. I don't know whether we realize it or not yet, but the world is changing. We are highly likely to go into a hypergrowth scenario once inflation and everything is under control. Whether that be we go to the Trisonomics whether that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunter have a different way of doing it. But you know, I think that's where we'll get to and we, we've got to look out and figure out where these Green Swans, which is a, an amazing book that I'm reading at the minute these Green Swans are going to come from and actually embrace them and live with them. And when you read the book or you see the wider remit, everything within it touches Treasury. Yeah, we generally we speak to the outside world in terms of the wholesale markets. We actually speak to the customer facing teams. We, we, we look back into the business and pull information from everywhere. We're in a key spot here to spot trends, spot movements and actually help and advise and work alongside CFOs, CEOs to move the business within the direction that it needs to go to grow and grow and build as we move forward.

I think also you just talked about the, you know, the remit of treasury expanding and it was like I set him up, you know. Thank you, Eddie. We've got a number of other shows just like this where we're also interviewing or re catching up with treasurers over the, you know, it's been going four and a half years so we're going back to some of the early episodes and actually the treasurers then they're either, you know, maybe some are still in treasury but a lot of them have now springboarded into wider CFO roles or different positions. We've got some of those. So if you are listening today, think oh yeah, actually make sure I listen to the next ones because I think treasury more so. Exactly. As you said there, it prepares you for that CFO ship and I think we talked about it that 10 years ago treasury was still, it's slightly ivory towered, you know, very specialist and everything else. Now I've seen it go the other way sort of thing and it's getting involved with the business only over the pandemic and everything else. But you've seen that as well. Just we'll touch on that as we nearly wrap up the show and give you that and then I'll give you closing words. But you mentioned that as well. You see as a great grounding for a CFO ship type thing. Would that be right?

A hundred percent. We are privileged in the positions that we sit in so we can identify, like I say, these trends. We can think strategically and commercially. You don't need to be a technical accountant to be a cfo. That was a thing. And everyone hung their Hats on these qualifications and accreditations. Everyone's probably picking up. I don't. And I think that because of that wider remit and those wide eyes and you're looking at everything that's going on that sets you up to be a strategic leader. And CFOs are growing into being strategic leaders rather than very technical people. And that only opens the playing field more. And hopefully as we move through time, more and more boards recognize that fact and actually start to look into the treasury world for, for their CFOs. And I think something that, that probably needs to come eventually is that there's a lot more, you know, treasurers. We become specific within the industries we were. And actually, yeah, we should probably look to move around outside of those industries so that we spread the skills even further.

It's been great talking to Eddie once again. He gave me loads of time before.

Fantastic.

Given me again being very generous with his time today. As we wrap up today's show, the next lessons, the next takeaways of people that have already had some from the previous episode and you know, we'll include those in the show notes. But as we move forward, what would you say next? What's the final takeaways for today's updated show is if you like, Eddie, over to you.

Good one. My real takeaway for anyone within treasury just starting out or very experienced is never stop learning, always reach out, always speak to people, always. If you don't know something, put your hand up and ask. Especially any. In these times, there's, there's not loads and loads of people around that have got the experience at the minute, but actually take the time to buy them a coffee or get them to buy you a coffee. Even better. Just absorb the stories. You know, ask what would you do in this situation? What would you do in that situation? Because I think over, over the next two years, three years, even you, the experience and knowledge of scenarios is going to be so much more beneficial to you as a person and give you a great springboard if you can talk about it in any process that you're going through.

Thank you, Eddie. You've been an absolute superstar. I can't wait to see you. I would have said for a beer, but obviously we'll have a nice coffee, nice flat white when I next see you. And I know that exactly as you said, he's very open to connecting with you guys. So we'll put Eddie's details again in the show notes. So do connect. He's a great guy to have in your network and he's always there to help. So mate, thank you very much for your time today. You've been a superstar as always.

No problem. Thanks, Mike.

Hello, it's Mike here again. I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, then maybe you want to follow the show or subscribe, depending on where you listen, whether that's itunes, Spotify or another great place to listen.

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