The Evolution of Treasury Recruitment: Mike Richards in Conversation with Richard Bostock

Foreign.

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 them about how they've built their careers, where they are now, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next. Let's get on with the show.

I'm welcoming back this week Richard Bostock. He's head of partnerships and business development at CE Innovation. Going very well, shouldn't I? The interesting thing is he's going to quiz me a little bit as well. So it's more of a conversation this week, but just covering what Richard does. Refresh your memory. He's been on a couple of times. C Innovation is designed to support ambitious startups and fintech enthusiasts who want to unleash their potential across Europe. And you can connect with Richard over LinkedIn but what he does their research led approach. He'll explain maybe, actually, we'll cover that in a moment, Richard, actually. And then you can, you can start quizzing me. So maybe if you would talk through what you've been doing more recently since we last spoke and bring us up to date and then you can start to throw the microphone back against me. Carry on. Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Mike. Nice to speak with you again. It's been a few years since, since our last interview. What have I been up to in those three years? Well, obviously the biggest, the elephant in the room is pandemic. That's changed a lot of things. That's made some ideas redundant and others have accelerated during this time. So C Innovation is what I've been up to. Essentially it's a gap in the market that we saw for high quality research for those people navigating the fintech market. We've all heard about fintech for a number of reasons. We decided to just get on and do it and provide that high quality research to fintech founders, investment funds, leading financial companies and it's gone from strength to strength. So that was a bit unexpected. We do deep dives on neobanks, n26 Monzo, Revolut wise starling bank and we also do specific research on parts of the fintech market that some of these bigger companies want to know about.

And how have you fared throughout that difficult Covid period and things. Is it getting better now everyone's waking up from the COVID slumber sort of thing?

Yeah, there was a lot of interest during COVID because you couldn't really go out and meet clients easily discuss. So it was very much online and that's what we do. Well, so we found that actually we can do things at a distance, we can send over the information, the reports, whatever. It's very easy to do it. During COVID now post, there is really, really strong interest now. We've got more readers, we've got more people talking. So we've, we've fared well. And I think Covid was the ideal time to really double down and produce interesting things to read. Basically. Yeah. CC Innovations, what I've been doing, it's highly interesting. There's a lot of things changed, even within the last five years, even since we spoke, what was it, two, three years ago, Mike? And hence why I thought it would be good. We could also have a chat to see how things have gone. Your side, how's for example, recruitment changed since. When was it?

2019, how it's changed? Well, we're going to go on to the future, if you like. I think let's just reflect on a couple of the bits that happened. You know, we went through Covid, everyone then proved they could work from home. Now as we come out of Pandemic and everyone's going, oh, we need to go back in the office. Why? What's the, what's the point now? There is a point. Point is that you can be more sociable with your colleagues, you can gain through social situations in the office and water cooler moments and things. And then there's a balance. You know, I've said the guys I spoke to in Ireland, when I spoke at the Dublin Treasurers Conference, he was like, I get so much more done by working five days a week from home. And then we got into a conversation and he said, yeah, but when I was in the office, I took to look to my right and I had a 20 year veteran of the company. To my Left was a 20 year treasury professional. And he said, yeah, it was actually easier. And when he was being trained up and learning, he wouldn't have traded anything for that. But then he also had the challenge of travel and everything else. So bringing it down to a sort of a micro level. To some of the listeners today, I think it's about balance and I think that's what people need to be thinking about that. You know, post Covid people have also talked about there's a, you know, economic recession coming. I was talking with a couple of clients last night and we do think there will be a downturn if you like. But is it as rubbish as everyone's talking about? Possibly not for Treasury. Treasury in itself, you know, talked about in the other podcast. It's recession not proof recession resistant. We don't get a hundred rolls come into the office, we get two. That's a boom time, you know, instead we just get one or we get an interim role. It's smaller, if you like, for that. But there's always going to be a demand for treasury professionals, particularly in a downturn, because the importance of having a Treasury function is actually to manage those financial risks.

Treasury is not something you can skimp on, especially in a downturn.

Exactly that. We talk about predictions and things like that. Well, this is what a lot of treasurers, if you like, are soothsayers. They look into their crystal balls. They go, well, despite uncertainty, we can 90% predict our cash flow for this. Well, okay, if you turn around and that treasury person's not there, you go, oh, hang on, where's our treasurer? Can they not tell us about. We need to manage this, we need to risk manage. We need to look at our enterprise risk, we need to look at all these risk, risk, risk. It's like, oh, hang on. If you don't have the risk professionals, there's. And it's part of the cv, the portfolio, if you like, of a treasurer and treasury professionals that they actually do do this. That's definitely one of the things. I was also the other one again. Someone asked me about Brexit, did I think that had a massive impact? I don't haven't seen a huge impact. I have seen increased, as I said back in the day when it happened, I said, look, I can see increased regulation around bureaucracy, things like that, but, you know, at the end of the day, UK is still negotiating new trade arrangements. I'm not going to get all political about it, I'm just more the economic effect sort of thing. It's got equally both challenges and opportunities. I'm not saying it's positive or negative, it's just what it is. And I think, just like treasury professionals all day long, what everyone in finance in the UK is having to do is adapt. And the same in Europe, they're having to adapt or how do we deal with the uk? So it's a different thing. I mean, when I relate it, though, to treasury itself, I think talent will move. You can still get sponsorship. You can't make the move from UK or Europe to the US and you can't make the move back because getting a green card is not impossible unless you marry someone at the end of the day who is able to sponsor you or you get sponsored by your company to move across. However, if you're in a UK based company and you want to go and work in Europe, it's not horrendous. There is more regulation. Yes, there are three hoops you have to go through, but actually people will still keep moving sort of thing that.

Fully makes sense, Mike. I know about the U.S. europe, lack of fluidity, I guess, across employment markets, even within Europe. Even if Brexit has slowed things down, there's still a demand for British or UK finance professionals. I mean, a lot of them in Switzerland, at least based, are from the UK and they are renowned for the quality of how they look at numbers and how, I wouldn't say massage the numbers, but how they approach risk. And that's exactly what treasury does. That's where things, how things have changed in the last few years. Do you see, Mike, a similar trajectory for the next three, four, five years, or do we not really know?

We don't know five years. I think we sometimes even struggle to predict three years in advance. If you actually look at it now, we're recording this at the end of January 2023. Hmm. Let's look back three years ago. Oh, yeah, we've got plane sailing. Oh, this a month after it was Feb 2020. Crumbs. And it all kicked off from there. So I think making predictions of what will happen three years in advance, predictions, this is what will happen is dangerous. I think we can make educated guesses and that's what a lot of treasurers do. I think we can predict certain things. You know, prior to Ukraine and political, everything was plain sailing. Oh, right, we're out of this and then suddenly this happens and it's like, whoa, okay, how do we deal with this? It's about being prepared. And I think actually it's your preparedness, if you like, as treasury professionals. And I think that's one of the things that it sort of comes down to, treasury professionals. I think a difference, if you like, previously, it's a weird way of asking the question, but it's like, what can we do to prepare for the next three years? Is that's the key thing to prepare. I was again talking at a conference and I said, look, guys, your treasury professionals, you've been very internally focused a lot of the time, you know, focusing on the company and everything else. And then I talk about who's looking after your careers and that's the pivot. A lot of treasury professionals having to say, right, okay, well, I've developed my skills, which is fabulous. I've done some qualifications, which is great. And this is really good. Internally, focusing on yourself, staying current with the industry trends, talking to people like yourself and developments and things, those are all great things, but they don't actually help you in the outside world. That's the inside world. Let's look at the outside world. I think you need to do things like have a LinkedIn profile. You often talk about this. You don't always have to do it to get a new job. It's not about that, but it's about being open, flexible to new opportunities. And that doesn't mean job opportunities. That means growing, maybe taking on a new IT system or looking at what the latest would come onto technology, but the latest things coming along in AI, looking at all the different things, being proactive in all senses and networking, networking with other professionals. You know, it was amazing to be back at Eurofinance back in October and we're going to do. We're now planning to go to a series of conferences, about three or four planned for the us, three or four planned for Europe, and just seeing people and actually meeting people. Just those water cooler moments, those chat at the bar or chat over coffee, you get far more than just being on a webinar doing all the other things. It's about being out there and being external. And I know that you and I, we recently met up and just seeing each other over a coffee led to us talking about this. This wasn't happening. We weren't doing this two, three, four months ago. This wasn't planned. And it was like, oh, actually, we should hop back on and we should catch up. And that's what it's about, don't you think?

Mike, I'm fully with you on that, especially the networking part. And what I've seen last few months is people still have the standard reaction, oh, let's do a zoom, let's do a Skype or whatever. And the moment you say, no, let's go for coffee face to face, everyone just runs, they will go and they want to meet, talk face to face. Old school, you know, and it does work, it does work. Just also going back to the networking part for treasury professionals and, and being prepared, that's a big thing, I think. And what you're saying about the world situation, who could have imagined Ukraine, Covid, you know, everything is just so unstable these days. And I was reading something about there's a, there's a doomsday clock, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's moved now 90 seconds before midnight. So the situation is really, really, I wouldn't say dire, but people are looking at it very, very seriously as extremely unstable geopolitically and globally. Hence what you mentioned about preparedness. That also is what we try and do at C Innovation is to make sure that our readers founders are prepared, that they know what's going on, where it might lead to, and they make their own decisions and they react how they see fit.

They choose their response as well, don't they, that preparedness? Yeah.

What are the possible responses? What could that entail? It's your decision.

Yeah. And I think I was just looking at some of the other notes here. Technology trends in the recruitment of finance professionals. And I was trying to brainstorm with myself in a way. There are some really good things. Let's talk about recruitment for a moment. If we could AI artificially. Everyone's going on a chatgpt. I'm a user, I use it to help me write. It doesn't write our posts. If it write there would be unoriginal content. The summary tool on it is amazing. I'll flower up all these words and I'll say, look, can you summarize what I've just done? And I the other day I had a two, three page document and it summarized it to about three bullet points. I was like, ah. And it was really disappointing because I had this beautiful prose like stuff and then actually I read the three bullet points went, yeah, that's what I mean. And quick rewrite. Yeah, this, this, this. And released it on LinkedIn and it was much better. So I think it is helping. We've also used it recently released our latest salary survey, which is tremendous. Gotta say 10, 18 people, a thousand people. Just amazing. But what that does two things. Firstly, we streamlined it. So now if you want to take part in the salary survey, go to treasurysalary.com oh, it takes ages to do it, doesn't it? No, doesn't it autocompletes where it can a lot of your information, you literally click on that and more than that, then once you've finished your entry in less than sometimes 90 seconds, you then get access to this incredible report. Well, I always remember thinking, if only we could streamline this so the next time someone takes part. So this is a great thing. In six months time when we want to update people through to six months, the great bit is people will just click on the button and it says, oh, I remember you, Mike, here's all your previous information and you go, oh, okay, yeah, I've got a pay rise there. Yeah, I'm happy there. Thanks very much under 10 seconds. You're refreshing yourself. Because we've embraced that AI makes that process so much better. Everyone's going on about matching it to jobs. To be honest, if everyone can match the jobs, we wouldn't be in jobs ourselves. If LinkedIn was going to take over the world of treasury recruitment, just stick a job advert on LinkedIn and what the people noticed in Covid, they get 150 responses to a job and then at the end of COVID then we get 50 responses and now they're getting two and both of them are, don't work in treasury, but they want to work in treasury and what they're going, oh, what do we do now? Oh, yeah, we go to the treasury recruitment company because we add the expertise and it's not a sales pitch, it's just more. This is where we help out because we're on social media, we're doing the research with the salary survey. We give back to lots of people the salary survey as a thank you for taking part. We then get this incredible data which we share with our clients and candidates, which helps us become experts. It's all this lovely circle of knowledge and I think, again, that's one of the key things that I'm seeing that with recruitment. It's about the knowledge sharing and everyone's talking about the social media. I listen to Gregory Mark Williams, he does about LinkedIn forms and each week he assesses what's happening on LinkedIn. I absolutely adore it. It's a podcast I'm listening to religiously and Mark's great and stuff like that, but I think that's about it. It's embracing those opportunities. I mean, coming back to you with this intersection between technology and recruitment, we talked about that, utilizing it for ourselves with you, intersection between corporate treasury, you guys see innovation of fintech. What are the key things you're seeing coming through? Because again, we're being listened to by lots of treasurers and I don't want to do too much talking. What are the key things you're seeing from your class? What are they coming to you and asking you and, and how is fintech impacting corporate treasury that you're seeing from.

Your perspective, the fintech world, it's very, very fast moving and there are a lot of, let's say, new ideas, new products that when you think about it a bit, have been around a little bit longer, like we have, you sort of realize that many of the ideas and they're not actually new, they're just very well repackaged. And they leverage technology, you know, whether it's automation, whether it's blockchain, whether it's AI, they use that much better than many or most of the incumbent banks can use. There is for example, the case of Klarna, which we were always a bit skeptical about. Okay, is that a really new product? But it's, it's credit, it's a store, carbonian, other name. It didn't last as long as we thought it would last. Probably all seen the news. Yeah, there's a few, few issues there, but it's just one example of not knowing when, when things come out and they explode in size and numbers and revenue and customers. You don't know where it's going to go. You cannot really foresee or predict where each company is going to go. It comes back to what we're saying about preparedness. Forewarned is forearmed as long as, you know, you have an expert opinion on what these guys do, what this product means and where it could go. You know, and in the case of Klarna, we didn't know where that would go and we didn't know it would happen so fast. That's the case of Klarna. More widely speaking, Neobanks, you know, we all know Revolut, we all know starlink, they have different lens legal setups, they have different approaches. Not all of them are profitable, not all of them have UK banking licenses. So depositors are not all insured by the FCS Financial Services compensation scheme. So you really have to be careful within the fine print, reading it, understanding it before you get involved. And okay, as Mr. X or Mrs. Y, okay, if I lose a few hundred pounds in a Neobank stay went bankrupt, okay, it's not so bad. But as a corporate treasurer, you've potentially got tens of thousands of pounds on these accounts if you use them. So it's all about being aware of what's going on and having a sensible approach to risk.

And listeners today will be corporate treasurers from across the world. We have a big US contingent obviously and, but they're saying, well yeah, but we don't use those new banks for our banking. So we were all right, aren't we? Then why is fintech? Why do I need to be aware of it? Why should I be bothered, why should.

We be bothered about fintech? Well, at personal banking level there is, there's a huge uptake just because it's so easy to open an account, leveraging a lot of automation, a lot of AI security is, is much better than it was two, three, four, five years ago. Cybersecurity is improving the speed of service, the quality and the new products coming along, they are getting better all the time. So personal banking level, it's happening now. We cannot go back to bricks and mortar banks that has started to permeate into the small and medium sized business sector because fees are generally lower than neobanks service that there's less hassle, there's less worry about having to meet your bank advisor every month or two for whatever reason. So it's much more fluid and easy for smaller and mid sized businesses to have a bank account with a neo bank and I think that's going to continue with the larger companies that they will see. Well actually it's much easier to manage these accounts and these relationships. Technology trends I see what's happening in fintech. I don't know if there is much uptake with treasurers or with treasury professionals for new technology. I'll name a few. I mean there's automation that's happening as we speak. It's, it's a no brainer. There's cloud computing that's getting better. We're looking at quantum computing that should really increase processing power of things. AI. We talked about chat gtp. I learned about that literally this week. Mike, there you go. Cryptocurrency and bitcoin. I learned this week that they're not looked at the same by some companies. I don't know where cryptocurrency is going. For treasurers that's probably a big question in their minds. Blockchain, we've heard about it. I haven't heard only positive feedback about this from, from companies.

So I'm going to jump in there. Just one of the things I, I was talking to a treasurer about this just the other day and I said look, you know how come? And they thought it would have moved further. A couple of bits have gone the way pandemic got in the way people's attention was diverted elsewhere. But one of the points they made was they said well because people's attention was elsewhere, did it prove that we don't need it? And he was agnostic about it. It wasn't saying oh we do need it, we do need it. He said one stage everyone was top of the if you went to a conference due to the blockchain session, it's, you know, it's new, it's this is it. And they said now we're two, three years later. And he said there is a need to adopt it. He said don't get me wrong, an understanding of that technology. Yes. However, it's not pressing. Things said, if I don't do it, I can still sleep in my bed at night. If I don't implement it at my company, if we don't have a blockchain solution this week, we're okay. And he said, the fact is, it's proved that it's okay. We're not knocking it. He said, look, actually it needs to be part of the toolkit, if you like. I've talked to lots about that, about the toolkit for people, for treasury professionals. But it doesn't mean need to be, oh my goodness, this is the big toolkit. This or the blockchain toolkit. We must get that one. It was just a really nice conversation and it made me step back from it a little bit. And you know, there's other things you do need, this understanding of what crypto is. Does it mean that you need a crypto policy yourself at work? Yeah, you probably need to think about it, you know what your policy is going to be. It's a policy thing and then you decide how it drives your decision making from what you do. And it's an opportunity. I know that you, obviously you're helping lots of people in the fintech market spot those opportunities. Is that what you've heard as well in your thoughts?

It's generally under capacity to answer all these questions, get the stuff done, focus on improvements, on doing those urgent projects that never get done. So it's about having more means to do it with us money people, expertise, whatever. And what you mentioned about blockchain Mike, I did actually have a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone here who said, yes, the business case for blockchain, it's an extremely good business case for export finance. There was a lot of impetus to do it because the gains are huge. I mean, there's many actors in that chain, a lot of rip there. It makes sense to do it, but there's no longer any impetus for whatever reason, cost or we're not sure, it's too automated, you know, we haven't got four eyes everywhere, so. So there is a bit of hesitance to jump and go in to do it. But the business case, it's.

It's great, as you say. I think also with again, some of these listeners today will be very overstretched treasurers, treasury professionals, whatever level. They'll be like not being funny, I've got a lot to do today. I've just got to get enough money in the right places and make sure that, you know, our risk profile is de risk, thank you very much. There's an impetus factor, but there's also all the other priority lists. Someone said all the things they've got to do that day in their job. And one of the things might be assess blockchain as a solution for this. Pretty sure it's not the top of the list, it's down the bottom because it's new tech again, there's a case for it, but it's an interesting one, so we'll see where that goes.

I was just going to finish off with an eternal problem, whether it's in banking or treasury or whatever in other industries last year as well. It's just there's so much focus as there should be on business as usual that there's no time left at the end of the day to do those extra projects that will in two, three years make your business as usual easier, cheaper, faster. So that's another problem that we could spend hours discussing.

We won't. We'll do that on another the next podcast. Who knows. Right, so to wrap up today, amazing to talk to Richard. We'll put his details in the show notes and you can connect. He's a great guy to have in your network closing pitch wise. Could you just explain to again, if you're a listener today, why should someone connect with you? Why is it going to be good for them? And then I'll do my pitch.

You can connect with me if you're interested in fintech, treasury, banking, finance, connecting the dots. What I do is provide a balanced, impartial and independent view on things. So my opinion is there for taking or leaving.

Lovely. And for us, you know, feel free to reach out, connect to me if you're looking for your next role, if you need advice, I just saw something on LinkedIn this morning at a Treasury in New York. Had lost their job and I'm like, why aren't we connected? You know, we. I was following him and I'm like quick, connect wherever you be. Where it's west coast, east coast, uk, Europe, further afield, down. You know, we got lovely Chris Emsley down in Singapore, previous guest and we cover the world literature of treasury, so connect anytime. And thanks very much Richard for quizzing me and being too gentle. Very kind of you sir.

Thank you very much for your time, Mike. It was great talking again. Until next time.

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 to the show from. It's totally free and means that you'll be the first to see each and every week when we release a new show. And maybe whilst you're there, you could even leave a quick review. Reviews and ratings are among the most important metrics for a podcast to effectively rank. And as you can probably appreciate, the podcast is a lot of hard work to produce every week. It'd be amazing. Just take, say, 20 seconds. Leave a quick review of my amazing guest guests and their great career stories. We'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much and I can't wait to see you soon.