Mike Richards (presenter) argues that while fully remote treasury roles exist, they are uncommon and generally suboptimal for career progression in corporate treasury because they hinder visibility, coaching, leadership influence, and on-the-job learning by proximity. He recommends hybrid work (typically 2–3 days in office, planned deliberately) as the best model. He also criticizes competitor salary surveys as unreliable and promotes his own global treasury salary survey at treasurysalary.com (ongoing, every six months), noting current participation and upcoming data runs.
Questions this video answers
November 7, 2025.
About 1,600 participants.
Every six months.
In January.
Chapters
Remote treasury roles sound great, that is, until you start to try and run your cash management and funding calls over Zoom. Or maybe you try to train someone how to use your tms, your treasury management system, implement the latest cash flow forecast. You're working in your home office, they're doing this, how do you do it? How do you work? But at the same time, I've then increasingly been asked by junior candidates, they're asking for roles and said, mike, I'd love to work 100% remotely. I've got some bad news for you. If you want to work in treasury and you never want to set foot in an office again, I don't think corporate treasury is for you. Sorry, I just don't feel it is. Let me explain a bit more. So I was being asked this question over the past three, four weeks at both Euro Finance in Budapest and AFP in Boston. It was a consistent question. People say, mike, are people working remotely in treasury or is it more hybrid? Let me knock these off in this. So do fully remote treasury roles exist? Yes, they do. But do I think it's the best route for people's treasury careers? No, I don't. You miss visibility. You struggle with coaching and being in the room. For those in the room moments, maybe that's by the water cooler, meeting your boss, meeting your colleagues, getting to and coaching other members of staff. If you want a fully remote job, I'm also probably not your best route. If someone's recruiting a remote role, they'll go to LinkedIn, they'll get 200 applications and apply there first. We do actually see some remote roles, though, that sort of thing, but 95% of the roles we handle are hybrid or in office, depending on the mixture and stuff like that. The recommendation stays the same. If you want to grow faster, go for hybrid every time. So let's give you some of the reasons. Treasury, by its very nature, is collaborative about visibility, coaching and teamwork. And I made sure I've got some notes here. This is why, because you don't need, you don't learn, treasure, if you like, by sitting at home. You learn it by hearing conversations with others, osmosis, getting to know them and things. I was just having a conversation with a candidate a moment ago and I said, look. And it's great. It was a sense check if you like talking to her. And I said, look, if you were a Treasury analyst and she was thinking back to her career, you've got to be in the room to learn, right? Yes, I said, you can't shadow your Boss on team calls all day. It would just be annoying. That's how you grow through proximity, not just through processes. What if you're a Treasury manager? Okay, next level, you need FaceTime with your CFO or Treasurer, influencing to show them that you know your gravitas. If you like, you're influencing how you push ideas and be visible. Doing that on a webcam, doing that remotely, all the way, doing it just like this. Good luck. It doesn't work quite so well if you're a treasurer. Leadership doesn't necessarily happen just over zoom. You've got to be there. Coaching, managing, leading a team, building a culture, coaching the team in person. Moments we. That's why I've done all these conferences past few weeks. They've been tiring, gotta say, getting back to meeting lots of people. And yeah, they're big conferences, but actually there's nothing better than meeting people over a coffee. Had lots of coffees, lots of beers as well. Catching up with people. It makes a heck of a difference. But what have we seen works best? Hybrid. Hybrid done properly, two or three days a week. Plan deliberately, not just in the office, because you have to be, but in the office to meet your colleagues, to plan projects, to do things like that. And I know that some treasurers who overlap their days with their teams, but then also they have their own time, beginning and end of the week. A couple of good friends, actually. And they say they go to the office and they take time out for themselves to get some of the stuff because they've got their home offices and. And actually with their family life, it's a bit easier sometimes to just focus on doing it that way. And it keeps that home, work, life, and they can focus in the office and then switch off when they get home. Because I think that's another thing that Covid taught us about that. Another thing to mention. I saw a couple of our rivals, actually, and a couple of our competitors. That's the best way to put it. Talk about salaries and their own salary surveys. And they are, yeah, I'm going to be careful because I don't want to get a bad rating. They're nonsense, they're rubbish. One of them doesn't even ask for your name, your company, that all they want is your contact details because they go, oh, and when you happen to be hiring, that's not research, that's just fishing for jobs. Guys, our salary survey@treasurysalary.com isn't that. If you just want a phishing email. That's not us. Ours is amazing. It's real data. We're going to be running the numbers in January. So if you're looking at your pay, you if you're already part of the survey, thank you very much. You're one of 1600 who take part in our salary survey, the only global treasury salary survey in the world that is real, that isn't nonsense, independent, accurate, only ongoing salary server that runs every six months. We're going to run it in January, so we're in November now. Take part. You'll get the last set of results which ran in July and get ready for our 2026 update in January. It's free and confidential. Take some out two minutes to take part. If you've never done it, if you've done it before, 30 seconds, update yourself, you're done. Final thoughts for today. Remote roles are rare. Hybrid I think is the future and should continue to be. But make sure when you're in the room, be seen. Collaborate with your team, stay ahead. Thanks for watching all these again. Had this lovely feedback from a candidate who said she really loves these My thoughts of the newsletter and I yeah, I'm gonna have to give a shout out to Deidra, my social media coach who made me do these videos, made me do the newsletter to say about the knowledge we have. And as this candidate just said, sharing all that knowledge is exactly what you do and proves you actually know what you're talking about. Who would have believed it? Anyway, thanks very much. Looking forward to got upcoming events, got London, Amsterdam to finish off the year and then on 2026 keep listening to the podcast as well. Go there TreasuryCareerCorner.com and this is the podcast. Amazing podcast. People like Tony Massone, global treasure of Amazon, go and listen. Thanks very much.
