“Think Like an Owner" Is the Best Career Advice I Ever Got

My best piece of career advice I got from a management professor when I was getting my mba, which was think like an owner. And I think that to this day it still rings true. I probably heard that 20 years ago now and it was the best advice I got. Because the way you differentiate yourself in the workspace is that you're not worried about your particular area or you're worried about the team in the company and those people that demonstrate themselves that they think like an owner, they think on behalf of the company, they're recognized at some point in time, if they work for a good organization, that type of behavior will be recognized and rewarded and they'll go very far in your career.

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, where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next, let's get on with the show. This week's show I'm joined or rejoined if you like, by Frank Meluccio, the Vice President Finance and Treasurer at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Frank was a recent guest on our Treasury Career Corner live event in New York. We were joined by Summer Sandra and Frank and he had so much value to give. Great guest. And I said, right, Frank, you've got to be back on the show on a one on one if you like, which we're doing today. So fantastic. Just to give you an idea and Frank will explain it more. But for anyone listening, particularly in the uk, maybe in Europe, we don't necessarily understand quite so much about medical insurance in the US it's a massive industry. And Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey are the States United States largest and oldest health insurer. There's a subsidiary of Horizon Mutual Holdings, a not for profit mutual holding company who together with their affiliates, they provide a wide range of medical, dental, vision, prescription insurance products and services. See, I've got all of that. Right.

That's it.

Okay, I can relax now because now you can tell a little bit more about them. And we'll go back to the beginning, if you would, Frank. How did he first get started into finance and then discover the world of Treasury? Over to you, sir.

Sure. So I was really interested in finance at a young age. I actually went to high school in Manhattan and I would take the train into the city and a lot of people worked on Wall street at the time and made friends with some of the people on the train and I was really intrigued by markets and would look at the Wall Street Journal. And that really made me think about working in finance. Decided to go to school, went to Fordham, received my undergraduate degree in both finance and economics. I really like both ways of kind of looking at markets. Finance was more of a practitioner's lens. Right. And I felt like economics was very theoretical but very timely and helping to understand macroeconomic trends as well as some microeconomic trends as well. After graduation, I was. Saw the opportunity to work at a regional bank in the New York City metropolitan area. And that's kind of got my start. It was a great opportunity for me. Really enjoyed working there. I got to work at multiple parts of the bank. So I worked on the retail banking side. So I understood that business. Business, all of the banking products that are offered. And then I also spent some time over in the mortgage area of the bank and got to understand mortgage originations, how underwriting works, how that goes with selling those mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, as well as when banks keep some of those loans on balance sheet. So really good opportunity. Great start to my career. It's funny, I always, when people ask me, I always say I thought I would be in banking my entire career and I've now spent more time in health insurance than I have in banking. So whatever you think is your future will be, I can almost guarantee it will be.

Yeah, it won't be that and stuff. And then you. So you stayed in banking for that period of time. So you went through a couple of banks and. But different banks as well. How did that help you or give us that track record of things?

Yeah. So while I was actually going to. While I was working at the bank, the nice thing about it wasn't too far from Hofstra. So I was able to work full time and actually go to school in the evenings and get my master's degree. So got my MBA in finance. It was a great opportunity and. But I decided that I wanted to work for a larger bank. And so was interviewing with a number of the larger banks in New York City and finally got a great opportunity to work at a bank in New York. And so it was a great opportunity, great institution to work for. Learned a lot. What I really liked about it, I was working in kind of the trust area of the bank, corporate trust. I was particularly supporting the structured finance group at the time. But we were actually working. I had the privilege of working on a rather large merger for those of you may remember, in the New York City area. Bank of New York actually used to have retail branches. And so one of the transactions that I was able to work on was we moved our retail branches, we sold them to JP Morgan Chase, and instead took over their. Their trust business. And so that was a really exciting time, really exciting to be involved in when you're working on something that's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And it's a good thing, right?

It's always, yeah, I did this.

Yeah, absolutely. So had an opportunity to kind of work on the people that were leading that deal, work on some of the budget figures. And it was exciting time. Happy that I had the opportunity to work at bank of New York and kind of work through some of those big changes for the bank.

And then why the. Then what shifted next for you sort of thing? Because you were. Then you're not that far from treasury.

Sort of thing as you started to get towards it, correct? Yeah. So I was actually. I really wanted to. I really wanted to do some heavy modeling work. I always enjoyed building financial models at bank of New York. I was doing a lot of financial planning analysis work and I wanted to probably more get into some of the business, some of the transaction side of things, and some of the more capital markets. I was looking at a bunch of different firms and then out of nowhere I got a call from a recruiter saying, PwC has a structured finance group. Would you be willing to work there? And I said, I mean, it sounds interesting. I said, but I don't have an accounting degree and I don't have a CPA, so what does PwC want with me? They said, no, we actually look for people in banking because whenever structured products are issued in the market, accountants in particular have to rebuild the models, do the valuations, assume everything's correct. And so they're not typically accountants. We generally hire a lot of former financier bankers, people like that, that understand how to build the models and do that. So I said, oh, great. So I signed on, did that. And what I was really interested about PwC was I work with a lot of people. Some had accounting degrees, some had finance degrees. What I want to DO, CPA or CFA. And so the best part about going to PwC was gave me the opportunity to either do the CPA or CFA or both. And they said that they would pay for either one. And they supported everyone to do either designation for the particular group that I was in. So I went on there. It was a great experience. I can't say enough good things about working at PwC. It definitely shaped my career working on transactions right out of the gate. My particular area of focus was the collateralized loan obligations clos. Some may be familiar with it. I sat alongside some of my colleagues, worked on mortgage backed securities, even some of the subprime things that people worked on. So all that was kind of going on during the time and while I was there and this is, I always kind of tell people, was kind of formative for my career was I worked there during the financial crisis and so I was working there and working on deals. And then all of a sudden I say almost a year into my role there, transactions started getting a little slower, starting to dry up. And then Bear Stearns was happening and that was kind of the focal point. And Bear went under, at which point things were getting worse, transactions getting slower. And anything that anybody knows anything about being an accounting firm, you have to be chargeable, you got to be utilized, right? And so everybody's making sure that their hours are coming through and there's less and less transactions. And then I was Sunday evening and I was at home with my wife and I saw everybody carrying their boxes out of Lehman Brothers. And I turned to my wife and I said, I'm either going to be really busy or I'm going to be unemployed. I'm not sure which one. And I end up being very busy. And one of the things that came out of that was the group kind of had to redefine itself a little bit. Originally we were very much a transaction and we relied on transactions. But unfortunately a lot of people that understood how those transactions work, the banks have let most of them go. And so you had all these securities that were sitting on the marketplace that were sitting on balance sheets of people, they didn't know what they were, how to value them or anything. And so the group really transformed into kind of evaluation and risk group. And I was able to lead the charge and work with some really bright people, many of which are still in that group and still at PwC. And it was a great time. I had some, many great clients, got to work for the Federal Reserve bank in New York on some of their portfolios. I was at all the major banks during the time. Some large hedge funds and even a health insurance company that I was doing some consulting on that was trying to go public. So really, really great opportunity for me in my career. Grateful for the opportunity.

And people have asked me how that sort of overflowed into corporate treasury. And it's, that's not dissimilar to current times. Really got tariffs, you've got all this stuff and I said, look, it didn't, it didn't stop the market. It just slowed the market exactly as you said. It wasn't that we will but remember our. We list all the roles we have on working within corporate treasury and treasurers by their very nature with one now, but risk averse or risk aware. So people, when they're not right. I was going to move. I don't want to move. I'm not. I'm gonna sit tight. I'm gonna ride this one out. I'm gonna just do my job. Look after the balance sheet of the company. Yeah. As you said, subprime would come along and then it was like, whoa, okay. And it just, it all slowed down. It was still there moving, but very slowly. So you came out of that what happened next sort of thing.

So interestingly enough, so one of the things you may remember then there was these things called auction rate securities that were failed. And so it caused a lot of angst for a lot of treasurers. And so I was doing some consulting work, had a health insurance company, Emblem Health, based in New York City, downtown. I was doing consulting work for there. And I was like, all right, I was ready to make a move out of PwC. I kind of. I liked the consulting, but I wanted to kind of do something. I wanted to be built right. So I either wanted to kind of be part of. Had people that actually did a lot of treasury consulting that were next to me. I'm like treasury, corporate treasury. Seems like a really nice place to go. Or I would do investment management. And so I had two offers. One was for a hedge fund and the other one was for a health insurance company. And I think most. A lot of people when I kind of tell the story and said, why don't you take the. The health insurance company? And I worked a lot of hours. I think anybody that's kind of been in that business kind of knows that a lot of hours. And young child at the time, married, said, you know what, let me kind of get some work life balance here. And so I said, the health insurance company gets to do everything I want to do and I get a little bit better work life balance. So that's why I kind of picked that way to go. And very happy that I did that. So I kind of went there. I actually worked on the investment portfolio for the health insurance company leading that and had a colleague that I worked with and reported to the treasurer. Was a really great opportunity for me to get my hands in, work on a portfolio, understand the business, do all that And I stayed on there for a number of years and then at one point the treasurer decided that he was going to retire. He was a great mentor to me. I actually just spoke with him a couple of months ago. Really accomplished treasurer. He worked in, he worked start in banking like I did, worked in oil and gas for a little bit and then worked for Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is now part of Elevance, which was the New York Blue Cross Blue Shield company. And he was, he really taught me all, everything I need to know, at least about all about treasury, health insurance, treasury and all those important things. When he retired, he had, he had recommended me for the role for treasurer and then his boss at the time who is also a great coach and I still stay in contact and can't say enough good things. He's. He was head of finance at the time, became CFO and is now CEO. Former company I worked at. He was really supportive of me and he really shaped my career and he gave me exposure to many other areas within the company that I never thought I would. Right. So it wasn't just Treasury. Right. It was understanding the business. And I think one of the things I always talk people ask me about Treasury. I think the way you differentiate yourself in treasury is understanding the business. If you just want to be the banker for the business, yes, you can do okay, but you're never going to be able to deliver the amount of value as if you can sit at the table and understand all the mechanics of the business and work with individuals. And my former company really gave me that opportunity. So I was very grateful.

And part of that you were, as you said, you took on a couple of hats. You were done investment analysis through to then treasurer and also chief risk. What was the that role or those two roles, strategic treasury responsibilities being thrown at you? How did you balance them? If someone's listening, how did you do it?

Yeah, it was tough. So my. So one of the nice things is when you're like I always found you always try to do whatever you can execute and bring results. Right. And if you do that, people will recognize it over time. And so that's exactly what happened at that, at that job. And we had. So once the financial crisis happened, there came up with this thing called own risk solvency assessment in the US and basically it's for insurance companies. It's the Frank Dodd version of in fact, in Europe you've probably heard of solvency too. Warsa, as we call it, is effectively the same thing for the US and the idea is that After AIG collapsed, they wanted to make sure that the holding company of insurance companies were managing their risk, calculating their risks and doing these risk reports to validate that they had sufficient capital that they would not be a systemic issue and would not be a failure issue. One of the things people don't maybe not realize about the United States is that while banks are regulated both on a state level and federal level, insurance companies are regulated on a state level. And so if an insurance company fails, there's a state guarantee association which guarantees it. There is a national association of Insurance Commissioners that kind of shapes the law, but it's very much over oversight. So. So with that role, I kind of. We have our ORSA filing that I have to do. And we received some comments from our regulators on how we could do it better. And I was interested in doing risk and I was sitting for my FRM exams. And so my boss at the time said, you know what, why don't you take a stab at this? I think you got it. So he, he gives it to me. And you know what? I think I, he was very happy. I built a pretty in depth model. I took all our business lines. I did a Monte Carlo based simulation for a number of those things, stressed the balance sheet, wrote up a pretty exhaustive paper. And that kind of became our basis going forward for ORSA filings. And it was great. Then we used that going forward and my guess is we're still using that to this date. And I kind of became our chief risk officer for our filings. And I love that. I love risk management. I think it's really important. So it was a good opportunity for me as well.

And you touched on that. You've done your frm, which is Financial Risk Management, done cpa, you've got your cfa. I mean any. I just said it's a collection of letters. They said you could just make some up and add them in there. But joking aside, that education and improving yourself is a key thing about you and you touched on Hofstra. Can you then. Because again, when we met and we did our lunch, our session in New York, rather, we talked about the fact that you balances off by being a professor as well. Can you just talk about the two of them or why you feel that's so important to people?

I've. It's funny, I always loved academic environments. I always been fascinated. I'm constant learner. If there's something I don't understand, I like to just learn about it no matter what it is. And so when I was actually in the workforce. I had an opportunity to do some guest lecturing work and one of the professors said, hey, you know what, we have an opening for an adjunct. Would you be interested in doing it? And I said great. And so I kind of signed up and did that. And I've been doing it now for a number of years. And I think the tie in really is that does a couple things. One, those certifications, they took a lot of work. They're very important to me. But I think it kind of demonstrates my personal commitment to understanding the world around me and what I do and personal pride. But then I can take some of that practical knowledge and help other students and pave the way. And so as an adjunct faculty, how I try to differentiate myself is I have to obviously understand the theory that I teach in the class, but I try to marry that with the practical nature of my.