Treasury Talent: Future Skills in the Age of AI

This week's Treasury Career Corner podcast was recorded live earlier this year at the ACT Annual Conference, the UK Treasurers' Conference in Liverpool. You want a flavour of the discussion? Well, have a listen to some of the highlights here.

It's an evolution, so I don't know where we'll be in 5 years' time. What I do know is there's going to be winners and losers, right? And you want to be on the winning side. If you want to be on the winning side, you've got to put your hand up. If there's a project coming, if there's an AI project coming, you've got to volunteer. You've got to say what you want to achieve out of that. and how you're going to achieve it and learn as you go. If you're going to sit back and say, that's not my job, that's not— it won't be your job because AI will take your job, right? So you have to move, you have to be proactive, you have to volunteer for work so that you become the next wave rather than the one left behind.

For me, it's the communication. I think I put so much stock on learning. I did a maths degree. I very much focused on just if I've If I know everything, then surely I'm the best person for the job. And then it's quite devastating actually when you see people do work roles that you think, but I would be perfect for that, and then why are they doing it? And you think, but I put in all this effort, but then realise actually it's because they could communicate. I know we've talked about it a lot, but I think I could just keep saying it. You've got to be able to, got to be able to convey the information and be able to build those connections with people around the business to get the points across. So I would say that would be the thing I wish I'd done something more on earlier.

I think there's so much noise out there at the moment, and you can see it, and you see it all over LinkedIn and everything else. I think the key thing for you guys as treasury professionals— I was doing this with a treasurer last week, and he said, oh, what do you think of my LinkedIn profile? I said, well, actually, having had a conversation with you, you're great. He said, oh, thanks. I said, but your LinkedIn profile stinks. And he was like, really? I said, yeah. I said, you just told me how you made a difference to your company over the past 3 years. You've saved this money, you've coached 3 members of staff, and your LinkedIn says, I'm a linked— I'm a motivated, great treasury professional, I'm this, this, this. You haven't told any of us how you've made a difference. And I think that's what's coming down to you guys here in the room. Think about where you're making a difference.

Do you learn how to create that sniff test for yourself when you kind of start to see the numbers. And therefore, when at the moment when you say that Copilot will give you the answer, but actually you can, you have the human interaction where you decide that that's correct, that's not correct. And a lot of that comes from your experience. If we start to take out some of the opportunities for people, for junior team members to have the hands-on experience because we now feed it through AI, how are you guys thinking about the future of your junior members of staff in terms of how you're going to develop them to ensure that they've got the skills to be able to pass the litmus test themselves.

Sounds like a great show, doesn't it? Well, let's get on with the show.

Okay, so we'll get started with our last session of the ACT conference. So first of all, thank you very much to everybody for coming, as I say, to the last session, that you've kind of— that you've made it here, you've stayed for the whole time, so you all get a a big badge and a big round of applause at the end. So thank you very much for joining us today. So the session itself today is Treasury Talent: Skills for the Future, where we have 2 group treasurers, and most of you will probably also know Mike from a recruitment standpoint, where we're looking at what skills will define treasury when AI handles the analysis. As automation takes on more of the routine and analytical work, the capabilities that differentiate treasury professionals are shifting, but how far and how fast? We're doing it a little bit different in comparison to last year where it's normally just been us as a panel. So we'll do a bit of a panel session to start off with, so please submit any of your questions through the app as well. But then we'll move on to a bit of a roundtable discussion. So we've put some prompting questions to generate conversation amongst yourselves as well as to what you're seeing within your own companies, what your own experience is, and what it is that you're looking for or looking to develop within your own careers for the future. So a bit of audience participation required. So Sorry if you didn't know that before you walked through the door. And then obviously this, we'll just see how we go in terms of timing for when we finish, and then we'll say goodbye to everybody. So first of all, myself, I'm Louise Woodruff, I'm Head of Treasury at Hastings and currently the lead, the chair for the Future Leaders in Treasury Working Group for the ACT. And then if I can ask my panel, Mike.

Yeah, I'm Mike Richards, I run the Treasury Recruitment Company. So I help you guys get new jobs, move around the room, and then I send out a bill. Been doing it now for 30 years. Love talking to you treasury guys. Have done it now, do it globally. Also run a podcast, 40 episodes, talk to treasurers right the way across the world. So recently interviewed Tony Massone, global treasurer Amazon, right the way through lots of UK treasurers. Alan's going to be on the show soon. You've got that on record now. You've all seen this. I've got 30 witnesses. Fantastic. Yeah, and I just love talking to you guys. We're obviously going to cover We are, as Louise said, we are going to do roundtables, so you're going to get to quiz us and all have a lot of interaction because it's the last session of the day as well. One other thing I was just going to add, just a little bit, notice a few of you looking at your phones, maybe on your laptops and stuff. This is an investment in you and your times, so give it to yourselves rather than think, oh yeah, I'll get on, I've got a few emails. They'll wait. You've got a live panel And I'm going to hand over to the amazing Victoria because she's even better than me. So over to you.

That's such good advice though, because throughout the last couple of days I've found it— I've just been addicted to my phone and then I've been looking at things and trying to multitask. It doesn't really work in some scenarios. But hi everyone, I'm Victoria Underwood and I'm Treasury Manager at Imperial Brands. So I head up front office treasury. I've been there for 5 and a half years now. Before that, I was at Computershare for 5 years, always within front office treasury. That's me.

Hi, I'm Alan. I'm Group Treasurer at Pepco. If you're in the UK, you don't probably know who Pepco are. If you're European, you probably do. So Pepco is a discount retailer. We've got 4,800 stores in 18 countries around Europe, and our treasury is based in Poland. And we have a traditional front office, middle office, back office structure of 16 people, and we have a lot of Traditional treasury risk management, FX, cash management, debt, throughout the whole sphere. I also did tax, insurance, and I had sustainability under my remit at one stage, but I've luckily handed that over to a real professional.

Thank you very much, everyone. I guess the first question, there has been a general theme through the last day and a half about AI and automation, and what that's going to do, and how that's going to make all of our lives easier, and how it's going to— we're going to come in in the morning and all of the work will be done for us. Maybe I'll ask Victoria and Alan first of all, how much is AI being spoken about within your organizations to the point of active discussions of active use cases that you actually are going to be identifying to use it for?

I mean, for me personally, we've got a siloed version of Copilot and I end up using that every day. I've been putting things in there to rephrase, compare documents. I've chucked in our RCF agreement and then asked Copilot questions about settlement timings. For the company as a whole, we've actually just partnered with Capgemini, which is a business and technical transformation company. So we're looking to actively then engage their AI capabilities as we go forward. So it's something that's definitely there. We've got webinars and different sessions that are happening within the company to both make people aware of what we're trying to move to, streamline as much as possible, but also how can we actually just Use it more, use Copilot more, for example. I've not used Claude yet. Everyone talks about Claude, and I feel like Claude is the one that's right up there. So intrigued to see where things go.

Claude is good. Claude is better than Copilot.

That's what I've been hearing. Everyone's been saying that. Definitely Claude for more of the data analysis side. Yeah, so it'll be interesting times.

Within the company, we don't have any formal AI policy, so we can have Copilot. I don't find Copilot very useful myself. you would imagine that Microsoft would be able to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for you quite easily. I've battled to do that, and its Excel capability is not great either. So I'm definitely not— personally, I use ChatGPT daily. When someone told me, one of my team members told me 18 months ago they were using ChatGPT on a daily basis, I laughed, and I was very quickly converted. And that's how quickly that technology is changing. I use it, you know, if I'm on a call with an investment bank, And they are talking some kind of jargon that I don't understand, I just ask Copilot, ChatGPT, and it will tell me in very simple English. So you can bring up, you can come up to a level of understanding of topics you don't know about, or you have a degree of understanding very quickly. I find that useful. My team's starting to find that useful. As a company, we are not that advanced in it. I do sit next to our general counsel, They have a silo version of Claude that they are training. It is getting very clever in terms of contracting, in terms of the general— the senior counsel I work with closely, she's from a Magic Circle firm background. She's saying it is the same level as a junior lawyer now, you know. So you are coming up with information that you need to review, but 80% of the work is done. And that is in the last 6 months. So it is evolving very quickly in that area.

And I'll base this— I love ChatGPT, or have loved it. My podcast coach was helping me, American guy, and he said, how many times a day do you swear at it? I went, probably 2 or 3 times, because it gets it wrong, or it does an Americanism, says, oh, you're running this on point. I'm like, I've never said those words except when I'm really drunk. The key thing is I love ChatGPT. He then said, go to Claude. And I said, well, what's the difference? He said, well, ChatGPT, he's found, is much like a secondary school pupil that you teach them, You go back to them a week later, they've forgotten half of what you've taught them and they might do it. You go to Claude, I've just started to use it and embraced it in the past 3, 4 weeks. It's making a real difference to all of the flows of work we've got. Particularly I put stuff in there, I come back a week later, he goes, I've been thinking about what you did last week, Mike. I was thinking about this and this and this and it's done an update. I'm like, oh my goodness. It's like, so yeah, I'm converted with it and I'm loving it.

Okay, so you're a convert, and it sounds like, Alan and Victoria, you're converts, or at least believers in the kind of use of AI and kind of bringing that into the world of work.

I am, apart from I have had Copilot tell me completely the opposite things in the same answer, and I think that's fascinating because there's so much that can sound so plausible and just be nonsense. And then that comes back— it's said a lot about trust in this conference whilst we've been here, trust in AI. I think that's still got a way to go, but then I haven't tried Claude, so Maybe.

But I suppose picking up on that then is, you know, obviously you've then had to review what's been said, really understand it. And I know that's why they kind of use the phrase of copilot. You have to be the pilot. It's just your copilot. But then when we think about AI versus automation and what's actually going to be there in the future, I've sort of got 2 questions for you that is probably not there yet within your company. But one is, what do you think it will— I say, what do you think it will do? As in, what will still be left for the humans to do? What will still be the human element that you've got to do and you've got to deliver on top of that? And then is it that you think that your kind of team remit will just continue to— I say continue to expand— or what's being additive about AI that you then get to look at the strategic work? Or are you just adding AI on top of what it is that you're doing without kind of like true strategic direction?

I think for me, the things I can say on that, I think It's never going to really replace humans. You need people to have that human interaction. If you're getting a system to do all of the bits that can just operationally be done quickly, that's great, but you still need— the people that remain need to be those people that have actually got the personable skills, if that's the right word. And that's going to be more noticeable. It's going to be more noticed if you're not interacting in a healthy way with people around the business, and if you aren't creating those relationships. is you're going to be more under the lens, I think. So I think that's the side of what will end up being left. But I also think if you're getting AI to do all of that sort of mundane day-to-day stuff, then it frees you up to be more treasury business partners. That's certainly what we're looking to do in Imperial, so that we can then connect up with entities around the world and be what they need and find out what they're doing instead of getting bogged down with all the bits, because it inevitably happens, even though we've already outsourced a lot of our operations to Poland, but there's still bits that remain and it's still this exercise to bring us back to, okay, we are experts here. This is, well, this is what we're getting to. We want to be those business partners for the business.

So Victoria said those that remain, I think that's the big point. You know, everyone here wants to know what it means for their jobs because, you know, you can talk around optimisation or development or everyone, what everyone really cares is will they have a job at the end of this? And that's a big question. I don't know. There's always going to have to be a degree of human interaction, and that degree will be variable, I think, from organization to organization, depending on what sector you're working in, how much risk they're willing to take on, etc. If you look back at, you know, not too long ago, you would have had a corporate treasury would have had, I don't know, 10 FX dealers on a telephone calling in FX deals. Those have disappeared. You've now got 2 people doing the same thing through a dealing platform, and AI is going to do that throughout the whole area. Treasury has traditionally had people coming into back office through an accounts payable or banking administration. I think a lot of those roles will be streamlined. I think a lot of the accounting is already optimized in ERPs, etc., so that's probably there. And you will see a lot more ideas being managed in the front office through risk management. So I think the teams will become smaller in the future, their remit will become larger, and you will have to have a lot of experience in order to manage the outputs and the optimization of AI.

And I think there is an issue coming along the line. I was talking to the treasurer for PVH over in New York the other day, and he was talking about one of his junior members of staff, again, who's doing the FX risk management. And they've got the senior guy who's supervising it. And his FX guy, and he was talking about, well, that guy's job, once we get in a learning model, LLM, bring it in, or an agent and things like that, that role will disappear because we weren't— I said, well, what are you doing? He said, well, we're trying to get the guy to cross-train. I was like, oh, brilliant. I said, but if he doesn't cross-train, then he'll be out of a job, you know, because his job is, is leaving the building, if you like, because it's the process. Now you guys are all Really good at getting rid of process anyway. You know, that's one of the key things when I talk to lots of the treasurers. You know, we had—

I had—

it was over a year ago, I was talking to Dana Laidhold, global treasurer of NASDAQ. She was talking about their FX risk management where they were scraping the risks, and they started off by doing it week to week, and it was day to day, then it was second to par seconds. You know, she was just doing it and it was able to do it, but it was supervised. That's one of the key things where Victoria talked about— we talked about this in our pre-call. It, you know, don't just assume, don't hand over the reins. You guys have got the responsibility. You know, some of my notes here were, I think I've been to a few of the sessions and spoken to people who have come out the sessions. I think if you added AI on the end of any of the sessions, you guys filled the rooms because you want— you're thirsty for knowledge, which is great. But I think a lot of people have forgotten, and I talked to someone about this just yesterday, it's artificial intelligence, it's not real intelligence. You guys have got the brains, You've got the initiative. You know, don't just manufacture problems for the sake of it, but you can actually go, right, we've got an issue in treasury, this can help you. These, you know, these, the AI that you can use will help you with your real intelligent problems and things. So that's where I'm seeing it as a real opportunity.

So maybe we'll take a slight diversion into current recruitment market. And what are you seeing? Are we seeing treasury teams reduce in size? Are we seeing treasury teams grow in size? What are some of the skills that are being asked for? Is it the traditional treasury skills or are we more into AI data scientists?

It's being added on. Again, I talked to Louise about this earlier saying, so I did a session in Texas this time last year and I looked around the room. I won't do it to you guys because it was fun just getting these guys in the room. I said, right, who here in the room had added AI or technology and put in a lot of the stuff they wanted to see from people? Within their treasury teams? Every hand went up. I went, fantastic. Can you keep your hand up if you know yourselves how to assess that? And they were all looking a bit sheepish. And I was like, yeah, slowly put your hand down. And I wasn't doing it to embarrass them. I said, but you can't assess these skills, so how can you ask for them? How can you measure them? So I think this is a slight danger coming along. Everyone's saying we want technology, we want data analysts, we want this. And you just, you know, touched on it there that You know, your colleagues are saying, oh, we should get people that are more better to handle data. But at the end of the day, we're all still learning. You know, everyone here is just— if you'd said 5, what, 5, 8 years ago we were at the ACT, it was, oh, blockchain. Oh, everyone's got to do blockchain. Everyone's got to understand it. Now it's 5 years later, it's like, block what? And that's— I don't know, you guys yourselves, are you starting to veer that way with the people you're looking to bring in?

I guess for us, we're a very small team.

Yeah.

So there's only 4 of us in front office treasury. We do— we did have a middle office treasury in Bristol. So Imperial Brands is based in Bristol, where I am. But our middle office was outsourced to a global business service in Poland a couple of years ago. So it was definitely a move to try and streamline as much as possible, to just leave us with the strategic stuff. So certainly, those people coming into front office will be expected to look with a strategic lens, not come in with the, right, I'm just going to be able to chug through some processes here. You're going to have to think more technically, be more technically able, and have that higher expectation.

So I think there's a combination of developing existing colleagues and team members and giving them the training to work on AI. And a lot of it starts with the use of Copilot or ChatGPT or Claude in your more wider day-to-day operations. Then we'll start with agents, and there's becoming a roadmap of how you develop the team for that. I think when we are now looking for new talent, it will be a nice-to-have and a requirement. But over the years, when I've been recruiting for treasury talent externally and bringing it in, I've always had quite demanding requirements for that. You know, I like to have people that— so my teams in Poland, they all speak English as well, if not better than I do. They are highly trained, highly educated, And adding on that kind of requirement is not a huge step because they're coming through the university and they have been doing some kind of data science or some kind of AI studies through that. But then you're also looking for skills and talents that I've always looked for. You know, people speak multiple languages, they have achievements outside of work. You know, I want to see someone who's achieved something in music or sporting or something because those are the people who are ambitious and are going to go through my teams. this is just another add-on. If you're bright enough, if you're ambitious enough, you're hardworking enough, you will learn AI. You don't have to be a data scientist, in my mind, to come into Treasury.

What about you at Hastings? What about you at Hastings? Do you know, are you looking at it yourself, or what are you guys doing?

I say we are sort of actively looking. I'm aware that one of my colleagues is in the room.

They'll hug you, cover your ears.

No, but I think we're similar to At Victoria, we have, you know, our own version of Copilot that is free rein, that is getting used more. There is a larger push within the organization for using AI more. We continue to look at our finance team structure, organizational design of trying to think about— I mean, part of it is helpful in the fact that we're going through a very large finance transformation and putting in an ERP, putting in a TMS. doing lots of things that are already bringing into the opportunity to do with AI or automation. And therefore, we are considering what are the skills for the future, and therefore, what is the makeup that we want to have. But we do start talking about having people that are LLM coders or developers or whatever the right technological phrases are. But whether or not, I guess it's whether or not they've got the skills out there that also have the treasury skills that we would be looking for, or financial and accounting skills that as a general team in finance that we're looking I sort of question, but it's a very big push that we effectively do believe at some point will be a competitive advantage for us within, and an attraction for kind of taking out, I think, you know, taking out some of the routine, taking out some of the mundane and trying to upskill and uplift people within the finance community. But at which point I sort of go, well, for me, and particularly for Treasury, and I talk about Treasury having a seat at the table, being able to influence just strategic decisions of your company being, again, to your point about being a true business partner, I guess it kind of flips through to a question as to not just thinking about AI but other skills. What are some of the skills as companies in general transition? What are some of the skills that you start to value more? Is it the communication? Is it, dare I ask the question, is it the ACT qualifications? Is it the being able to kind of like talk with people? What is it that are some of the true skills that really set either you know, star people in your team out or star candidates out for people in hiring? So maybe we'll go generically across the market from what you're seeing first of all.

I think it's first, yeah, essentially communication and clarity of those. It's someone that can express themselves both on paper and don't just get ChatGPT to write your CV. I see so many of them, it's like, yeah, I'm on point with this. I'm like, yeah, get out. It's like, yeah, so we see those. I think it can help you, But I think it can also harm. I think there's so much noise out there at the moment, and you can see it, and you see it all over LinkedIn and everything else. I think the key thing for you guys as treasury professionals— I was doing this with a treasurer last week, and he said, oh, what do you think of my LinkedIn profile? I said, well, actually, having had a conversation with you, you're great. He said, oh, thanks. I said, but your LinkedIn profile stinks. He was like, really? I said, yeah. I said, you just told me how you made a difference to your company over the past 3 years. You've saved this money, you've coached 3 members of staff, and your LinkedIn says, I'm a linked— I'm a motivated, great treasury professional, I'm this, this, this. You haven't told any of us how you've made a difference. And I think that's what's coming down to you guys here in the room. Think about where you're making a difference. AI can help us, and technology, as long as you can hear through the noise— and you've probably heard a lot of noise the past couple of days— it's that filtering. As well, that it's where have you saved your company's money? Where have you saved your company's time? Where have you made— helped your companies make money? Put that on your LinkedIn profile, put it on your CV resume. It's where you're making a difference. And actually coming here as well, what I would say is well done for coming here. You know, it's quite a journey and stuff. You're investing in yourselves. And that's been— and it's— I've got to say, you know, I was saying earlier to Louise that came a few years ago, it wasn't as strong a conference. This has been really good. some really senior people having some great meaningful conversations. I don't know if you guys have felt the same, or over to you, what are you looking for?

I think technical skills will just be a base. ACT qualifications will be a base, they'll be a tick box almost. That really minimises the effort that goes into doing them, but it's almost then it's just, okay, cool, you know that, good. Now the biggest thing, I agree with you on communication. I think that is, you can understand the most technically difficult things, but if you can't communicate them, then it's useless. and it's so annoying because I don't see myself as the best public speaker, but I try. I go to Toastmasters public speaking group to try and practice that because I know how valued it is within an organization. So I definitely stress that. Think about your— how you communicate things, having the confidence to then go and put yourselves in situations that you might not necessarily feel comfortable to do, and just say yes and go for it.

I think business partnering is the key. Understanding the business. So understanding the industry that you are working in, the business that you are working for, and your stakeholders, both external, internal, up and down— that's your career, right? You should be able to do treasury, and you should be developing and understanding treasury. But if you're not a business partner, if you're someone that goes to a meeting and takes treasury jargon there and makes it even more difficult to understand for someone in a or an ops manager or something, you haven't done your job, right? Because we give jargon to everything. No one understands what we're talking about. So if you cannot take that and make it simple for the person you're telling it to, you're not doing your job. And that's the key thing that you really have to develop. You have to be able to tell your senior stakeholders, whether it's a CFO, in 5 words where you are, not in 200 words. You have to be able to take what your CFO has told you and explain it to your team so that they have the context of what they are trying to achieve. And if you don't understand the business that you are working in, the industry that you are in, you won't be able to achieve that. And you'll just be a siloed team that has no engagement, and people view you as an ivory tower somewhere rather than someone to come to and ask questions and be a partner. The AI will give you more time, maybe, to do the processes, etc., so you can become a value-add partner to the teams that you outsource. Treasury is quite unique in that we go across every area. For me, you know, we have card acquiring in stores, we have payments to China, we have debt with the— you know, I sit with the board members, we have share buybacks, you have huge FX, you have Container payment, like freight payments, everything in the business that I'm in, Treasury touches in some degree, more than others. And if we don't, if we can't communicate what we're doing and partner across all of that and understand what the other person is talking about as well, then we won't be doing our jobs. And that will become increasingly important in the future.

And one of the other things I was going to add to all of this, great words as well, Is give yourselves some credit for coming here, making an effort. Just one thing that is a differentiator, I think, with some of the treasury professionals I've looked at—I get their CVs, resumes, and things like that—is you guys who volunteer, volunteer for the AC, get involved, get out of your corner offices. It's difficult. It's easier to shut your laptop and think, "Ah, I say it done." We run events, and people go and they. Do networking, and they come out and they go, "Oh my goodness, that was amazing!" We do round tables now, and they were going, "Do you know what? I never realized I would get so much value just from talking to another five treasury professionals." And we do, you know, get to meet fifty-five. So you guys need to start to say yes. And great example: I do the podcast, and someone said, "Well, what's the difference between getting a UK person on the podcast or US?" I said, "Well, UK person." They say, "Oh, send me the details. I'll think about it." That's the default answer. I know every time. If I do a US person, they say, I'll do it, send me the details. It's just a different, slightly different ethos. Maybe they like the publicity, I don't know. But the fact is, the more you guys can promote yourselves— and a few people said, oh, you're on LinkedIn. I could give a stuff. I existed before LinkedIn. ACT Directory, calling people saying, should we go to the pub and I can talk to you about your Treasury career? That's how I met Alan, you know, years ago. And we're getting to know you guys. That's the thing. So getting to know your colleagues, you know, we're at the end of the session when you're— the end of the conference rather. When you start to go back to your offices, connect to people you've met. Say, oh, we talked about this. Expand your own networks. Work on that. That will then, and you know, increase your LinkedIn profile. Someone said, well, I'm not looking for a job. I said, but what if a job is looking for you? What if an opportunity comes knocking at your door? And with you, what have you found as well on CVs or whatever?

Wow, it's an interesting question. That is, I think lots of people have a lot of experience and a lot of skills that are in Treasury but haven't necessarily done the ACT. I think to Victoria's point, I think I would love to see some more people that have got the ACT. That means that, you know, that they've got that kind of qualification that to a certain extent I think becomes more relevant in future because my question was back to you is going to be that some of the more junior roles are where you learn the fundamentals. You learn how to create that sniff test for yourself when you kind of start to see the numbers. And therefore, when at the moment when you say that Copilot will give you the answer, but actually you can, you have the human interaction where you decide that that's correct, that's not correct. And a lot of that comes from your experience. If we start to take out some of the opportunities for people, for junior team members to have the hands-on experience because we now feed it through AI, How are you guys thinking about the future of your junior members of staff in terms of how you're going to develop them to ensure that they've got the skills to be able to pass the litmus test themselves?

I think that's a very good question, and it's a combination of 2 things. It's with COVID and working from home, so you don't have the interaction with senior people, and now AI. So it is a difficult question, and I don't know what the answer would be. I don't know how we're going to ensure that the juniors pick up all the experience that they need as they come through. It's something we need to work on. One of the scary things for me the other day was, because I work with a lot of people who have worked for Big 4 firms, and one of the Big 4 firms for the first time in many times were retrenching staff. And they were retrenching staff because the people who'd done their 3 years of audit work, etc., did not want to leave because there were not roles out there for them. Now there's an indicator of what might be coming, right? The Big Four— apologies to who's in the room— their business model is to bring in young graduates, make a lot of money out of them, train them up, send them out into industry. If they're not being— if they're not— if that pipeline's blocked, there's an issue. And I don't know what's causing it. I don't know whether it's AI. I don't know whether it's environment, the economy. I don't know. But that is a warning sign. For me, that's out there. That model that they've had for however many years is starting to creak, and it feeds back into maybe they're not— maybe they're using AI for those junior roles. Maybe the junior roles are not getting enough experience because they're working from home all the time, or they're not at clients, etc. So I think there is definitely a question mark out there.

I think it'll be a lot about asking the right questions, asking different questions. So you've got the younger people that you want, like, You want people to come in and ask you loads of questions, don't you, when they first come in? But I guess it's that actually you'll be wanting them to challenge AI. You'll be wanting them to think about what it's producing yet and then ask questions on that. And should this be done differently? And that, you know, this is what supposedly the perfect answer is according to Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, but can we apply a different lens? I think it potentially would be all about the questions that you'll be encouraging them to ask.

I think also the skill set is changing rapidly. 2 years ago, who would have said, what's Claude? You know, no one would have known. And it's people that are at university, they're, what, you know, say doing a 3, 4-year degree, they would perhaps starting to look at it. I think that's what's going to have to evolve. And I don't know if universities are catching up. Certainly when I was talking to a lot of the US guys over the past few weeks, they would— their kids are at uni and they're going, they're worried, you know, they're trying to think. One of them, for instance, was doing accounting and economics and was then trying to change their major or their, you know, one of their— because they said, actually, I don't want to do accounting. Well, my— that part of my job will go away, he feels. So he was like, right, actually, should I go into data science? What can I learn? And I think it is a worry, but I think also if universities are going to help bridge that gap, I think they've got a big challenge doing that as well.

Thanks. What I've noticed on the app is that there's actually not an opportunity for asking Q&A through the app. So I'm just going to pause very briefly and see if anybody has any questions in the audience.

You want questions and you also want skill sets changing.

For me, it's like even before that, it's when I hire people, it's the behavioral read that you're getting from the candidates that you're talking to in terms of that you've got people that are curious, that want to adapt and take the next step.

How do you— that can be very hard to try and ascertain in an interview sometimes. And if you guys have got any sort of things that you can share?

I guess just on that, sorry, just on the questioning bit, I suppose I was more thinking once someone's in the company and then trying to how you develop them forward. So then thinking, you know, getting them to think about the questions that they should ask. But I massively agree with you in terms of you want that enthusiasm, you want someone that's proving that actually they want to develop, they're open to learning new things, and they're curious. So I absolutely agree with that. Sorry, I jumped in.

No, no, I was maybe going to kind of throw it back because your question was also about how do we identify those people. So maybe I'd ask, what is your— I'm no expert at that at all, but I suppose, what's the way in which you interview people? So the way I've done it historically is there's a— the first interview is very chilled, very relaxed, just talk me through. I'll give quite a lot of history, quite a lot of detail about the role, the person that I'm looking for, and I do that first to get them to sort of calm the nerves a little bit, then ask them About them, what made them interested in the role, how does it work, and it's very much more of a chit-chat. And then the second stage is more, here's a scenario, how would you respond to it, what's your sort of presentation back to me, that then becomes partly the communication skills that they have. But also, if it's not a kind of situation— I give 2, and if it's not a situation that they've had before, which one do they pick? Which to a certain extent already kind of says to me, whether or not they're willing to put themselves out there or develop in different ways. But so therefore, that's sort of where I go, is changing up the way you interview with people to create those opportunities for conversations more so than the interview questions.

And I also, I do a weekly newsletter on LinkedIn where I have a newsletter writer who helps me, but I talk about some of the problems I'm facing with our clients and some of the challenges. And actually, last week's newsletter, week before this, was just about a process I'd faced with one of our clients, and they said, well, we need to know that they are really good at treasury, really good at maths, really know this psychometric. And what they wanted to do originally, they said, like, before we even do anything, we're going to do psychometric testing, and then we're going to do this, and then we'll get them to meet the treasurer. I went, good luck. I said, I don't want to work with you. And they were like, what? And I said, because there's no point. If you're going to do it that way, you're going to scare off all the people But I think what they were doing, and I sat with them and we had a coffee, and I said, right, put yourself in there, you know, in their position. When you were originally starting, and it was a few years for them, they had to go back. So when you were 25 or whatever and you got into Treasury, what was your first interview? They said, I was terrified. I went, fantastic, think of that feeling, and that's exactly who's applying for your job. And they went, oh yeah, oh yeah, maybe. I said, just like Louise said, What we got them to do was say, right, get them to have a coffee, meet with some of the team, understand who you are, get them engaged, get them wanting to join you. It's about them, not about you. And then you can pick and choose. And then you can also sell to them the process. You can say, look, this is what we're going to do before you meet the treasurer. We want to make sure you've got this and also you're interested in the job. And that's a really good way to do it rather than sometimes I think that's the other problem that a lot of people Do you think that everybody, they don't need your job, they've already got a job, they've already got a good job, maybe not the best job, which is why they're applying for a role, but the fact is you've still got to put yourself in their shoes?

I am a big fan of psychometrics over the years, but I would never do it at an initial stage. It's when you've got down to your shortlist of 2, and you have, and it is a confirmation of your own process. You've interviewed, you have a preferred or a second preferred candidate, And the psychometrics is going to red flag something or confirm what you already have estimated from your interview process. So I would, going forward, I would never do a hire without a psychometric exam. I, as I said, I look for achievements outside of the career— sporting, music, political, whatever it is— so that you have someone who is engaged, who has reference points that they can bring in from achievements. And I like people that have traveled a lot. I like people that have hobbies. So these are all things that you kind of add on to your CV as a little bit at the end. Everyone, apparently everyone reads a book and everyone does triathlons, etc. But if you're going to put it on there, I'm going to ask you about it and you're going to have to explain which triathlon you did. Do you prefer swimming or running? You know, what's your swimming time? So be careful what you put on there. But that is what I'm looking for. Right. I've had people come in who have gone to the Commonwealth Games for gymnastics. They were great, right? They can work. If you're a swimmer and you put in swimming hours, you know what hard work is. Okay, so that is what I'm looking for outside of achievements. If you can play the music, if you can speak 5 languages, you can do Treasury. So that is, for me, is an indication of talent. Not the final, but is another filter.

For us, we tend to do 2 interview, like a 2-stage process. So we'll have an interview over Teams, and then we'll move to a second interview where we're expecting the candidate to then give us a presentation. We'll set some questions, and then they'll come in and basically show us how much homework they've really done and how much they can expand on what we've previously talked about, if they can pick up some of the tidbits that we've talked about in those. And I think that's quite, I mean, it's sort of quite, I suppose, maybe a standard even approach of way of going, but it really does seem to work. And I definitely remember there's one guy that stood out for the wrong reasons in one of the interviews where Imperial Brands is a tobacco company. I asked them what products we sell, and their response was, oh, I don't need to know about the products because I don't smoke. So that interview wrapped up in about 10 minutes. That was— as soon as that was said, it was a case of, come on, come now. Yeah.

Any other questions in the audience?

Yes. So just a little bit of a future-focused question.

So looking 5 years ahead, so in 5 years' time, a lot of corporations And especially the treasury departments, they're going to look significantly different because of all these AI developments as well. So, so just assuming that we're 5 years into the future now, what kind of skills would the hiring market be looking at when they're recruiting for, let's say, you know, earlier roles such as treasury analysts or even treasury managers at that point, considering, for example, me being a treasury analyst right now, but likely the role for— so that you'd be looking for?

Shall we do that first bit? I don't think you look 5 years ahead. You can barely look 2 years ahead at the moment. I think Treasury has to embrace that. I was recently coaching one of my clients. They've got a fantastic lady in there. She's doing a massive debt capital raising project. And her job, she's not got a classic Treasury background. She's fantastic at her job. And the CFO was trying to get his head around, do I hire this person Not in treasury necessarily. She wants to get into treasury, but she's not got cash management, she's not got systems, she's not got— but is she a 2-year project manager? And she sold, you know, she wants to do the job and she might then cross-train into treasury. She might get the extra skills and bolt them in. And because— but she's brilliant for that. And he said, well, what do you think? I said, well, it's up to you. I said, because is that a bigger project? Is that a bigger headache for you over the next 2 years? Then give it a go. A lot of treasury professionals, like you guys sitting here, you go into your role, the first year you're learning it, second year you're doing the role, third year, a lot of the time you're getting bored of it. You've already done 2 cycles of it. You know, there is a cycle with treasury and finance. Then it's like, okay, where do I go next? Or, you know, that could be upwards internally. I'm not saying you have to move external. As long as you're getting progression, I think it's too ambitious to look 5 years ahead. at the moment? I mean, as we said earlier, 2 years ago, what was it? Was AI on the agenda at the ACT conference 2 years ago? ACT can ask me. No, Mike, they're not like, no, they don't know. But with you guys, what do you think?

I think it's a case of, as now, spread out as much as possible, learn as much as possible about adjacent teams, not even adjacent teams, the whole business. Really try and understand what the company is doing and then understand your role within treasury and how you can support, coming back to that treasury partner kind of mindset, thinking in that direction. And then I think that's probably, that's, I suppose that is bringing it to what you can do now to pave your way so that then you're both best prepared for 5 years' time. That would be my suggestion.

It's an evolution, so I don't know where we'll be in 5 years' time. What I do know is there's going to be winners and losers, all right? And you want to be on the winning side. If you want to be on the winning side, you've got to put your hand up. If there's a project coming, if there's an AI project coming, you've got to volunteer. You've got to say what you want to achieve out of that. and how you're going to achieve it and learn as you go. If you're going to sit back and say, that's not my job, that's not— it won't be your job because AI will take your job, right? So you have to move, you have to be proactive, you have to volunteer for work so that you become the next wave rather than the one left behind. But where we'll be in 5 years, I don't know. I'm hoping to be retired in 5 years. Yeah, I had a big finance graduate program in previous roles and I always said, you know, I want to hire the people, the top talent coming out of universities. And I want— my goal in that was I wanted to retire before they became my CFO, okay? Because that's who I wanted coming through. This was in the beer industry. Out of that finance graduate program, there were probably 10 finance directors within a 10-year period coming out of that. And that's the kind of talent that you need to bring into your organizations, and you need to make sure you are that talent in order to achieve.

Slightly different to the technology angle, if you like. One of the things I was going to say is, and obviously that's what we've been talking about, AI and all that, and it's top of mind. I think there's a different thing as well. One of the previous, I was just thinking back to what Alan said about business partnering. You guys are your own worst enemy 15, 20 years ago. Treasury specialists, look at us, aren't we magic? Great. And then you got shoved in the corner and like, here's the money, or give it to the treasurer. And then the treasurer would say, oh great, I want to talk to the business. No, no, you're the treasurer, you sit in the corner. I've seen treasury over the past 5 to 10 years battle its way back out of the corner and properly talk to the business. As Alan talked about there, would Alan's role have ever encompassed all the different things and the longest, you know, job title? That's what I've seen with a lot of treasurers, that actually the most successful ones, and those are the ones that are standing out, They do like Treasury Plus. You know, they're getting involved in the business and actually being part of the business, not just standalone. Oh, I know I just do Treasury, and that's a difference as well. So, and more junior candidates, they say, well, that's okay, but I'm not a treasurer. And one of my US treasurers, they— this junior guy came to them and said, right, I need to get out there. What do I do? I'm like Treasury analyst. And he said, go have a coffee. He said, what do you mean? He said, go and meet the head of tax. Go and meet this. A couple of weeks later, he got frustrated. He said, well, okay, how much coffee have you— how many people have you met? He said, oh, I've just met 2 over 6. Drink more coffee. And every Friday, he would then go and have a coffee with a different part of the business. Didn't matter who in sales. Within 6 months, he actually got headhunted out of that role to go and work for the CEO as a sort of a roving person within finance and doing all this different stuff because he was so well networked. He was a 6-month grad, but he actually and putting together all the dots. And you guys do this very effectively as treasurers. You get to know all the different businesses. I think that's what stands out as successful as well.

Which I think I'll harp on. The 2 words I use at the moment are curiosity and adaptability. And I think they just come out more and more because you'll be curious about when you get the answer of how the answer arrived, and you'll be adaptable because you'll be wanting to change the processes, improve the processes, embrace AI, embrace automation. but still wanting to kind of learn how it all fits together. So from a junior point of view, that's what I'm kind of like looking for, because the rest of it will change because we don't know where it is going to end up being. And I think that's the people that will change with the business as well.

I love that, thank you.

And I guess if I could just ask one more question as well, please. So I guess in terms of soft skills, should I look at developing the most immediately?

The fundamental soft skill for me is making complicated topics, simple. If you can do that, if you can take jargon, if you can explain an FX hedging program to a sourcing manager, you have the soft skills. That's what you need. If you take cash management and explain how it should be working, great. If you take what is— some of it's complicated, it's not that hard, treasury. I mean, there are bits where like you can get a bit more, but if you take what we know and make it more complicated, In order to sound like you're an expert, and in order to make sure, you know, the CFO knows how great you are, that's not what you should be doing. Completely the opposite. Take your job and simplify it so everyone understands what you're doing.

And that'll probably feel wrong, right? If you're in a room with senior people, you'll probably feel like if you're using simple language, you feel uncomfortable that maybe they think that I'm not as good as I am or something. But actually, it's the other way around. Exactly. As he said, that if you can simplify— because we are the Treasury people, it's just assumed we know what we're doing. So the fact that you can turn it on its head and explain it simply. I joined a tax accounting and Treasury committee and then started taking the minutes for it. And initially I wrote— I tried— I made it sound really quite complex, all the different ideas. I'd never really got into tax, but now I was learning all this tax stuff. I thought, I need to make sure I put all the technical words for everything in. And our group financial controller literally said to me afterwards, can you please just make it easier to read? And I just thought, wow, you've got so much more experience than me, and you're asking me to really simplify it. That just says everything. You're absolutely right.

And to build on both of those, the way that I've done it sometimes with candidates is, it's called your so what moment. CFO is going to come to you and say, great, you've implemented this, this project. Oh, well, we've done this, we've done this. So what? And just keep on going, so what, until it gets, well, we've actually saved the company this money, or We've de-risked it to this level. It's exactly as these guys are saying, make it simple. Keep it simple for these guys because they've got short attention spans. If you walk into a room, so what, what have you achieved this— Emma Haywood, she's, she's been on the podcast before. What she does every week, she sends herself an email and she sends what she's done and what the team have achieved, and she sends it to a mailbox, and then every month she summarizes it. So when Ever the CFO walks past her desk or one of the team's desks and said, "So what have you done?" Oh well, this week we've implemented the treasury management system. They go, "Well, I don't care. I don't understand." Instead said, "Actually, we implemented this. We've saved two man hours days, and this is how much money we've made the company." Oh, hang on! This is treasury. Yep, I should be talking to treasury more. That's the way to elevate to show what you what a difference you've made.

Amazing. So I have a question. Just Ketchum. In just just just want to have a perspective regarding the The use of AI has been increased, you know, drastically. Now people are using ChatGPT to improve their CV wording and to make them presentable. So how does it really matter, those who prepare it with ChatGPT or those who is preparing by themselves? It does— does it matter really in terms of hiring and screening, you know, perspective, or it doesn't matter much?

It just For me, you've got to talk to your CV, right? If you've got an amazing CV and you can't talk randomly in detail about each of those items on there, your interview is over. So you can do what you want to your CV. If you put it in front of me and you can't talk to it, sorry. So it's a risk you take.

They're more suspicious as well because there's certain tag words, exactly like you said, you can tell that if something's been generated automatically. So then you can actually, you almost set yourself up to be asked those questions that are going to, you're sort of helping yourself to fail, because then it will, you can go in and be like, I know that wasn't written by you, so let's dig.

It's also, it's a blessing as well because it cleans up CVs. A lot of, I've seen some terribly written CVs, but actually it makes them better. But it's about, you know, with all this stuff, it's a tool. The fact is, you know, you've got to give your truth, if you like, and The fact is you can talk, you know, I talk to ChatGPT or with Claude. I get, I ask, get it to ask me questions and then it comes up. You were talking about some of the proposals and some of the board papers you've written and stuff and actually making them not vanilla, but actually make it the standout moments. Going back to the so whats and all the other stuff we've said, it's about making your resume CV actually match a job. Now I've done it the other day with a candidate and they were saying, oh, I'm applying for this job. I went, you're terrible for this job.

What?

I said, you don't actually have most of the requisite skills. You're just desperate for another job. And they were like, yeah, but this looks like a really good job. I said, yeah, but you're not going to get it. I don't think it's actually going to be a match. If you were to get this job, you'd probably be back in the same situation. They were wanting to leave a bad home, wanted to get out of a role that they weren't enjoying. I said, so you want to go from a bad job to possibly an even worse job in 3 to 6 months? They went, ah, yeah, maybe not. I said, I think they need to be screening more and then getting roles that they can actually do and they can actually make a difference in.

And I think I agree with Alan, is like, you can use it and you can make it look good, but you have to be able to follow up within the interview. And I think the next step that you probably have within it to do with interviews and application forms is there are obviously, there is software out there that you can have on your, that's almost like, I'm going to call it like copilot for your interview. that will listen to your interview and will help you answer the questions. But again, having experienced that in a couple of interviews, it's very easy to spot because it's not you. You're reading part of a script. It's not— you're not recalling your own lived experience. You are just reading off of a script, and that's very easy to tell unless you are a fabulous actress.

And if you're doing a Teams interview and you're reading ChatGPT in front of you, the interviewer can see it. Right, so don't have it on another screen there. Talk from your own experience, talk from your heart.

And also, when you put that, you can now put your CV into it, into someone's CV, and we do it all the time and say, has this been written by you? Pick out the elements of it, and it's like, and tell me, because that's what it does. It's a machine, it can tell you the answers.

For example, somebody who have an apparent experience But not directly with the treasury one, and that person really wants to explore that. For example, I have a finance experience, but I don't have experience in treasury. So how does it really matter if that particular person have done the ACT or like it matters, right? You will going to filter out the person who give a priority to the person who already done the ACT, but those who haven't done but have the transferable skill RP. And the banking operations, FX transactions, the basic treasury things, how does it really matter? Is it still having a chance for getting a job like an entry-level or junior? Is there any possibility for that?

I think what I said about earlier about ACC qualifications always being a tick box, I guess it's a way if everyone's got the qualification, it's the tick box, and then you can just start going through the behavioral skills, the personal skills. I don't think it stops you if you've got experience in other areas, then why not? Otherwise, I think everyone's just limiting themselves because you want people that have got a breadth of experience and, yeah, think bigger. So I don't think it's a good thing to just have tunnel vision in terms of what the perfect treasury person should look like.

I think you also got to be careful though as well because you might apply for a role and think you've got all the transferable skills and everything else, but is it that that employer's duty to train you. That's one of the things I think a lot of treasury departments are very small and perfectly formed and everything else and great and all this, but they don't actually have the bandwidth to actually train people up, which I think is quite difficult. So if you're applying for a role, say, I want you to train me on this and this, you know, a lot of the time I say to people, maybe if you're in the finance team, try and get a transfer into treasury because you understand the company, you understand a lot a lot of the way it works, but actually trying to, you know, shadow someone in Treasury, try and work with them, that's good. Because otherwise, if you're just applying for it and I've— if I get 10 CVs and one person is from Finance and the other 9 are from Treasury, you know, if I give them to Alan, he's going to go, no, Mike, no thanks, I'll look at these 9, because he's, you know, he hasn't got the bandwidth to train someone. This is the challenge with Treasury.

I suppose it's also how you present yourself about it, because if you're just saying, oh, I just thought I'd give it a go, that's not really that appealing in terms— if there's someone that's like, look, this will actually be really interesting, I'm willing to do a qualification, I'm willing to learn, willing to do what it takes to actually understand more, then yeah, you stand yourself in the best stead.

Because I'd be slightly more with Victoria there in terms of, at some point in time, for me, it comes down to more of a cultural and a behavioural fit, that you fit with the team, you fit with the ideology of where we want to go, where we want to get to, that you buy into what it is that the company does, that you're interested in the products, to your point, like, that you know the products that it is that you're going to be actually dealing with. A cultural fit at times is more important. I can teach you treasury, you can go on the treasury management, you can do AMCT if you're willing to learn and willing to do it. What I can't teach is the cultural fit and how you're going to show up and how you're going to represent treasury as a business partner. And for me, sometimes that's more important. So, not having it, but being able to talk eloquently about Treasury, why you want to move, what are those transferable skills, I think is just as good. Right, time-wise, we are rapidly running out of time actually. So I did say that we were going to do a bit of a roundtable where you talk with one another and maybe do this a bit more kind of actively on some of the questions that are there. So in order to move on to that for the last sort of 15-20 minutes, what I might just ask the panel, and I'll ask yours slightly differently, but for Victoria and for Alan, what is one of the skills that you wish that you had known that you would need earlier on in your career, that you would have developed earlier on, a skill or a behaviour?

For me, it's the communication. I think I put so much stock on learning. I did a maths degree. I very much focused on just, if I know everything, then surely I'm the best person for the job. And then it's quite devastating actually when you see people do work roles that you think, but I would be perfect for that. and then why are they doing it? And you think, but I put in all this effort, but then realise actually it's because they could communicate. I know we've talked about it a lot, but I think I could just keep saying it. You've got to be able to, got to be able to convey the information and be able to build those connections with people around the business to get the points across. So I would say that would be the thing I wish I'd done something more on earlier.

So I come from an engineering background and I'm a Chartered Accountant, so I found a lot of treasury It has been— it's not too difficult, and I think where we've seen— and it's all transferable. I think where I probably would have told myself is do a bit more self-marketing, a bit more networking. I can be quite laid-back in my approach, but I get the work done, and you always assume that if you get the work done, people will notice and will reward you for it. Sometimes it's the marketing that will take the role. So you do have to be aware of, with senior stakeholders, how they view you. Do they view what you're actually doing? Is someone else taking credit for the work you're doing? So you do have to be a bit of a self-marketer, a bit of a political, a better political person than what may come as comfortable to all of us. A lot of us don't like that area. However, it is a skill you need to have if you're really going to go far in your career.

And I think from that, it'd be, you're all great salespeople if you try. You know, when you go back to your offices and someone asks you, what, you know, what was the conference like? Oh yeah, it was great, drinks at the Museum of London, yeah, the Museum of Liverpool rather, we really enjoyed it, it was great. Okay, but what did you actually learn? You've been away out the office, what are you bringing back to improve this business? And translate it into— it's an actual business conference. So give them one takeaway or give them one or two ideas that you can implement as a team or as a company, because that is what you're going to be measured on. You know, that's one of the key things.

Okay, perfect.

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