Mike Richards explains that core treasury skills (cash management, foreign exchange, debt and liquidity management) remain essential for day-one competence. Beyond technical ability, treasury professionals who can translate numbers into clear recommendations for CFOs and influence decision-making will win strategic visibility. He notes team-reshaping and internal promotion as successful career-development approaches, and observes that technology and AI are improving operational tasks (cash forecasting, process automation) but have not yet produced a strategic step-change. The video closes with event anecdotes and a call-to-action to participate in a salary survey (treasurysalary.com).
Chapters
Hello, Mike here. This week's newsletter is about what is still matters in treasury talent. What am I seeing? So it's about what skills are coming to the top and first thing, what hasn't changed. Let's go back to that. The basics still matter. Day one, you need your cash management, foreign exchange, debt liquidity. You need to know this stuff. That's your day job. That's what gets. That's what gets you a role, if you like. I just talked to a candidate today and they said, I want to do this. All this other international stuff. I went, but you don't have that experience. You walk in the door, you're being paid to do your job. Oh, yeah. And I said, when you can go in there and then you can expand your role, that's fine. Try and shadow other members of staff, trying to help out, try and do other things to expand yourself, but you can't go in because at the end of the day, you're not being paid to learn on the job. Companies need delivery from you, so they got it. Actually, that was one of the good things. So you do your day job, that's what you get paid for. But what that hasn't gone away, but the things that are changing is what sits on top of that, what gets you a seat at the table sitting next to the CFO with the C suite, even if you're further down, say you're an assistant treasurer, what gets you a seat at the table with your treasurer? How do you do this? I. I said this recently that you don't need a treasurer to build a dashboard. Some might be good at it, good luck. But you need to be able to explain and translate what it means for the CFO and that it's great. You explain and then the next stage is make recommendations. That's where you, as treasurers and the ones that I've seen a lot of the conferences here, the ones that are the real making a difference, is those that are able to guide their CFO to lead them, if you like. So these are what the numbers suggest that tell us. And I recommend, or we recommend, I recommend we do this. You're guiding them, if you like, taking them on the journey, the treasury journey, if you like. So that's what you need to do. The markets itself, everyone keeps saying, oh, the markets. Well, tell me what the market is like. You've had tariffs, you've had trade wars, you've had all this stuff throughout 2025. It is settling down. 2026 is getting better. A lot of people have Actually delayed retirement plans and things like that. But that's actually where I've seen a number of people stepping up, actually, where they actually have taken on more responsibility. One in particular, one example, what I spoke to a client just a couple of months ago actually, that instead of hiring middle year when their deputy retired, they reshaped the team. But they did it in conjunction with their team. Yeah. So look, this guy's retiring. We don't want to just promote one of you because actually you're still developing as a team. What we're going to do is reshape it and actually give you more responsibility. Not just to save the cash, because they actually promoted them and gave them both pay rises and a number of other members of the team. It wasn't about holding people back, it was about helping people move forward. That was one of the key things. So that came as a push from the team because they said, look, if you think there's a too big a gap. And they were like, no, we want this opportunities, please, boss. So, yeah, that's a thing to do in it. Again, other things, technology. Yeah, it's the big thing. If you put AI on the end of any of the sessions at AFP Boston or a Euro Finance in Budapest, the room was full. Whether or not it was about AI or not, it's. Yes, it's being used for cash forecasting, day to day activity. But the pushback I'm getting from treasury professionals is the. It's not there yet. It's not really helping move to the strategic level. It's helping with the day to day, the, the process, heavy stuff. The cash management, cash forecasting, yes, that's an improvement. But we're yet to see anything where it's a step change and I think it will happen. And we're seeing this and that's where, when we're looking at hiring people. I had this in Texas about this year actually, when I said to the room, I said, you guys are saying, now we want people with technology AI. And they were like, yeah, so how many people have got it on their job descriptions? Boom. Put up your hands. And they went, yeah, they kept the hat. I said, keep your hand up if you've got it yourself. And they were like. I said, how are we going to measure these people? How are you going to assess them? And they were like, oh, yeah, you're right, actually, yeah, I'm not sure about that. So, yeah, it's, it's all very well saying it, but it's actually living and breathing it as well. So that's one of the key things. So what impact does treasury have? That's one of the key things you've got to look at. Technical bar for treasury will still keep on rising, but it's the people who can communicate, influence and bring others with them on that journey that's going to be the key thing. Other things for me was that I was actually at the trade web Christmas party. Thank you very much. This week, bumped in lots of people who watch these videos. You enjoy them. Thank you very much. I said I could take it or leave it. I said, I do them because I've been coached to do it. And I said, what do you think? And actually the feedback was, mike, you're a bit of an influencer. I'm like, yeah, feel really weird with that. I said, look, I'm just here to help you treasury professionals understand the market, answer your questions. So if you have questions and you drop me an email, you don't have to put it publicly, just say, look, could you answer this on one of you or could you give me some advice? And that's what I do each week. We also. One of the key things for 2026, your salary guys, it's Christmas coming up, you've got to pay for it. You've got to pay for everything. It's your world. It costs still keep rising. Do as a salary survey, will you go to treasurysalary.com or look in your inbox. If you've done it before, there'll be an invite in there. We've sent it out to all of our database. 18 plus thousand people we are. We've got 1600 UDO already. Want to get out to 2000. It's going to be amazing. Thanks for watching. If you need advice, reach out to me anytime. Thanks very much. Cheers.
