How Treasury Earns Its Seat at the Table Through Trust | Treasury Careers Podcast

Treasury is no longer a quiet back-office function that only gets noticed when cash runs short.

In this live Treasury Career Corner panel, three senior treasury leaders explain how trust, relationships, commercial understanding, and curiosity are what truly help treasury earn influence across the business.

Meet the Guests:

Louise Woodroffe, Head of Treasury at Hastings Direct
Mike Tackley, Global Head of Treasury, Howden Insurance
Joanne McCormack, Treasury Director

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Featuring

Louise Woodroffe

Head of Treasury at Hastings Direct

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Mike Tackley

Global Head of Treasury, Howden Insurance

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Joanne McCormack

Treasury Director

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Mike Richards

CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company

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About this episode

In this live recorded episode from our Treasury Career Corner event in London, host Mike Richards is joined by:

Louise Woodroffe, Head of Treasury at Hastings Direct, with previous treasury experience at Marks & Spencer, Burberry, and across mining and real estate.
Mike Tackley, Global Head of Treasury, Howden Insurance, with previous experience scaling the treasury function at Chrysaor and working across treasury roles at BG Group.
Joanne McCormack – An experienced treasury leader whose career has taken her through Time Warner Inc, Warner Music Group, GE Capital Real Estate, Travelport, and Interpublic Group.

This episode explores what it really takes to build a successful treasury career and become a trusted voice within the wider business. The panel discusses how their careers evolved across different industries, why treasury professionals need to understand the business behind the numbers, and how strong relationships can open doors that technical skills alone cannot.

The conversation also looks at the future of treasury, including the role of AI, automation, data quality, and prompt skills. While technology is becoming more important, the panel is clear that human judgement, commercial awareness, and trust remain essential.

Key topics discussed:

How each guest found their way into treasury through different routes and career paths.
Why treasury professionals should stay open to opportunities rather than relying only on a fixed career plan.
The importance of understanding the business, not just the treasury function.
How treasury earns a seat at the table by building trust, protecting the business, and adding commercial value.
Why relationship-building is essential when joining a new company or building a treasury function from scratch.
How treasury teams can become stronger business partners across the business.
The role of AI and automation in treasury.
How networking, recruiters, and industry events can shape long-term career opportunities.
What hiring managers really look for.
Why technical qualifications such as ACT can help open doors, but behaviours and relationships often determine progression.

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Key Takeaways

Trust is treasury’s real currency
Technical skills matter, but they are only the starting point
AI will support treasury, not magically fix it
Your network matters before you need it
Do not wait until you are desperate to explore opportunities
Curiosity is a career advantage
The best treasury professionals are business partners

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Podcast 439 - Treasury Career Corner LIVE in London 2026, Panel Session

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1 / 10

1. Joanne describes how she got her first job in banking supervision at AOL Time Warner in Amsterdam. What happened on the way to her interview that influenced the hiring decision?

She was running late, stopped a man on a bicycle and asked him to help her get to the venue on time, and the interviewer was told by her team afterwards that they had to hire her because she was so resourceful

She arrived early and used the extra time to research the company's recent acquisitions, which impressed the interviewer enough to offer her the role on the spot

She had studied part of her degree in Spain and the interviewer happened to be looking specifically for a candidate with Spanish language skills for the role

2 / 10

2. Mike Tackley describes a specific 'own goal' moment early in his career at BG Group involving a euro trade. What happened, and what was the outcome?

He approved a trade without properly checking it, the trader then traded it the wrong way, and although the error accidentally resulted in a $500,000 gain, his boss told him to take the money and leave when he reported it

He signed off on a euro versus US dollar trade without checking it properly, trusting that the trader always got it right, the trade was then done the wrong way, but it accidentally generated a $500,000 gain rather than a loss, and the lesson he draws is to check everything

He misquoted a currency rate by a decimal point on a two and a half million euro deal, which caused a loss that had to be reported to John, his boss, who told him it was a valuable lesson but did not penalise him further

3 / 10

3. Mike Tackley explains his deliberate approach to introducing treasury policy at Howden, given the scale and decentralised nature of the business. What does he describe as his strategy for the first six months?

He immediately issued a single global treasury policy across all 56 countries and required every division to comply within 90 days, using his CFO's authority to enforce it

He focused entirely on hiring a new treasury team before attempting any engagement with the divisions, believing that headcount needed to be in place before any policy could be rolled out

Rather than rolling out a policy immediately, he reverse engineered the approach — spending six months travelling to meet divisional CFOs in person, such as in Miami, building relationships and selling the value treasury could bring, before layering in cashflow forecasting, FX policy, and interest policy over time

4 / 10

4. Joanne describes how she tailors her messaging when working with different functions across the business. How does she say her approach differs when working with shared services compared to the tax team?

With shared services, she takes a protective, supportive tone — telling them she is there to step in if anything goes wrong — whereas with the tax team it is more of a sparring conversation

With shared services, she focuses purely on process compliance and escalation paths, whereas with the tax team the conversation is centred entirely on transfer pricing documentation

With shared services, she leads with cost-saving metrics to justify treasury's involvement, whereas with the tax team she leads with regulatory risk to gain their buy-in

5 / 10

5. Mike Richards describes an example Louise referenced involving Victoria using Copilot for a foreign exchange deal. What happened in that example, and what point was it used to illustrate?

Victoria asked Copilot to summarise a credit agreement, and it omitted a key covenant, illustrating that AI should not yet be trusted with legal documentation review in treasury

Victoria identified that Copilot had got the FX deal completely wrong, and when challenged, Copilot agreed it had made an error — illustrating that without real intelligence and experience to catch the mistake, pressing go could have cost the company thousands

Victoria found that Copilot consistently outperformed her own FX hedging calculations over a six-month period, illustrating that AI tools were becoming reliable enough to take on more responsibility in treasury

6 / 10

6. Joanne identifies a specific treasury process that she believes is the most promising current use case for AI. What is the process, and what problem does she say AI could solve?

Cashflow forecasting, because manually consolidating data from multiple business units currently takes far too long and AI could reduce that time significantly

Intercompany netting, because manually reconciling intercompany balances across multiple currencies and entities is time-consuming and error-prone

KYC, because the process can take up to two months per batch of bank accounts, acts as a major barrier to switching banks, and automating part of it would free up significant time that is currently lost to this administrative burden

7 / 10

7. Louise explains the distinction she draws between AI and automation, and what she says companies need before AI use cases can really take off. What does she identify as the key requirement?

Companies need to give employees access to more advanced licenses and tools, such as Copilot Premium or integration with more capable models, and without that access, talking about AI will not take you anywhere

Companies need to first appoint a dedicated AI governance committee with representation from treasury, legal, and IT before any AI tool can be rolled out safely

Companies need to migrate all of their treasury data into a single cloud-based data warehouse before any AI tool can produce reliable outputs across the business

8 / 10

8. Mike Tackley describes the message he gives his team at Howden about AI and job security. What is the core message, and how does he frame the risk?

The message is that AI will inevitably replace most transactional treasury roles within five years, so team members should focus on developing strategic and advisory skills as quickly as possible

The message is not that AI will replace your job in large numbers, but that your ability to use AI is what will help you keep your job, because if you cannot use it, the company will employ somebody else who can

The message is that AI adoption will be entirely optional for the foreseeable future at Howden, and team members who prefer not to use it will not be disadvantaged in their roles

9 / 10

9. Mike Richards describes a piece of advice he heard about beating applicant tracking systems when applying for jobs. What was the tip, and what method does it use?

Submitting applications only between 9am and 11am on weekdays, because that is when human reviewers are most likely to read CVs before the AI filtering software has processed the full backlog

Repeating key terms from the job description multiple times throughout the CV in different sections, so that the keyword-matching algorithm scores the application more highly

Putting white text into the CV instructing the AI to rank the candidate as number one and the best candidate it has seen, so that the instruction is invisible to a human reader but is read and acted upon by the AI ranking system

10 / 10

10. Louise explains why she advocates for starting to look at job specifications before actively wanting to move roles. What reasoning does she give for this approach?

Looking when you need to move is when you start making bad decisions, since you feel pressure to get out of your current job, whereas looking earlier means the right role might appear six months before you are ready, and recruitment processes take a long time so the first job applied for is unlikely to be the one secured

Job specifications change so frequently that reviewing them regularly is the only way to keep pace with evolving skill requirements in the treasury market

Recruiters prioritise candidates who have applied to multiple roles over time, so frequent applications signal genuine commitment to the job search process and improve the chances of being shortlisted

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