A few years ago, you couldn’t go to a treasury conference without hearing about blockchain.
It was going to change everything.
There were presentations, webinars, panel discussions and an awful lot of noise.
Then…
Well, not a lot happened for most treasury teams.
Now there’s another term appearing everywhere:
Stablecoin.
Will they go the same way? I’ve no idea.
But I recently spoke to a Treasurer who had exactly the attitude I think you should have towards these things:
Understand it well enough to make your own mind up.
I think that’s the right approach to ANY new technology.
Because treasury professionals are being bombarded with this stuff at the moment.
And there are two very easy reactions…
You can jump on every new shiny thing and declare it the future.
Or you can roll your eyes and say:
“That’s not relevant to us.”
I don’t think either is particularly clever.
You need to understand something before you can dismiss it.
Blockchain is the perfect example.
Plenty of treasury professionals took the time to understand it and ultimately concluded:
No. Not for us.
That’s fine.
There are companies where there may be a use case, but there are plenty where there isn’t.
Learning about something doesn’t mean you have to use it.
Sometimes learning about it simply allows you to give a much better “no”.
But occasionally, something comes along where the answer is very different…
Look at AI.
Two years ago, if I’d told you to go and ask ChatGPT, plenty of people would have replied:
“Chat what?”
Now I use these tools virtually every day.
They’ve allowed me to do things I’d previously never have the time for.
And that’s when technology becomes interesting to me – because it actually does something practical and useful.
I think every treasury professional should take the time to study new technology that may help them in the role.
While you don’t need to become an expert, you need enough curiosity to understand what it might mean for you.
Because at some point your CFO may walk into your office and say:
“I’ve been reading about stablecoin. Should we be looking at it?”
Or AI.
Or tokenised deposits.
Or whatever comes after those.
They won’t expect a 45-minute technical presentation ready to be presented to the board that day. But a well-prepared Treasurer should be able to have an intelligent conversation.
- What is it?
- What problem could it potentially solve?
- What are the risks?
- Is there actually a use case for our business?
The answer at the end of all that might still be no.
That’s absolutely fine.
In fact, sometimes that’s exactly the right answer.
But there’s a big difference between:
“No, we’ve looked at it and it doesn’t solve a problem we have.”
And:
“No, we don’t do that sort of thing.”
One is good judgment. The other could eventually leave you behind.
So the next time everyone starts talking about the latest thing that’s apparently going to “transform treasury”, you don’t necessarily need to believe the hype…
But don’t automatically dismiss it either.
Learn enough to make your own mind up.
Best regards,
Mike
