How Treasurers Can Avoid Costly Mistakes and Master Risk, Hedging and Liquidity Strategies

Mike Richards, CEO & Founder, The Treasury Recruitment Company: 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.

Mike Richards: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast. We’re interviewing treasury professionals each and every week about their treasury careers. This is a bit of a different one. It’s a special episode of our first ever Treasury Career Corner live in person with Jackie Bowie. Getting that right. The managing partner, head of EMEA at Chatham Financial.

Mike Richards: Now, I’ll get Jackie to describe who Chatham Financial a little bit later, but just to give you an idea, global leader in financial risk management, specializing in debt and derivatives markets, markets. They combine expert services with technology. Help clients across various industries. So we’re going to bring this back to you as treasurers, why this is important.

Mike Richards: It’s a description of Chatham, but also about Jackie and her career. So Jackie, how did you first start in finance treasury over to you?

Jackie Bowie, Managing Partner and Head of EMEA at Chatham Financial: Yes, so I started my career actually in asset management. Having done economics and finance at university, I knew financial markets was where I wanted to be. I did have a very short stint in a pure economist role at RBS and decided that whilst I loved economic research, I didn’t want to spend my days writing about things that no one would ever read.

Jackie Bowie: So decided that my career would be better placed going into what I call the real money decisions. So still really interested in financial markets and economics, but wanted to go into using that expertise and knowledge to actually make decisions. So I did 10 years in asset management. So that was enlisted equities.

Jackie Bowie: And I did us equities. I’m going to And I’m going to pinpoint of what age I am because I managed a tech fund through the late 90s. So the whole boom and bust, completely career defining in so many ways. I then made the switch into the pure derivative market into consultancy in 2003. And that was really a combination of having done 10 years in asset management and loving it, but could see the industry going in a way.

Jackie Bowie: that I didn’t think was right for me. So really quite a big career shift. And just in my kind of personal life, I’d got married. I’d had my first baby and I was thinking I wanted a career that where I was in a bit more control of my own destiny. So moved to a small consultancy firm called JC Rathbone Associates and just went on.

Jackie Bowie: Such a great ride with them as a small entrepreneurial business, very client focused, um, across the UK, a little bit in Europe, a little bit in the US and took that business through to management buyouts, one private equity backed again, huge learning experience with that. You think you know everything about finance until you are at the center of a private equity back transaction when you’re leading it.

Jackie Bowie: And then ultimately the sale to Chatham of the business. And when you’re acquired by another larger competitor. I always get asked the question, well, how did you move from being in charge of everything to then being part of a leadership team? But the transition was really smooth despite COVID that came in the middle of all of that.

Jackie Bowie: So yeah, so when I say I’ve been in financial markets for 30 years, but it’s been so different if you think of the different phases and all the things that have happened in the market in that time. So that’s where I landed where I am today.

Mike Richards: And Chatham itself, I know the company, you guys, very kind sponsors.

Mike Richards: Of our, a lot of our events, and one of the key things is when you then, and I hear Sarah and yourself talking to our clients and explain what Chatham do, what do Chatham do for treasurers and what’s this, you know, who are Chatham if you like?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, so I think the role of the treasurer, if we can have turn it back to them, I see as, and from my vantage point, it’s such a diverse role.

Jackie Bowie: And I think to be. Best in class in cash management, debt capital markets, FX hedging, commodity hedging, industry hedging is, is diverse. So the work that we do with CFOs and with treasurers, and that would be across corporate clients, which is where you see us most, but also in funds, private equity sponsors, real estate.

Jackie Bowie: And we are. Completely independent, so we’re agnostic to your counterparty, to the strategy. Our job is to come in. And the way that treasurers would, or CFOs would deploy our expertise, sometimes it’s for something very specific. It’s event driven. Something has happened and they want to bring in resources and specialist expertise.

Jackie Bowie: So an example might be a business that’s been a carve out from a larger business. So it’s had a parent kind of treasury set up an operation and now it’s kind of a little orphan and doing its own thing. And Chatham would come in to do a project on looking at their treasury set up and looking at their exposures and really setting them on the pathway for a best in class, um, treasury setup.

Jackie Bowie: So some of them will use us as a bit of an outsourcing solution, and some are coming with very project specific. Some will say my role being so diverse, um, and I’ve got the liquidity management under control and the debt capital markets, but actually I want someone who’s in the market every day for derivatives.

Jackie Bowie: So for that part, I’m going to bring in your expertise. So it is a real mix. Chatham do also put people out in secondment from the team, so they’ll go and sit inside the client and that’s where it’s a much more kind of end to end type support. I think the other part of it though, you mentioned just in the introduction about the kind of platform and the tech solutions that sit behind.

Jackie Bowie: And that’s the bit that’s really exciting for me. I’ve come at it from a pure markets perspective and the advisory side. Chatham have tried to listen to what their clients needs and wants are and have built a whole tech solution around. debt derivatives, liability management, and that moves into why is that important.

Jackie Bowie: It’s around valuations and hedge accounting, reporting, transparency, everything in that. So it’s not a full stack TMS. And when we speak to your clients and your contacts, we are not positioning as an end to end TMS, but we can slot in as a kind of the best in class for what we’re good at. Um, and again, that’s been quite a shift for me to learn that different world, but yeah, really interesting pivot using my expertise, but applying it in a slightly different way.

Mike Richards: And how are you guys different, or how do you differentiate from some of the other consultancies? It’s a loaded question, but I know when we spoke about it before, How are you different?

Jackie Bowie: Well, I would say, obviously I worked for a different firm and I read a culture and a process there and then becoming part of Chatham.

Jackie Bowie: I think one is how we’re actually structured and set up. So Chatham’s a large global business, but we’re employee owned. So we take a long term view. Everything is built on long term. client relationships. We’re not chasing just transaction by transaction, which makes us a little bit different. I do also think, and whenever I do interviews like this and I do things on and other media broadcasts, we really want to be at the forefront of leading through education.

Jackie Bowie: And if people take something from that. And don’t ever use us as a partner advisor. Ideally, obviously, we would love to be getting business. But everything we do, we really lead through. This is what we know. This is the knowledge that we have. How can we take that to market and shade it? Because despite all the changes in regulation over the years, and I’ve seen many of them in my career, um, the derivative markets are still pretty opaque.

Jackie Bowie: And there’s still a feeling that it leans more towards, kind of, Bank favor as opposed to end user favor. And we are sitting on the side of the end user to rebalance that information.

Mike Richards: And you mentioned that and actually I wanted to dive in. You’ve had this 25 year career across the financial markets. You talk about the opaqueness.

Mike Richards: What other changes have you seen? You talked about the dot com bubble and burst, but more on the capital market side. What have you seen as it relates to treasury? How have you seen that evolve?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, I think if you, going from the financial crisis, and there were things that, that changed in the markets prior to that, but the financial crisis being a really big, um, pivot in terms of the focus on, um, the lack of transparency in certain markets.

Jackie Bowie: Now obviously the regulators at the time were very focused on, um, the systemic risk. in the financial system as we saw through the banking collapses and the financial crisis and a real lack of understanding of how that was rippling out through the financial system and the real economy and I think you and I had a bit of a joke that everyone should have to watch them the big short.

Jackie Bowie: It’s a good kind of training for graduates and analysts coming in to really the whole complexity. So the regulation was aiming to try and Pull all that apart and make everything more transparent. I think in certain circumstances, it’s probably gone a bit, maybe too far. And some of the clients that we work with, they’re not big financial counterparties.

Jackie Bowie: And they are using derivatives for pure risk management purposes. And they’re caught in this web of increasing reporting and compliance, etc. So that’s been a big shift. And in fact, The point I was making about building out some of the tech solutions is also to address some of that. A requirement to have a complete handle on exposures and, and counterparty risk too.

Jackie Bowie: So I’d say that was certainly one of the big shifts that came, that impacted the business that, that I do every day. I mean, again, going back to the financial crisis, one of the big repercussions of that for anyone that was around in that time is that the banks, the UK banks in particular, did get into a little bit of hot water with Um, big negative mark to mark positions, um, from their borrowers, and having to try and refinance debt at lower LTBs, but then also having to take into account this liability that was on the derivative.

Jackie Bowie: And that then spawned years of catch all of kind of swap mis selling, and I was involved in some of those situations from an expert witness point of view. So again, that independence, but being called in to give an expert opinion to say, was this derivative at risk management and was it properly explained to the end user?

Jackie Bowie: So I think there’s then that kind of change some of the work that we do and I guess the opportunities for an independent, um, point of view because banks then became very cautious. about who they were willing to position derivatives with. The good thing that came out of that is I would say that, particularly in FX and rates, that there was a move towards much more vanilla structures, what we would call real hedges, as opposed to structures that had some bells and whistles on, which makes them less transparent in terms of pricing, but ultimately turns them into less of a hedge.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah. Because it’ll have a knockout or something.

Mike Richards: Everything else is around it. Yeah.

Jackie Bowie: So it’s interesting having conversations here with some of the younger people that weren’t around then that say why would someone hedge their position using an instrument like this? They just can’t quite understand it.

Jackie Bowie: And

Mike Richards: it wasn’t, yeah. It’s not something there. So how did current treasury professionals prepare for those challenges? When they’re dealing with their banks, when they’re dealing with their partners? Is it asking for clarity or what should they be doing? Obviously, we’re an advice podcast. Someone’s listening today.

Mike Richards: They’re a treasury manager. How does this apply to me?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, so I think it depends if they are in a situation with multiple bank counterparties. That’s a very different situation to a corporate treasurer that might only have one or two. We would say be canvassing input from all of your bank counterparties because banks have good structuring teams.

Jackie Bowie: They can come up with really great ideas and I think what happened again just after the financial crisis was Banks would produce more documentation around the structures, but we would joke and say yet. There’s just more Um, disclaimers and non reliance clauses in that, as opposed to an explanation as to what it is.

Jackie Bowie: I would say from a treasurer or an end user’s point of view, is to say, what is my objective? And what am I trying to achieve? What does this look like in a year’s time, in three years time, in five years time? Now, no one has a crystal ball. You can’t say we know exactly what’s going to happen in the markets.

Jackie Bowie: To do some kind of sensitivity testing, not just on market moves, but What is the business objective? And that’s one thing that I really admire about Treasurers as well that we speak to is that they are finance professionals, they’re all very smart, well qualified, but they have to fit their decision making into a broader business strategy and they’re not always at the heart of that.

Jackie Bowie: They’re maybe hearing or they get invited into board meetings and they hear. What the business strategy is, but the decisions on derivatives and hedging and the broader treasury management Needs to fit into what the business objectives are. And again, if you’re listening to your banks coming to you with ideas and structures They won’t have any of that insight Your job then is to try and match that up and to ask yourself those questions And I think if you ask the questions and answered them, honestly, you would move away from some of these more structured products where Not always, so I’m generalizing a little, but usually the more structured the product, the headline rate on day one, whether it’s an FX rate or an interest rate, looks better, but do that time test question?

Jackie Bowie: What does it look like in a year, in two years, in three years? Exactly. And, and could I go into a board meeting in three years time if the market is here and the business strategy is here and still justify that this was the right decision to make?

Mike Richards: emerging trends or risks, if you like, that you think are coming.

Mike Richards: We’ve got political risks, we’ve got lots of different things and turbulence in the market. Is that it, or what are the other things that you

Jackie Bowie: think? So we always use this catch all phrase of it’s the known unknowns, right? So the other things will happen in the markets and you just don’t know exactly what they are.

Jackie Bowie: So it’s that kind of preparedness for the volatility that might come or Sometimes it’s lack of liquidity, right? It could be the repercussion is different, but being prepared for that. And I keep using the financial crisis as the benchmark, but there was a lot of people in 2006 and seven and nearly early 2008 that could not.

Jackie Bowie: Envisage a time when their relationship banks were not going to be there for them. It was just this assumption that liquidity would always be there and those banks would be there. So what happened obviously completely turned that around. I think where we are today of course is there’s a lot of people who are very experienced but they didn’t live through the financial crisis.

Jackie Bowie: But they weren’t at the heart of it. And I always say memories are quite short in financial markets. I would say just If we look at the interest rate market at the moment, it’s just, it’s so interesting because if you were an outside observer, you would say, but how hard can the treasurer’s job be?

Jackie Bowie: Interest rates are falling. That’s easy. It’s actually harder to make the right hedging decision in a falling interest rate environment. When rates are rising, you have to hedge. and you’re trying to hedge it better than the market rate if you can, but, um, or better than what the market’s pricing in. When rates are falling, there’s a bit more of a thought process of saying, well, I can wait because the rates are falling.

Jackie Bowie: And if I hedge now, Well, I have that future proof question in a year, two years, and the interesting thing for the last 12 months has been the market was pricing in and let’s use dollar and sterling as the two markets pricing in fairly significant interest rate cuts, which didn’t come on what we’re finding now, of course, as people coming into the market to hedge and rates are higher than they were when they first looked at it, call it 10 months ago, and they’re saying, but But rates have come down as in spot, so central banks have cut rates, yet my fixed rate and my swap is higher.

Jackie Bowie: And it’s that whole question again of, what is the market pricing in? What does my business plan say? If I could lock in at that rate. Don’t try and make the call on the short term move in the markets because we’ve been proven wrong on that and again Even just a few weeks ago We’re talking about the Fed are gonna cut Markets still expecting to 25 basis point cuts and we were saying but let’s assume a scenario where they don’t cut

Mike Richards: Yeah, because

Jackie Bowie: that’s quite likely.

Jackie Bowie: It’s not like the The worst case scenario that it’s quite likely that they don’t cut at all What does that look like given what the market is pricing in? I, I would stick with my comment that I think it’s actually harder to be brave and make the right hedging decision on rates when rates are falling.

Mike Richards: You touched on technology, obviously treasury management systems, big thing, I had a, I keep coming, harking back to this, one of my recent guests. I said, look, AI is coming along and everyone’s talked about this, but this treasurer said some of my colleagues don’t even switch on their treasury management system.

Mike Richards: So you’ve got a diversity of uses of technology, but obviously a lot of treasurers lay adopters. They’re wanting to see what happens. What are you seeing in technology, innovation, and what are your thoughts?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, and I can understand people who are have access to systems and are not using them because I think part of the I think part of the challenge is many, and I’m not just talking about treasury management systems, many, much of the technology that is available maybe has overpromised and underdelivered, so people have less trust in it, so they say you know what I don’t trust what’s coming out of this or I don’t like the user interface or how I have to input data.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah. I’m just going back to Excel. And everyone reverts back to something they know, it’s familiarity, and they’re comfortable with it. I think the pace at which technology is now developing, and the improvement in quality, it feels like we’re here now. Now I’ve got a bit of bias in my own day to day work because, as I say, coming into this world of Technology solutions inside financial markets and changes actually quite new to me, too And i’ve loved learning all about it and and it is amazing how much technology has moved on I would say that there is more There seems to be more confidence and then this is just based on my sample of clients that I speak to that some of the systems that are now available in the market and that they can have more trust in them.

Jackie Bowie: So that should lead to better user adoption, right? Once you then lay it on the whole. AI part. I think the trust element just blows up because we’re like, Oh, I don’t trust it. Where is that information going once it’s in the bot or the system? I know we were very cautious about it here. You don’t want to be, you can’t give away sensitive information, but actually I was having a conversation, um, this morning with my husband and he was saying that he was on a call and they asked if they could use.

Jackie Bowie: this, I won’t mention the name of it because I don’t want to promote, but this specific AI tool that would basically record and then summarise the conversation. And at first I said, well, like a transcript, we’ve been doing that for years. That’s not very forward thinking. And he said, no, they finished the call after 45 minutes within 30 seconds.

Jackie Bowie: It was here are the key takeaways, five bullet points. Here were the key numbers that were discussed, and he said they were all right bar one, where a six had become a zero or something, but someone proofread it, and he said that whole instantaneous summary, we all agreed that was the summary, so instead of having to go back to your desk and whatever, and he’s a real sceptic about these things, and he’s, I’m sold, like, this is it.

Jackie Bowie: So it does feel like the way that part of technology development is going. And again, we see it here in our business and how we can deploy it safely. Um, now we just need to wait and see what the regulators are going to do about regulating AI. And I

Mike Richards: think you’re right. I think also, and I think I use the same tool.

Mike Richards: And what is scary or what’s amazing was one of my clients the other day got the same email with the action points that we agreed. And I got my action points. She got her action points and things that probably would have taken a week to get together. By the end of the day, we’d sent out the paperwork and it was like, wow, okay.

Mike Richards: And it’s taking out that manual. But I think there is room precaution when that brings it on to the next bit. So given these challenges and the outlook. There are challenges treasurers are sometimes a little bit not overly cautious. That’s what they’re going to be. But what are the opportunities as well?

Mike Richards: What do you know AI maybe the use of that or what are the opportunities? Do you think treasurers should be thinking about?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, so I think there’s there’s a couple of things we’ve talked a lot about the tech side and Getting more confident in the platforms and systems that they’re using that are giving them and it’s not data for data sakes Accurate data is number one.

Jackie Bowie: That’s the foundation, right? Is the information correct? Once you’ve achieved that level, it’s okay. Data for decision making. How do I then use this to represent? Treasury at the board meeting to represent my company externally to stakeholders, et cetera. So it’s, and that’s where some of the more kind of added value AI, whatever, could come into play.

Jackie Bowie: So, but I still feel that at that stage of saying, is the data actually correct? Have I got a real handle on my exposures globally or all my counterparty credit risk and that part of it? So I think that’s one. But moving away from the technology, we are looking across the markets at all of the new liquidity providers that have come in.

Jackie Bowie: And as we look at how banks deploy their balance sheets for lending, how the kind of bond market both here in the UK as well as globally. But then there’s this whole extra liquidity coming from the private debt, private credit market. And some people will say, Oh, that’s just debt that’s used for like these unitrans type providers for private equity back higher levered situations, perhaps higher risk.

Jackie Bowie: But when we’re talking to clients, we’re actually seeing these different sources of liquidity coming into play. For me, I think should. should always be out in the market. It might not be suitable for them right now, but these sources of liquidity are changing all the time. And also keep going back to the financial crisis, being reliant on incumbent lenders from using their own balance sheet from a kind of senior term debt perspective is.

Jackie Bowie: Is not the way is alternatives liquidity anymore. And it’s not always about the lowest price either. Some of the private debt and the funds and the tran providers. Okay? The actual headline cost of the debt might be more if it will be more than what a bank can lend at. But if you look at all the other components of it, so I would make that same.

Jackie Bowie: Or be aware of that and make that same decision, the same as I was saying you would do with derivatives. Look at the business plan and say, does this work for me? As opposed to just saying, it’s not about the headline rate of interest only. So I think there’s loads of opportunities, both on tech, data, productivity, and sources of liquidity in the market.

Mike Richards: Now you, moving on to the people side of the business, if you like, I know that’s a passion of yours and we, we talked in our meeting recently about mentorship and you do the fostering talent, giving feedback, number of things, obviously a lot of people listening and watching will actually. You know, be managing and coaching teams.

Mike Richards: What sort of advice would you give them, maybe? Just general advice, then we’ll deep dive a little bit.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, so I think I’ve probably changed my stance over the years. And I’ve told this story to some of my colleagues here. When I first started managing a team of people, I remember coming around to the year end where they give 360 feedback.

Jackie Bowie: And We’re always a bit nervous thinking, what will they say about me as a manager and a leader? And when I read the feedback, from a few different people, but I’m going to take the two extremes. One of them was, she’s a great manager, leader, she spends time, she’s interested, she really wants to help you develop, she gives you autonomy, blah blah blah.

Jackie Bowie: All great, I’m all smiley and happy. The opposite one, I mean, you’d think they’d written about a totally different person. And, and you, of course, and you don’t look at the positive feedback, you’re only hanging on the negative feedback. And I talked to my manager at the time and said, clearly one of them’s wrong.

Jackie Bowie: And he said, yeah, and it’s you. You’re the one that’s wrong. And I said, but I’ve managed them the same, I’ve given them the both the same time and attention. And he said, and that’s what you did wrong. Because they’re different people and you’ve managed them the same and it’s, I mean, it sounds so obvious, but it’s a real light bulb moment to say as a manager and a leader, it’s got to be about individualization and we do a lot of work here on our strengths and we use an external consultant and everyone in the team goes through these kind of strengths workshops and a really big part of that is how you give and receive information and how someone else So I think it’s from a manager kind of mentor perspective, it is about real, what’s worked with someone else will not necessarily work with another person because they’re bringing a whole load of different situations with them and you don’t know what they are.

Jackie Bowie: All you can see is the overt behavior. And you’re saying, I want to give them constructive feedback, but how will they take that? And to do that, you really need to get to know them. And so we do spend a lot of time here getting to know people personally. I don’t mean asking them intimate questions about their personal life.

Jackie Bowie: But actually, and I always say, as a manager, be really honest. And then people will be really honest back with you. Because I think when you get to a senior position in particular, People think, oh, but you’ve achieved all this and, and they don’t realise that, it’s not saying it has to be a rocky road the whole way, but it’s by no means a smooth journey.

Jackie Bowie: The things that you’ve had to deal with throughout your career, um, whether it be external events, whether it be personal things, whether it’s that questioning of did I make the right decision. Everyone has done that. So, I often think if you can open yourself up to people, then they’ll open up to you. And that’s how you can really help them to develop and grow and mentor them.

Jackie Bowie: So, I much prefer an informal form of mentoring. We, in my, where I worked before, we had a more kind of formal mentoring program. People were forced to sign up and it felt a little bit engineered and not as authentic as, but to make it informal, you have to have very motivated managers that are willing to really push themselves out there to connect with people, catch up with them.

Jackie Bowie: And I’ll have managers who’ll come to me and say, I’ve been working with this person. I don’t think I’m the right. person to mentor them? Is there anyone else in the business you think they should informally connect with just to help them think about their career trajectory inside Chatham or could be outside Chatham?

Jackie Bowie: Some people will come and say I’m not sure this is the career for me and again I don’t take that personally at all and you must see this all the time.

Mike Richards: I do and the salary survey proves it. This is one of the things that when I get this and I had this with this US group of treasurers, just post lockdown, they were asking me, they’re saying, Oh, we’ve got all these problems with our staff.

Mike Richards: What do we do? I said, but it’s really easy. It’s all about you. And they were like, what? I said, look, these are the reasons people leave. And I said, if you go back to them and ask these three questions. How am I as a boss and be prepared exactly as you said for the feedback also asking the people about their career progression, where do I go next?

Mike Richards: But it’s your responsibility, not just theirs. Yeah, they shared. And the other one was work life balance, which is also an interesting one, because I’m going to come back to that as well. But that’s what I see as well with the treasurers. And the fact is, we survey 1400 people. We have the facts and figures, but also it’s a market survey, so we actually understand that.

Mike Richards: And you’re, you know, testament to it as well, that you’re having that 180, 360 feedback.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah. Yeah, as I say, it’s not always a comfortable position to be in, but yeah, I’ve opened up to

Mike Richards: it. Going back to that work life balance, how have you, what advice would you give to, you’ve managed it very successfully, what advice do you give to your team?

Mike Richards: What advice do you give to our listeners and viewers?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, so I have to confess that I was asked this question in an interview before, and it was on a, it went on a broadcast, and They cut out some of the bits I said and took Don’t

Mike Richards: worry, we’re not cutting any bits out, we don’t want to do

Jackie Bowie: that. Please listen to the full answer.

Jackie Bowie: And it was one of these ones that ended up being broadcast very wide. And the sort of line was something like, don’t chase work life balance. And that’s not what I said. What I said is, there are times in your life and throughout your career where you are all in. And you may be, but if you love what you do, you don’t crave the break from it.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah. Now you do need still to have downtime. Yeah. Because you need time to decompress, to reflect, to learn. But there are times where you’re just all in and you have to a, learn to recognize that, but know when the pressure is off a little, that the to-do list never disappears. It replenishes itself constantly, and you have to learn to know when you can dial it down a little and take some time for yourself.

Jackie Bowie: And if I think throughout, and everyone’s where they are in their personal lives makes a big impact too, but for me, early in my career, I had no responsibilities other than me. It was come to work, learn, work really hard. I did my professional exam that is a part time masters. I was all in worked long hours, loved it.

Jackie Bowie: Just learning, learning, learning. Once I got married and had children, of course, then you have to say, okay, I have to pick and choose a little bit. And there are some times when your domestic and family commitments. Whether it be to pets, parents, siblings, children, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has a domestic responsibility.

Jackie Bowie: Then you have to learn to dial it back without feeling guilty about it. And that’s hard because you’re like, I, I should be doing this or I should be doing that. And I think I eventually just got into this rhythm of telling myself that you cannot be. Always on all of the time, but there are times, and it could be a week or two weeks, if we’re working on a really big client transaction, we’re meeting deadlines, you’re all in and you’re sacrificing your social life, your time at the gym, your time with your family.

Jackie Bowie: But as soon as that’s done, then you can, you’re still working, but you just learn to dial it back a little. And what I was saying is. Which was taken out of context is if you put all of your or if you put a lot of emotional energy Into I need to have a work life balance. I need to have a work life balance to me.

Jackie Bowie: That’s a waste of energy Accept it. And if you’re not willing to then I’d say maybe you’re in the wrong career Find something that you’re willing to have those

Mike Richards: And so you’re talking there about getting that balance and being conscious of it, maybe. How do I get them without, as you say, spending too much energy on it.

Mike Richards: You’re all, as you say to your husband, right. These next two weeks, by the way. It’s all in and then we’ll have a bit more time or is that the way you’ve managed? Yeah,

Jackie Bowie: and it doesn’t always play out exactly like that But I’m very fortunate that I get to travel lots with my job But that takes me away from home sometimes over weekends and for travel and I always Try and make sure then okay.

Jackie Bowie: I’m coming back on Saturday morning and then I’m not going to work at all on Saturday. I might catch up a bit on Sunday, but really, and also I find, and it’s probably an age thing too, that some of the problems that you’re kind of grappling with, when there’s always challenges and problems coming from clients, coming from running the business, that sometimes if you’re too in it, you can’t solve it.

Mike Richards: Yeah, you need to step back.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, and, and it’s so cliched, but it, But it is true, and I find that actually, whether it’s going to the gym, I do a lot of Pilates now that I’m older, not so much running, and I find those times when you’re not actively thinking about it, that suddenly And I’m not saying it’s like light bubble, there’s the answer, but it just starts to go into perspective a bit more.

Jackie Bowie: But I certainly was not like that in my 20s. And I couldn’t get that kind of introspection quite so much as I do now that I’m much older.

Mike Richards: So not quite at the end and we’ll come back to that later, but just before we get there. Challenges for treasurers. You’re talking to as many people as me, in a different perspective actually, different angle, which is interesting.

Mike Richards: What do you see as the greatest challenges for treasurers? I know you’re at conferences, you speak on panels, you speak on various things. They should be thinking about what should they be preparing for?

Jackie Bowie: Gosh, it is so different, but I suppose we could pick up a couple of things that we’ve talked about already.

Jackie Bowie: So one is, I am just amazed at how diverse their role is and how they have to try and master all the different elements of that. I think it is a very confident treasurer that will come out for third party help and support. And sometimes our involvement comes from the CFO or sometimes the board. And then we work very close partnership with the treasurer.

Jackie Bowie: So I think it’s Within that very broad role is understanding a which bits you really love and being really good at them and not thinking that you have to be amazing all the different parts of it. Sometimes when I speak to treasurers and I’m going to throw the question back to you is I’m always interested on what they believe their career trajectory is.

Jackie Bowie: Is it to become a more senior treasurer? Is it to move to another firm and be part of a. Bigger treasury team, so doing the same things but with a bigger team, or is it the journey to CFO or something like that? The treasurers that I speak to, they tend to, they’ll maybe move, come to the company, kind of doing the same kind of thing, but maybe, to the point I was making, where if they’re more interested in the capital market side, they might go work somewhere where it’s, they’re managing a big bond issuance program or something that’s different.

Jackie Bowie: Um, But I think from their perspective, it’s that diversity of the role. It’s getting behind the technology that will actually help them do their job and trusting that it’s the right platform and system. And then thinking about their own. Career journey and where do they and we’ve hired people here who’ve come from in house Treasury that then come into advisory consultancy and then they get a really broad view of Kind of good and bad and everything in between a few people have come to me to say I’m thinking about switching So I’m thinking about switching So I think that’s one of the challenges for treasurers as we think about this, what’s the career trajectory and where do they want to go long term?

Mike Richards: And that’s the answer. And the answer to that, I would say the very different, it depends. And what I mean by that is I get some treasurers who come to me and they are, they want the career path to CFO. I think that is actually nowadays more open to them. I would say 10, 15 years ago, treasurers have put themselves.

Mike Richards: A little bit in a box, a bit of a corner, got a bit of a pay rise. Now they’re much more partnering with the business and that’s really helping them with their treasury careers and then their general finance careers. But there are also some treasury specialists and they just, what they love treasury so much, they’re going to stay within that and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Mike Richards: But it’s interesting for me when I’m talking to those clients because they are, and I’ll talk to a client and they say, we want someone like this. And they, you know, you have to then mold it with them as well.

Jackie Bowie: Yeah, I think that’s the point we were mentioning earlier that I think treasurers that can really make their decisions and drive the business, but understanding how that connects into the operational business, whether it’s consumer, retail, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, whatever it is, is really making that connection is really important.

Jackie Bowie: And I guess for those that want to move on to CFOs, that is. That’s key. That’s the difficult part. Yeah.

Mike Richards: So I want to be respectful of your time. So we’re going to put your LinkedIn details in the show notes so people can connect to you and they’d be lucky to have you. But as we do each and every week, takeaways.

Mike Richards: If you reflect back on it and someone’s listening today or watching today, they are a treasury manager or maybe a more senior treasurer. What advice would you give to them? What should they be thinking about do’s and don’ts or what are your thoughts?

Jackie Bowie: Yeah. Um, so I’ll do the personal bit first. Um, so. Yeah, getting a bit of a repeat, but if you’re in the job that you love and you want to be really good at, be prepared to make the sacrifices, but know that you can dial it back.

Jackie Bowie: It doesn’t need to be always on, all the time. Remember that if someone is mentoring you, that you still have the opportunity to mentor someone else. It might not always be in your professional environment. I’ve kind of informally mentored people that I haven’t met professionally, and you have met them through personal relationships, and I think that.

Jackie Bowie: If you’re in a treasury rule, don’t underestimate that people might hang on to your advice. Um, even if it’s not in a professional setting, um, but be prepared to take some of that tough feedback, especially if you’re early in your career. Um, it’s not a negative, it’s to help you grow and develop. And then from a market perspective, I’d say on the technology and development side, be more open about how much technology has.

Jackie Bowie: Um, developed in the last couple of years and maybe be a bit more trusting of what it can do to, to help you and your rule on the pure markets that are broader sources of liquidity available. Be open to exploring them, even if not for now, it might be in the future. And yeah, don’t try and call that interest rate market based on central bank expectations.

Mike Richards: Nowhere. What a wrap up. There you