What Managing $20B in Crisis Liquidity Taught Me – and What Every Treasury Professional Should Know

What do you get when a classically trained percussionist trades the concert hall for the corporate boardroom?

In this episode, we uncover the extraordinary journey of Evan Bertrand from performing orchestral music to leading treasury and investor relations at major corporations during times of crisis, growth, and transformation.

This is an inspiring story of reinvention, resilience, and the real-world impact of finance at the highest level.

Listen on:

Featuring

Evan Bertrand

Director of Investor Relations at Forward Air Corporation

Mike Richards

CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company

About this episode

Evan Bertrand is the Director of Investor Relations at Forward Air Corporation, a leading international logistics and trucking company. With a career spanning ExxonMobil, Solera, and Six Flags, Evan has carved out a unique path from classical music to high-stakes corporate finance, specializing in treasury operations, cash management, and capital markets.

His cross-industry experience and dual expertise in treasury and investor relations offer valuable insights for finance professionals navigating change and complexity.

Main topics discussed:

  • How Evan transitioned from a professional music career to finance and ultimately to treasury and investor relations.

  • His early roles at ExxonMobil and the importance of rotational programs and mentorship.

  • Managing a $20B commercial paper program during an oil price collapse and steering Six Flags through the pandemic.

  • Constructing a global treasury function from scratch post-LBO at Solera, including ERP-banking integration.

  • The benefits and strategic impact of combining treasury and investor relations into one role.

  • Key trends shaping treasury today—automation, fraud prevention—and the mindset shifts that shaped Evan’s career.

You can connect with Evan Bertrand on LinkedIn.

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Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast. We’re interview treasury professionals at their treasury careers. Each and every week I talk to treasury about how they build their careers, where they are now, and where they see both themselves and the treasury profession. Going to next in this week’s show, I’m joined by Evan Bertand, the Director of Investor Relations at an international logistics and trucking company.

Mike Richards: Forward Air Corporation for over 40 years forward has been grown to. Leading ground transportation provider and related shipping services of North American Air Freight and expedited LTL market. Yeah. I’m going to get Evan explain about it. There’s so much in here. It’s basically the wholesale transportation community.

Mike Richards: You’ve got logistics, you’ve got freight forwarders. Air, cargo, everything. So I’ll get Evan to explain who for what are, he can do a bit more of a, uh, PR pitch for those guys. But first of all, we’re going to go back to the beginning how Evan started in finance and then got into treasury. It’s your show. Over to you, sir.

Mike Richards: I

Evan Bertrand, Director of Investor Relations, Forward Air Corporation: appreciate it, Mike. And um, just want to make a point that I really appreciate what you’re doing with this podcast. Thank you. Really enjoyed listening to it. It’s interesting kind of hearing everyone’s story and what kind of surprises me is that everyone’s journey is very different. And what people do is very different.

Evan Bertrand: And you would think like treasury, it’s, we could say treasury is this, it’s managing cash, it’s managing the capital structure. But when you really get down into the day to day, everyone’s experience is very different, which maybe that sounds pretty simple, but I think it a lot depends on the company that you’re with, the industry that you’re in, as well as just.

Evan Bertrand: What the, what’s needed at the time, the macro environment and everything. So I’ve really enjoyed it.

Mike Richards: Thank you very much. And yeah, and that’s why we do it. I’ve said to people in the past that if, if you were in tax, you’ve got the rule books, you have to follow the rules and everything else. If you’re in treasury, you take the rule books, you read them, and then you throw ’em out the window and do your own thing.

Mike Richards: Um, it’s about, I meet treasurers at conferences and you have 10 different treasurers that all do different jobs. They’ve all got the same title, but they all do it different ways. Cash rich debt, la and again, that’s why there’s so much variety And talking to people like yourself, cause you’ve got a very interesting sort of career history.

Mike Richards: And then with your current role, how that’s evolved. So take us back to the beginning. So you started in finance with Exxon. Before that, as we were just talking, you were doing undergrad and whatever. You were a musician, as we can see on the video if anyone’s watching today. So how did this all come about?

Mike Richards: So you went from school and then in as a musician. Talk us through Interesting.

Evan Bertrand: I guess if you want to go to the very beginning, that would be, I started my career in music, actually studied orchestral music at Rice University, was playing percussion. Got a job with the Jacksonville Symphony when I was outta school.

Evan Bertrand: Wow. And did that for a couple years. Like that was the path I was gonna do that for the rest of my life. And the question I always get is, so how do you go from music to finance and yeah. Like everything else, it wasn’t part of some master plan, it just happened. So I guess what I would say is while I was doing music, I got really interested in just investing and was fascinated by just the markets and I wanted to read up on it.

Evan Bertrand: So I immersed myself in that world. I read a lot of books and not the goofy like. Here’s the secrets to investing, but more like actually trying to understand the economics, the markets,

Mike Richards: the mechanics and everything else.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, exactly. Like even just answering simple questions like what is a bond? What is the stock market?

Evan Bertrand: What’s L-I-B-O-R? Just things like that. I got totally immersed in and did that for a while. And at the time, just as background, it was this sort of been mid two thousands, so obviously a pretty interesting time in the economy and. Working for a nonprofit, like in an orchestra. We were feeling a lot of pressure pretty early on, like as early as 2007.

Evan Bertrand: And being young in my career and having to deal with that, there was, there was just always this part of me that I was like, maybe, maybe long term this is not the way to go. ’cause obviously when you have these business cycles that can be pretty rough in that industry. Around the time the recession hit, I’d already taken the GMAT and thought about what I could do and it.

Evan Bertrand: I felt like getting my MBA was probably the best way to go because it really provided the most options. So if you think about, there was some other things I could’ve done, just go directly into the industry, or if you get an MBA, it’s like you have more options available to you. So after playing in Jacksonville, I did a brief stint in Charleston, South Carolina, and then ultimately went to business school in Houston.

Evan Bertrand: And while I was there, this was 2009, so there was. A lot of involuntary career changes there. So interesting dynamic. Everyone was going through the same thing, and while I was there I was thinking I’d go the investment banking route, but as time went on, I realized that corporate finance was probably a better fit because I liked the fact that you’d be working for a company versus like consulting or investment banking, where you’re really more of an advisor.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. Uh, and there was a couple choices ’cause I was still new to this. I didn’t know if I wanted to do accounting, fp and a whatever, so corporate finance seemed to be the right route. ExxonMobil recruited on campus. They had a great rotational program. So I thought for someone like me who didn’t really have the background, this was the best place to go because they could do the training.

Evan Bertrand: They had the rotational program and also at the time, they had the possibility for expat work, which I was really interested in. So my first job at ExxonMobil was an FP and a role. Did that for a couple years, and then I was rotated into the treasury group. And my job, this was my first job in treasury. I was managing their commercial paper program, and at the time it was this, I would say pretty basic commercial paper program.

Evan Bertrand: Not very big, but right at the time I started, that’s when crude. Kind of crashed. It went from like $80 to, I think below 20 at one point. Wow. And so we really leaned pretty heavily on that commercial paper program because maximum ExxonMobil’s not really a huge, they don’t have a ton of debt relative to their size.

Evan Bertrand: And with oil falling the way it did, there was a big reliance on the short-term liquidity program. I think we got the commercial paper as high as like 19 or 20 billion. So it was very active. I learned a lot. I loved that job because I was really dealing, it was. First opportunity, I really had to deal with people outside of ExxonMobil.

Evan Bertrand: ’cause when you’re an fp and a, most of what you do is internal. Internal,

Mike Richards: yeah.

Evan Bertrand: And this, you’re dealing with your investors and you’re dealing with ’em at a time where it’s challenging. Like before you could just print the paper, but now there’s a lot of concern about oil prices and liquidity and things like that.

Evan Bertrand: So it was a, a challenging time, but.

Mike Richards: And you are also quite at that stage, you’re quite young, you’re quite new to it, and fresh faced sort of thing as well. How did you deal with that? ’cause if there’s someone listening today in their early stage of their career, they go very well. But, and then, but you were quite early, it wasn’t like you were an experienced person at that stage.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, and I think that’s to Exxon’s credit, they’re really good about the training, so yeah. With the rotational programs, it’s a very coordinated process. You’re never like jumping into a job and you’re on your own. There’s a very smooth handover, which again, that’s, that is usually not the case, but everything was very coordinated, so I had a good mentor there.

Evan Bertrand: And part of it was really just having that mentorship, but also it, it was something I found uniquely interesting. I really got into it and. Actually at the time too, I was completing my CFA, so there was a little bit of overlap. I think that was part of the reason why they put me in the role is that there was a lot of kind of training that I was doing on my own that really helped out in the role.

Evan Bertrand: But yeah, you’re right. It’s, it can be scary, but I found it pretty fun.

Mike Richards: Yeah, good. But it’s, you had some good support people there to lean on and everything else sort of thing, so that helped. Yeah. Yeah. And then, then you moved on. Talk us through the move. What, how did you transition?

Evan Bertrand: That was just an opportunity that kind of popped up like I was, I was doing the job at Exxon, and I think part of it was all the jobs that you do there, it’s part of rotation and so you’ll do it for 18 to 24 months and move out.

Evan Bertrand: And I was really liking what I was doing and I didn’t want to give it up. I wanted to keep doing it and building this skillset and this opportunity at Sora came up where? This was a company that had been public, they had recently gone private LBO, so they had tons of debt and they was in the process of taking what was more of a holding company and going towards more of a, an operating model and consolidating corporate operations.

Evan Bertrand: And who are they? And so who

Mike Richards: are they for the people that

Evan Bertrand: don’t know? Oh, solar. Okay. At the time they were, their main business was really insurance claims processing. So. Just to put it real simple, if you get in a car accident and you call the insurance company, you’re likely not calling the insurance company that that piece of it gets outsourced and then the end to end process of essentially you making the claim and you getting the check, all of that stuff is handled by a third party and then that’s where we come in.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, they had other parts of the business, but that was really bread and butter at the time.

Mike Richards: Yeah,

Evan Bertrand: yeah. Soro is a very global company. I think we had. Offices in like 90 countries, I think. And they were operating very much like a holding company. Everything was very independent and they actually didn’t even have a global treasury function.

Evan Bertrand: So I was asked to come in and really start to build that out, and that was obviously a pretty interesting opportunity because I had spent so much time at this very large, sophisticated company. Everything was just. It’s a finely tuned machine. Everything was topnotch and I was going to this situation where it’s, I didn’t have anything.

Evan Bertrand: I, we didn’t even have processes documented or anything like that. You, you were running them out from bank sheet to

Mike Richards: paper, literally, and go, how do I do this? Yeah. Even

Evan Bertrand: just walking in and trying to level set, okay, how many bank accounts do we have? Who’s doing what? And for the most part, day to day. Cash management like AP and collections and things like that was obviously all handled at the individual business unit level.

Evan Bertrand: So just the process of trying to pull all of that stuff in, it’s a really brute force process. Yeah. It’s not like there’s this command on I and everyone just does it. Like you have to go out there and you have to develop the process. You have to take stock of the landscape, get your hands around. Like I said, even just.

Evan Bertrand: Finding out how many bank accounts you have. And then the most important thing, and this has been a common theme I’ve noticed, is that when you have a company that is chugging along, they have good margins, they’re making plenty of money. Cash is the last thing they think about.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Evan Bertrand: And then all of a sudden you do a transaction, you get $3 billion of debt, and then all of a sudden cash is the most important thing.

Evan Bertrand: So to flip on a dime like that is tough because the first thing is you need to have a cash forecast. And so that really is almost always the first thing that you need to do in these situations. Just get your head around like what your cash flows look like, what’s your liquidity? Because when you’re in a situation like that, an LBO, it’s like that you could run outta liquidity pretty quickly.

Evan Bertrand: So that’s obviously very important.

Mike Richards: And any tips for people again. As you said, you going back to the brute force idea, were you just like picking on the phone, shouting, give me my money, gimme this. What? Who do you bank with? Or, I know you didn’t do that. What I’m saying is how did you do it? What if someone’s in a similar situation out there listening today?

Mike Richards: That’s pretty close.

Evan Bertrand: I think you have to be like, part of it is being nicer about it, but in reality, yeah, it is. There’s a little bit of a turf war mindset sometimes, especially when. You have a company that’s been really inquisitive, is that, ’cause in, in a lot of cases you could be a company that’s gone through 12 or 13 acquisitions, but you’re dealing with people who were there for 20 years.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. And they have no idea what’s going on outside of their individual business units. So I, I found obviously there is a little bit of that. Like you just have to figure out who is doing what. But then there is a little bit of a marketing campaign. And this was my first time doing it. So there was a lot of lessons learned.

Evan Bertrand: For me, it’s not, I did everything perfectly. There was a lot of missteps, but I think when I finally realized that you do have to make your case to people as to why it’s so important, and I think one of the ways I was able to do that is just showing them what the bigger picture looks like, showing them that, okay, now we have three, $4 billion of debt.

Evan Bertrand: We have. This much liquidity. Our interest rates are this, we produce X million dollars outside of the US, but all of our debt sits in the us. That means we have to repatriate this much every year. And guess what? Every dollar that we leave stranded is costing us 10%.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And then with, how did you manage the complexity of all that, all those streams, and that must have been, yeah.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, it, it’s definitely like an 80 20 approach. Obviously some countries you just deprioritize as far as like, where are you gonna focus getting the cash, because every pipeline that you have, you need to build it out. Yeah. The first question is always gonna be, what is the mechanism I’m gonna use to pull cash into the country?

Evan Bertrand: And so that, that means you need to work really closely with tax. Probably have a good outside advisor that can help with that kind of stuff. With a company that’s as global as Sora was. Obviously all of that stuff is very much in place because that’s a big part of the business. Yeah. And then of course when you do have that many pockets of cash, you’re dealing with a consolidated cash forecast.

Evan Bertrand: So I built one in the us obviously that’s where most of the money was. And also that was probably the more streamlined. Account structure, so it was a little bit easier, but then you had to look at, well, where am I generating most of the cash? Then you go to the next country and the next country and you need to start building out a cash forecast for everyone.

Evan Bertrand: And then just having a, A routine where, yeah, whether it’s monthly calls or an email or whatever, you just have that routine. You set the expectation of what’s needed, and then just, it just needs to be like a reflex

Mike Richards: essentially. And then you made the move to Six Flags, and that’s where I know there was originally I’d seen your details and everything else.

Mike Richards: Can you talk us through what happened next? You’d been at Solar for what, four and a half years and then Six Flags came along?

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, so the common theme in my career has been, I’m always going somewhere where cash is becoming a major issue. So when I went to do the commercial paper at Exxon, crude filled 20 bucks.

Evan Bertrand: When I went to Sora, they had recently LBO and now it’s Six Flags. I joined right in the middle of Covid. So again, a business that was just printing money before

Mike Richards: a seasonal consumer focused business. And you joined it in the middle of lockdown. I’m not saying anything about your decisions ’cause we didn’t know about Covid.

Mike Richards: But what was that like for you? How did you manage?

Evan Bertrand: Well, I saw it as a good opportunity ’cause the, I think the quarter. I joined, revenue had fallen by over 90%. His stock had taken a huge hit. And personally I was looking at it as this is gonna come back, obviously this is temporary. And that ended up being pretty much the case.

Evan Bertrand: Like I joined in 2020, but then 2021 was a great year

Mike Richards: record. Yeah.

Evan Bertrand: But that being said, it was, we were still dealing with the issue of cash and you were joining a company where. Margins were really high. They were producing a lot of cash flow. So there wasn’t really that rigor around, like I said, that the cash forecasting and all the processes, now Six Flags is a little bit simpler than SL was.

Evan Bertrand: ’cause 90% of your business is in the United States. So I wasn’t dealing a lot with the international piece as much. Yeah. What I would say made it a lot more difficult was that I, I guess the business model, you’re not dealing in a B2B where you have maybe 20 or 30,000 customers. You have millions of customers.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And the throughputs are just ridiculous.

Evan Bertrand: Exactly. So you have millions of customers and you’re trying to predict what their spending patterns are gonna be coming out of this massive pandemic.

Mike Richards: And also a seasonal business. So where do you then, you talked about the 80 20, where did you spend 80? What were the things you did?

Mike Richards: And the 80%, I mean, at Solari was really about just

Evan Bertrand: identifying where most of your cash is being generated. Yeah. So understanding the business and the seasonality, which at Solari didn’t really have that problem as much with Six Flags, like I said, a little bit simpler. So really it was step number one.

Evan Bertrand: You gotta build a cash forecast, which that was. Very challenging based on the points that we were just saying. So it’s like you have to predict what the ticket sales are gonna be, what past sales are gonna be. You need to understand what the working capital implications are of a selling a ticket versus the season pass or a season pass of the payment plan or a membership, which we had at the time.

Evan Bertrand: The working capital piece was a huge challenge. Plus at the time we had 27 parks. So you’d have to do that at an individual park level for it to make any sense. You can’t really do it at a high level, you know that that was definitely the challenge there. But like I said, 2021 was a very good year. We, when I came in, we were in the middle of a, because of covid, obviously there was some downsizing and they had undergone an ERP integration.

Evan Bertrand: What I had done is when I got in, I was in the middle of that process and I had mentioned, I was like, have you thought about integrating the banks directly with your ERP? Because you can take advantage of things like straight through processing and automating some of your reports, and that hadn’t been considered when I got there.

Evan Bertrand: So I came in really at a good time because I was able to work on that integration while they were implementing the rp. Versus having to do it after the fact. Yeah. And that was really fundamental in facilitating the, the reduction force and trying to consolidate things from 27 different parks into corporate, which they were also doing at the time.

Mike Richards: And you had to do it in a short time period as well.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, it was probably from end to end, it was over a year, but obviously that was, it was a big undertaking. ’cause like I said, similar to a solar was the day to day. Cash management was happening at essentially 27 different parks and after Covid that was being consolidated in, into corporate

Mike Richards: and just.

Mike Richards: With that. And it brings up an interesting point that I, people say to me, do treasurers need to be it guys? Do they need to be data geeks? And I’m like, no, but they need to understand it and they, you need to translate it. Or those you, you are the go between, if you like the translator to here’s the ERP, here’s what the end result, and that’s where you sit as a treasurer with yourself, obviously technically strong and everything else, but is that where you see your role sort of thing?

Evan Bertrand: You definitely need a good banking partner because ultimately they’re gonna be the most in the know as to what the new technology is. But it helped starting my career at Exxon because I was seeing the final product. Yeah. And this is a company that had the best TMS. They had, everything was fully integrated.

Evan Bertrand: They had totally fully documented processes. So I saw what the end state was. And so when you go into. Maybe a smaller company that doesn’t have all that stuff implemented already. You can see, all right, we can get a lot of value if we do this

Mike Richards: Well. Good. Looks like, yeah, this is the perfect working model.

Mike Richards: Let’s get as close to that as we can.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, exactly.

Mike Richards: Yeah. But how do you do that when you’re blocking and tackling and you’ve got a smaller tick, massive, global, multinational, lots of star. Yeah. Just lean person. Not in that situation. How did you do

Evan Bertrand: in this case, like. ERP implementation, it helps that the process is already underway.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah, because obviously if you do it after the fact, you have to reinitiate this process. Yeah, exactly. The other thing is, like I said, having a good banking partner. It’s one thing having ’em keep you in the loop as to the newest technologies, but you need to lean on them as well for these implementations.

Evan Bertrand: I’ve done multiple RFPs before for different projects, and that’s usually one of the first questions is like, how do you manage your projects? What sort of resources can you provide? What does project management look like for you? And so that’s a huge part of any RFP that I would do.

Mike Richards: And so then let’s bring ourselves a bit more up to date.

Mike Richards: So you with Six Flags, but then you, you became then the, you took on investor relations as well. How did that come about? That

Evan Bertrand: was, so I was doing a little bit of investor relations at, so it was a little bit different because it was a private company, but a lot of the same. Processes, working with the board, putting together the earnings presentation.

Evan Bertrand: I was doing that stuff and that was, I was really enjoying it too. And so when I joined Six Flags, my boss at the time was the head of treasury and investor relations, and I told him early on, I was like, I would love to learn more about most relations for public company. He brought me in. He was a really good mentor and so pretty much from day one I was running the treasury operations, but also doing investor relations and learning a lot about what the public side looks like

Mike Richards: and what does that look like.

Mike Richards: Again, if someone is listening, what are the top tips there? Do this, don’t do that

Evan Bertrand: on public company investor relations. Yeah. I’m still figuring that out, I’ll be honest. Okay. But I would say number one, obviously. Ma maintaining good relationships, like staying in touch. And I think this is more of a broad point, even with treasury, actually, especially with treasury, I’ve always tried to foster very close relationships with my banking partners because ultimately they’re a great resource.

Evan Bertrand: They can be very informative, they’re very helpful, and especially if you’re in a situation like Covid or something like that, like you need them. So. It’s good to have those relationships. Same thing on the investor relations side. You don’t want this to be like an as needed relationship. You want to, I, I strive to have frequent contacts staying in touch, being transparent.

Evan Bertrand: So I would say for me that’s number one. But it’s equally as important in treasury.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And then bring us up to date ’cause you know, we’re moving on the show. So you’ve then joined Forward Air Corporation, who are they? And bring us.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. So prior to that I was working on a merger at Six Flags with Cedar Fair.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. So they completed that deal, I think June of last year. And that really took up the past year and a half that I was at Six Flags. That was a major undertaking. It was an $8 billion merger of equals. Wow. So I worked on that and I think that was probably the highlight of my career so far. It was so much fun to, to work on that.

Evan Bertrand: Mergers aren’t. Very common acquisitions all the time, but doing a big merger like that, they don’t happen every day. So it was a good opportunity and essentially completed my work and is as is the case with mergers. You move on. And I wanted to stay on the investor relations track. So there there is some overlap between treasury, investor relations, and you’ll see actually sometimes that’ll be a combined role.

Evan Bertrand: That’s what I had at Six Flags. But I wanted to make sure that I stayed on that track. So I found this opportunity at Forward Air and I took advantage of it. And who were forward air. You. I, yeah. So, so forward air. I think you did a good job explaining at the beginning. The logistics industry is extremely complex, and I’m speaking as someone who’s changed industries with each job.

Evan Bertrand: Like I started in oil and gas, then went on to automotive, then theme parks, and now I’m in logistics. So there’s several different pieces of the, what I’d call the logistics ecosystem. You have trucking, you have freight forwarding brokerage, third party logistics, all those different elements. And you have some companies that will just be a pure play within there.

Evan Bertrand: And then you have some companies that do it all and forward air. Prior to my joining was a pure, I would call LTL or less than truckload business. I. And you can think of that just when you see the trucks driving down the road. It’s that. But there’s differences between how you manage that process, whether you do it on a schedule on demand, or whether you wait until you have a full truckload to do it.

Evan Bertrand: So like I said, even within trucking you have all these different elements.

Mike Richards: Yeah. And

Evan Bertrand: prior to my joining, they did a merger with a business that’s more logistics focused. They’re the sort of the people coordinating between. The suppliers and the truckers and managing that process. So now what you have is, rather than just like a pure LTL business, you have a more integrated

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Evan Bertrand: Business. And the last year has really been spent on integration, just bringing these two companies together. And the next piece of that is really taking advantage of this broader. Product sec. So now that you’re more integrated, what can you do as far as cross-selling opportunities and things like that?

Mike Richards: And you’ve gone from this role of, as you said, combined IR and treasury. What has treasury given you, if you like, in this role? And you’ve got your CTP, you’ve got all those in your back pockets, I think. Where do you see treasury taking you next, not treasury, but the roles going next?

Evan Bertrand: I think, I think.

Mike Richards: I don’t

Evan Bertrand: think I’m necessarily done with treasury.

Evan Bertrand: I loved treasury, and a dual role would be great. And I think that’s becoming more and more common where you combine TR treasury investor relations, and I think really where the overlap is that capital markets piece. And that’s really the piece that I’ve always enjoyed the most. I’ve done the nuts and bolts treasury, I’ve done that, but the raising capital, doing acquisitions, things like that, that.

Evan Bertrand: That’s the piece that has always fascinated me the most. I don’t see myself really as leaving treasury. I’ll always, that’ll always be a part of what I do. Yeah. But I think ultimately that’s where I’d like to go is just doing both. I’ve really enjoyed

Mike Richards: that. And you touched on there about technology, automation, ERP and everything else.

Mike Richards: What other trends do you see shaping treasury, finance, all of the above. Integrated. How do you see that developing at.

Evan Bertrand: As far as trends, I think the biggest thing right now is probably fraud. That’s a growing piece. I think we, in treasury, we’ve probably always dealt with fraud, but it’s just amazing at how much more sophisticated it’s getting.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. The banks are going to need to stay on top of it. We are going to need to stay on top of it as treasurers. And honestly, I think that’s just, I think that’s probably for a lot of people, a growing business. I think there’s, you’re gonna see a lot of. Businesses pop up that really just specialize in that piece of it because it’s not, it’s not going away.

Evan Bertrand: And what part of that, like when I was at Six Flags prior to Covid, it was a heavily cash business. And now Six Flags is completely cashless.

Mike Richards: Yeah.

Evan Bertrand: And it’s interesting ’cause when you move away from cash, there’s this huge benefit because cash has this tendency to just walk away. When you go from cash to credit cards, you have less of that slippage, but then now you have the credit card piece.

Evan Bertrand: Yeah. And so there’s a lot of fraud associated with that. And then e-commerce is becoming bigger. There’s a lot of fraud associated with that. It’s, it’s great that we’ve gotten rid of this issue of cash, but now we’re just. More susceptible

Mike Richards: to fraud. Yeah, it’s interesting. Covid for all it did, it accelerated working from home and different transitions in that as well.

Mike Richards: I was also with a US client of mine the other day, and we talked about QR codes, contactless and things like that. And he said he was in the UK. He said, oh my goodness, you order from your table and you carry on with this. And just prior to Covid, QR was dying out. No one was scanning a code. That was it.

Mike Richards: And I was thinking, oh, do I need one for the business? Oh, not bother and stuff. Now it’s, that’s what we do. If you want a menu in some of the restaurants still now. That’s what they’ve kept to. So it has done other things. Any other trends or any other things you think coming along the line?

Evan Bertrand: It’s just funny you mentioned that because a mobile ordering was, that was a huge effort for us trying to grow that business because obviously there, there’s benefits in just like increasing sales, but just operationally there’s a lot of benefits and.

Evan Bertrand: We had done the same thing. We had added the QR codes to the table so that they could scan it. It goes directly into the mobile ordering platform. They could order food, have it delivered out to them. So that is obviously the direction we’re going and I think if your business out there trying to do that there, there’s a lot that goes into that.

Evan Bertrand: You have to have the technology in place to allow that. Obviously you need a strong IT department for stuff like that. Like these rollouts are, you know, pretty significant and. Again, that trend is not going away.

Mike Richards: So if we just look at your career before we we’re not quite there at the end. If you look back, any defining moments that stand out to yourself that you look back and go?

Mike Richards: You just talked about some of the merger, which is obviously a career highlight. That’s one key thing you touched on. Anything else or other advice to the listenership?

Evan Bertrand: I guess I remember one time I was talking to someone and they asked me like, what’s the hardest thing? What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make?

Mike Richards: Brilliant.

Evan Bertrand: I told them I was like leaving music. And I remember she, she laughed ’cause it was like in her head she’s thinking, oh, you’re a musician. You don’t make much money. You’re gonna get an MBA and make so much more money. It’s gonna be so much easier for you. That’s how I think she was thinking of it when she laughed and I told her, I was like, that was who I was, that was my entire life.

Evan Bertrand: And I’m leaving that to do something completely different that I have no experience in. And it’s frightening. But it, it’s like a theme that comes up is that I feel like the best opportunities happen when you, you do make that leap. Yeah. I feel like the best opportunities I’ve had have been where I’ve taken a job where, like you’ve said about going to a theme park business during Covid.

Evan Bertrand: It’s, that’s usually where the best opportunities are.

Mike Richards: Yeah. Okay. We’re gonna put your LinkedIn details on the show notes. You’ve heard the show. That’s what we do. And then we do the takeaways. So what are these, but maybe as you said, the more junior staff, mid-level senior. Any key tips for people out there?

Mike Richards: I, I

Evan Bertrand: think that was the main one. And don’t be afraid to take chances like that. Leaving music was very scary. Even Exxon, I remember when I left there, that’s a company where people stay there for 20 or 30 years. Yeah. Their whole, the life and when I left, people thought I was crazy, but I, I just, I saw this great opportunity.

Evan Bertrand: It’s, I think it’s scary, but I can’t really pass this up. Yeah. That, that’s a big one. Another one is. Maintaining those relationships has been extremely helpful, especially in treasury. Don’t take for granted some of these outside partners you have, especially with the banking partners and even internally as well.

Evan Bertrand: Especially if you change jobs like you’re going into a situation where you know all these other people, if they’ve been there longer than you, they know a lot and you can learn a lot from ’em. So I think fostering those relationships can be extremely

Mike Richards: helpful. As you say, and I hear it a lot, that it’s all about the relationships and it’s not about what you know, it’s who you know a lot of the time.

Mike Richards: Yeah, exactly. Evan, thank you very much, sir. Great episode as always, and by the time this comes out, people will be able to get CTP credits from this as well. So thank you very much for being one of the new shows that gets it as well.

Evan Bertrand: Thank you, sir. That’s great. Thanks. Thanks. Appreciate it. Cheers.

  • Big risks lead to big rewards – Career growth often comes from making bold moves into unfamiliar roles or industries.
  • Strong systems = success – Structured treasury programs and ERP integrations are critical for efficient cash management.
  • Forecasting is foundational – A robust cash forecast is essential during times of economic uncertainty or structural change.
  • Relationships matter – Whether it’s banking partners or internal teams, strong relationships are vital in both treasury and IR.
  • Treasury is evolving fast – Fraud prevention, mobile tech, and integrated systems are rapidly reshaping treasury operations.

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Podcast 375 Evan Bertrand

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1 / 6

When Evan joined Solera, what was one of his top priorities due to the company’s recent LBO and high debt levels?

2 / 6

What was one of the biggest challenges Evan faced when trying to centralize cash at Solera?

3 / 6

At Six Flags, what treasury system integration did Evan push for during their ERP rollout?

4 / 6

How did Evan apply the 80/20 rule in managing global cash repatriation at Solera?

5 / 6

Why did Evan stress the importance of strong banking relationships in treasury?

6 / 6

What key treasury trend did Evan identify as growing rapidly in importance?

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