“Think Like an Owner” Is the Best Career Advice I Ever Got

Frank Melaccio, Vice President, Finance & Treasurer, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey: My best piece of career advice I got from a management professor when I was getting my MBA, which was think like an owner. And I think that to this day, it still rings true. I probably heard that 20 years ago now, and it was the best advice I got because the way you differentiate yourself in the workspace is that you’re not worried about your particular area or you’re worried about the team and the company.

Frank Melaccio: And those people that demonstrate themselves, that they think like an owner, they think. On behalf of the company, they’re recognized at some point in time. If they work for a good organization, that type of behavior will be recognized and rewarded, and they’ll go very far in your careers.

Mike Richards, CEO, The Treasury Recruitment Company: Welcome to this week’s Treasury Career Corner podcast. We’re interview treasury professionals about their treasury careers. Each and every week I’ll 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: this week’s show. I’m joined or rejoined if you like, by Frank Muccio, the Vice President Finance and Treasurer at Horizon Blue Cross, blue Shield of New Jersey. Frank was a recent guest on our Treasury Career Corner live event in New York. We were joined by summer, Sandra and Frank, and he had so much value to give great guest, and I said, right Frank, you’ve gotta be back on the show, uh, on a one-on-one if you like, which we’re doing today.

Mike Richards: So fantastic. Just to give you an idea, and Frank will explain it more, but for anyone listening, particularly in the uk, maybe in Europe, we don’t necessarily understand quite so much about medical insurance in the US It’s a massive industry. Horizon. Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey are the states, United States largest and oldest health insurer.

Mike Richards: They’re a subsidiary of Horizon Mutual Holdings, a not-for-profit, mutual holding company who together with their affiliates, they provide a wide range of. Medical, dental, vision, prescription insurance, products and services. See, I’ve got all of that, right? That’s it. Okay. I can relax now. ’cause now you can tell a little bit more about them.

Mike Richards: Um, and we’ll go back to the beginning if you would. Frank, how did you first get started into finance and then discover the world of treasury. Over to you, sir.

Frank Melaccio: Sure. So I was really interested in finance at a young age. I actually went to high school in Manhattan and I would take the train into the city and a lot of people worked on Wall Street at the time and made friends with some of the people on the train.

Frank Melaccio: And I was really intrigued by markets and I would look at the Wall Street Journal and that really made me think about working in finance. I decided to go to school. I went to Fordham, received my undergraduate degree in both finance and economics. I really. Like both ways of kind of looking at markets.

Frank Melaccio: Finance was more of a practitioner’s lens, right? And I felt like economics was very theoretical, but you know, very timely in helping to understand macroeconomic trends as well as some microeconomic trends as well. After graduation I was, saw the opportunity to work at a regional bank in the New York City metropolitan area and that’s kind of got my start.

Frank Melaccio: It was a great opportunity for me. I really enjoyed working there. I got to work at multiple parts of the bank, so I worked on the retail banking side, so I understood that business, all of the banking products that are offered. And then I also spent some time over in the mortgage area of the bank and got to understand mortgage originations, how underwriting works, how that goes with selling those.

Frank Melaccio: Mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, as well as when banks keep some of those loans on balance sheet. So really good opportunity. Great start to my career. It’s funny, I always, when people ask me, I always say, I thought I would be in banking my entire career and I’ve now spent more time in health insurance than I have in banking.

Frank Melaccio: So I, whatever you think is your future will be. I can almost guarantee it’ll be different. Yeah. It won’t be that and stuff,

Mike Richards: and then you. So you stayed in banking for that period of time? Yes. So you went through a couple of banks and, but different banks as well. How did that help you or give us that track record of things?

Frank Melaccio: Yeah, so while I was actually going to, while I was working at the bank, the nice thing about it wasn’t too far from Hofstra, so I was able to work full-time and actually go to school in the evenings and get my master’s degree. So got my MBA in finance. It was a great opportunity and, but I decided that I wanted to work for a larger bank and so.

Frank Melaccio: Was interviewing with a number of the larger banks in, in New York City and finally got a great opportunity to work at a Bank of New York. And so it was a great opportunity, great institution to work for. Learned a lot. What I really liked about it, I was working in kind of the trust area of the bank, corporate trust I was.

Frank Melaccio: Particularly supporting a structured finance group at the time, but we were actually working, I had the privilege of working on a rather large merger for those of you may remember, in the New York City area, bank of New York actually used to have retail branches. Yeah. And so one of the. Transactions that I was able to work on was we moved our retail branches, we sold ’em to JP Morgan Chase and instead took over their their trust business.

Frank Melaccio: And so that was a really exciting time, really exciting to be involved in when you’re working on something that’s on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It’s a good thing, right? It’s always,

Mike Richards: yeah, I did this. Yeah,

Frank Melaccio: absolutely. So I had an opportunity to kind of work on the people that were leading that deal, work on some of the budget figures, and it was exciting time, happy that I had the opportunity to work at Bank in New York and kind of work through some of those big changes for the

Mike Richards: bank.

Mike Richards: And then why the, and then what shifted next for you sort of thing, because you were then, you’re not that far from treasury sort of thing as you started to get towards it.

Frank Melaccio: Correct. Yeah, so I was actually, I really wanted to, I really wanted do some heavy modeling work. I always enjoyed building financial models at Bank of New York.

Frank Melaccio: I was doing a lot of financial planning analysis work, and I wanted to probably more get into some of the business, some of the transaction side of things, and some of the more capital markets. I was looking at a bunch of different firms and then outta nowhere. I got a recall from a recruiter saying, PWC has a structured finance group.

Frank Melaccio: Would you be willing to work there? And I said, I mean, it sounds interesting. I said, but I don’t have an accounting degree and I don’t CPA, so what does PWC want with me? And I said, no, we actually look for people in banking because whenever structured products are issued in the market. Get accountants in particular have to rebuild the models, do the valuations, and assume everything’s correct.

Frank Melaccio: And so they’re not typically accountants. We generally hire a lot of former finance bankers, people like that, that understand how to build the models and do that. So I said, oh great. So I signed on, did that, and what I was really interested about PWC was. I work with a lot of people. Some have accounting degrees, some had finance degrees.

Frank Melaccio: What I wanna do is CPA or CFA. And so the best part about going to PWC was gave me the opportunity to either do the CPA or CFA or both. And they said that they would pay for either one, and they supported everyone to do. Either designation for the particular group that I was in. So, so went on there. It was a great experience.

Frank Melaccio: I can’t say enough good things about working at pwc. It definitely shaped my career working on transactions right outta the gate. My particular area of focus was the collateralized loan obligations, CLOs. Some may be familiar with it. I sat alongside, some of my colleagues, worked on mortgage backed securities.

Frank Melaccio: Even some of the subprime things that that people worked on. So all of that was kind of going on during the time. And while I was there, and this is, I always kind of tell people was kind of formative for my career was I worked there during the financial crisis and so I was working there and working on deals and then all of a sudden couple of, I’d say almost a year into my role there.

Frank Melaccio: Transactions started getting a little slower, starting to dry up, and then Bear Stearns was happening. And that was kind of the focal point. And Bear went under, at which point things were getting worse, transactions were getting slower. And anything that anybody knows anything about being an accounting firm, you have to be chargeable.

Frank Melaccio: You gotta be utilized, right? And so everybody’s making sure that their hours are coming through and there’s less and less transactions. And then it was Sunday evening and I was at home with my wife and I saw up everybody carrying their boxes outta Lehman Brothers, and I turned to my wife and I said.

Frank Melaccio: I’m either going to be really busy or I’m going to be unemployed. I’m not sure which one, and I end up being very busy. And one of the things that came out of that was. The group kind of had to redefine itself a little bit. Originally, we were very much a transaction and we relied on transactions, but unfortunately, a lot of people that understood how those transactions were, the banks had let most of ’em go.

Frank Melaccio: And so you had all these securities that were sitting on the marketplace, that were sitting on balance sheets that people, they didn’t know what they were, how to value them or anything. And so the group really transformed into kind of a valuation and risk group. And I was able to lead the charge and work with some really bright people, many of which are still in that group and still at pwc.

Frank Melaccio: And it was a great time. I had some many great clients. I got to work for the Federal Reserve Bank in New York on some of their portfolios. I was at all the major banks during the time, some large hedge funds, and even a health insurance company that I was doing some consulting on that was trying to go public.

Frank Melaccio: So really real, really great opportunity for me in my career. Grateful for the opportunity.

Mike Richards: People have asked me how that sort of overflowed into corporate treasury and it, so that’s not dissimilar to current times really. You’ve got tariffs, you’ve got all this stuff. And I said, look, it didn’t it, it didn’t stop the market, it just slowed the market exactly as you said.

Mike Richards: It wasn’t like we were, but I remember our, we list all the roles we have on that working within corporate treasury and treasurers by their very nature with one now, but risk averse or risk aware. So people when they’re upright, I was gonna move. I don’t wanna move. I’m not, I’m gonna sit tight. I’m gonna ride this one out.

Mike Richards: I’m gonna just do my job. Look after the balance sheet of the company. Yeah, as you said, subprime had come along and then it was like, whoa, okay. And it just, it all slowed down. It was still there moving, but very slowly. So you came out of that, what happened next sort thing.

Frank Melaccio: So, interestingly enough, so one of the things you may remember, then there was these things called auction rate securities that were failed.

Frank Melaccio: And so it caused a lot of tr angst for a lot of treasures. Yeah. And so I was doing some consulting work and I had a health insurance company, emblem Health, based in New York City downtown. I was doing consulting work for there, and I was like, all right, I was ready to make a move outta pwc. I kind of, I liked the consulting, but I wanted to kind of do something.

Frank Melaccio: I wanted to be. Build, right? So I either wanted to kind of be part of, had people that actually did a lot of treasury consulting that were next to me. I’m like Treasury, corporate treasury seems like a really nice place to go. Or I would do investment management. And so I had two offers. One was for a hedge fund and the other one was for a health insurance company.

Frank Melaccio: And I think most. A lot of people when I kind of tell the story and said, why don’t you take the, the health insurance company? And I worked a lot of hours and I think anybody that’s kind of been in that business kind of knows that a lot of hours. And a young child at time married said, you know what? Let me kind of get some work life balance here.

Frank Melaccio: And so I said the health insurance company gets to do everything I wanna do and I get a little bit better work life balance. So that’s why I kind of picked that way to go and very happy that I did that. So I kind of went there. I actually worked on the investment portfolio for the health insurance company.

Frank Melaccio: Le leading that and had a colleague that I worked with and reported to the treasurer was a really great opportunity for me to. Get my hands in, work on a portfolio, understand the business, do all that. And I stayed on there for a number of years. And then at one point the treasurer decided that he was gonna retire.

Frank Melaccio: He was a great mentor to me. I actually just spoke with him a couple of months ago. Really accomplished treasurer. He worked in, he worked, started banking like I did, worked in oil and gas for a little bit, and then work for. Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is now part of Ance, which was the New York Blue Cross Blue Shield company, and he was, he really taught me all, everything I need to know, at least about, all about treasury, health, insurance, treasury, and all of those important things.

Frank Melaccio: When he retired, he had, he had, you know, recommended me for the role for treasurer and then his boss at the time who was also a great coach, and I still stay in contact and can’t say enough good things. He’s, he was head of finance at the time, became CFO and is now CEO. Former company I worked at, he was really supportive of me and he really shaped my career and he gave me exposure to many other areas within the company that I never thought I would.

Frank Melaccio: Right. Yeah. So it wasn’t just treasury, right. It was understanding the business. And I think one of the things I always talk with people ask me about treasury. I think the way you differentiate yourself in treasury is. Understanding the business. If you just wanna be the banker for the business, yes, you can do okay, but you’re never gonna be able to deliver the amount of value as if you can sit at the table and understand all the mechanics of the business and work with individuals.

Frank Melaccio: And my former company really gave me that opportunity. So I was very grateful.

Mike Richards: And part of that, you were, as you said, you took on a couple of hats. You uh, done it. Investment analysis through to then treasurer and also chief risk. What was the, that role or those two roles, strategic treasury responsibilities being thrown at you, how did you balance them?

Mike Richards: If someone’s listening, how did you do it?

Frank Melaccio: Yeah, it was tough. So my, so one of the nice things is when you’re like, I always found, you always try to do whatever you can execute and bring results, right? And if you do that, people will recognize it over time. And so that’s exactly what happened at that, at that job.

Frank Melaccio: And we had, so once the financial crisis happened there came up with this thing called own risk solvency assessment in the us And basically it’s for insurance companies, it’s the Frank Dodd version of, and in fact in Europe you’ve heard, probably heard of solvency too. Orsa, as we call it, is the effectively the same thing for the us.

Frank Melaccio: And the idea is that after a IG collapsed, they wanted to make sure that the holding company of insurance companies were managing their risk, calculating their risk, and doing these risk reports to validate that they had sufficient capital, that they would not be a systemic issue and would not be a failure issue.

Frank Melaccio: One of the things people don’t maybe not realize about the United States is that while banks are regulated, both on a state level and federal level, insurance companies are regulated on a state level. And so if an insurance company fails, there’s a state guarantee association which guarantees it. There is a National Association of Insurance Commissioners that kind of shapes the law, but it’s very much over oversight.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah. Uh. So with that role, I kind of, we have our orsa filing that I have to do, and we received some comments from our regulators on how we could do it better. And I was interested in doing risk and I was sitting for my FRM exams. And so my boss at the time said, you know what? Why don’t you take a stab at this?

Frank Melaccio: I think you got it. So he, he gives it to me. And you know what I think I. He was very happy. I built a pretty in-depth model. I took all our business lines. I did a Monte Carlo based simulation for a number of those things, stress the balance sheet wrote up a pretty exhaustive paper, and that kind of became our basis going forward for our OSSA filings.

Frank Melaccio: And it was great and we used that going forward. And my guess is we’re still using that to this date. And I kind of became our chief risk officer for our filings. And I love that. I love risk management. I think it’s really important. So it was a good opportunity for me as well. And you touched on that,

Mike Richards: that you’ve done your FRM, which is Financial Risk Management Done CPA, you’ve got your CFA, I mean any, I just said it’s a collection of letters.

Mike Richards: I said you could just make some up and add them in there. But joking aside, that education and improving yourself is a key thing about you. And you touch on Hofs stroke and you then. Again, when we met and we did our lunch, our session in New York, rather, we talked about the fact that, that you balances off by being a professor as well.

Mike Richards: Can you just talk about the two of them or why you feel that’s so important to people?

Frank Melaccio: I’ve, I guess it’s funny, I always loved academic environments. I always been fascinated. I’m constant learner. I, if there’s something I don’t understand, I like to just learn about it no matter what it is. And so. When I was actually in the workforce, I had an opportunity to do some guest lecturing work, and one of the professors said, Hey, you know what?

Frank Melaccio: We have an opening for an adjunct. Would you be interested in doing it? And I said, great. And so I kind of signed up and did that. And I’ve been doing it now for a number of years. And I think the tie in really is that. There’s a couple things. One, I, those are certifications. They took a lot of work.

Frank Melaccio: They’re very important to me, but I think it kind of demonstrates my personal commitment to understanding the world around me and what I do and personal pride. But then I can take some of that practical knowledge and help other students and pave the way. And so as an adjunct faculty, how I try to differentiate myself is I have to obviously understand the theory that I teach in the class, but I try to marry that with the practical.

Frank Melaccio: Nature of markets and how things work in the business world

Mike Richards: and kind of bring that

Frank Melaccio: to the students. Yeah.

Mike Richards: And just can you just explain again, adjunct professor, how do, what does that mean or what’s the commitment for that for, again, for some of our listeners who maybe don’t understand the phrase.

Frank Melaccio: Sure.

Frank Melaccio: So generally speaking, if you are a part-time, so you teach one or two classes a semester, you’d be considered an adjunct. The full-time faculty would have a full slated classes. Yeah. And that would be a full-time job. So anybody that kind of has a job full-time that does this on the side would generally be considered an adjunct.

Frank Melaccio: And when you are

Mike Richards: being that, how has that helped you as a treasurer, maybe with your team and things like that, and teaching those guys as well?

Frank Melaccio: It’s been phenomenal. So I teach two classes. I teach one class on derivatives that I’m wrapping up right now. And we cover everything from futures forwards, swaps, options, black shoals modeling by all of it, right?

Frank Melaccio: And so everything, which is great because most people that go to school and they kind of forget about it. Right? And I’ll be honest with you. When I had to teach this class, I kind of had to relearn some things myself. Exactly. What does that mean again? Yeah, exactly. I can’t have my students knowing more than I do.

Frank Melaccio: Right. And so, but it, what’s great is that it really keeps you fresh. So when some of these things come up, particularly in the treasury world as it relates to derivative, it’s like, oh. I know this. Here it is. This is how you, how do you price these things and very helpful. And the other class I teach is a healthcare finance class, and that’s a really interesting class because it’s, while it’s in the business school, we have a lot of students that come from the medical school.

Frank Melaccio: So it’s not uncommon for me to have many doctors or people doing what’s called the joint degree where they get their medical doctor, so MD and an MBA at the same time, which is becoming more and more common, so, so two great classes for me to teach, considering my role. And you,

Mike Richards: we joke about certifications there, but you know, you’ve got things like CTP, which obviously as I said, but you know, this qualifies for CTP, do the quiz at the end and things.

Mike Richards: But joking aside these, do you think certifications are more necessary for treasury professionals today? Or is it an equal balance with hands-on experience? What’s the sort of the balance would you say?

Frank Melaccio: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I’m a big supporter of the CTP. In fact, I’ve kind of pushed everyone on my team to kind of get that.

Frank Melaccio: I have, I think they’re all good certifications. If you’re in treasury and you don’t have a certification, I think ctp yeah, is absolutely the way to go. And I said that. You need to have the experience, right? And so I don’t think one is more important to the other. I mean, obviously you can have great experience and if you have all the right things, then you don’t necessarily need to have a CTP, but especially if you’re, I would say, and I’d love to get your perspective on this, Mike, but like if you’re two to five years in your role and you’d wanna stay in treasury.

Frank Melaccio: I think getting you to that next level, getting that CTP is gonna demonstrate to employers that you’re serious. And I, that’s kind of where I tell people, go out and get it. So I’m curious what your thoughts are in the marketplace on that.

Mike Richards: Well, well, the practical example is I was actually asked this direct question by a candidate last week in Texas and he said, what should I do?

Mike Richards: I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, should I get a CFA or CPA or CTP? And I was like. Well, the definitive answer is, it depends. Oh, okay. Listen, you could do all of them, but where are you going? What’s your next step? And we’re not well’s, not what’s your end goal, if you like, but where are you go?

Mike Richards: What are the steps you’re gonna take now do you think? See yourself in treasury for the next two to three years? If you do CTPs, great. If you are in the uk, you’ve got the A CT qualifications. They all give you a rubber stamp of experience. They said they’ll help springboard you into the next role because you know that you get on the yes pile rather than just the maybe pile, and then the competition is fierce.

Mike Richards: So it’s a good thing to have. But also then I said, look, as you’ve just talked about, if it’s risk management, and as you’ve told us there. If you want to deep dive in that, do the FRM, you know this. I said, it’s gotta be your choice. I can’t define it. I said, and again, he was said, well, well, who wants, you know who wants what?

Mike Richards: I mean, it depends on your audience. If you are going more to the accounting route and do the CPA, A CFA, if you financial analysis, you wanna do that? I said, you’ve gotta, I said he, I was asking him to go back and just do some quick q and a with himself. I said, where do you see your next two steps or next one step at least?

Mike Richards: And then that will define it. I said, and that will then, you know, that’s what will define it. And that was one of the key things I. I

Frank Melaccio: mean, it sounds like great advice to me. I mean, certainly that’s how I think about it. So I would say anybody that’s listening, follow Mike’s advice. Absolutely. Go and

Mike Richards: sit down with yourself and have a to say and have your Friday coffee.

Mike Richards: But if you wanted that, I just said to go and think about what you, I. Where do you see it? We can’t define it for you. You’ve gotta start to have that direction now. And then on that point, you sort of, you’ve been with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey since 2017. You and I have joked about this in the long, can you explain again, maybe for some of our international listeners, they don’t quite understand the nuances or who the company is, what you do.

Mike Richards: You did a great job of this in New York. So can you explain who you are in your role?

Frank Melaccio: Absolutely. So I’m the treasurer for Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield in the us the way the insurance markets work is they’re generally private markets. There are some publicly funded insurance products that they partner with private.

Frank Melaccio: So a private company will get the contract to administer that. These may be Medicare or Medicaid. Some may have heard of. And so people hear Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s a very big name, and in fact, blue Cross Blue Shield as association ensures more people in the United States than any other insurance company.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah. Now the way it works is that each, there are many Blue Cross Blue Shield companies throughout the United States. They have a specific geography where they insure people, and each one of those companies is an independent company and they. Pretty much they have the license rights for a particular geography.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah, so you think about my company, horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. We are the Blue Cross Blue Shield company for the territory for New Jersey, and we work together with other Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, but each one has its own CEO own board of directors independently run and operated.

Frank Melaccio: And

Mike Richards: your role as treasurer there, you’ve day to day, what are you focusing on and how’s the team structured? Again, I’m asking this for the listeners. I know how it is. ’cause we’ve spoken.

Frank Melaccio: I have a pretty broad treasury role, so I think from a core treasury perspective, I have a traditional cash management team and we try to break up cash management.

Frank Melaccio: We have a kind of special projects individual that helps run special projects. We have cash management. We have. Debt. We kind of now have this investor relations function ’cause we had a bond offering recently that we’re, that we’ve built out and we also have kind of traditional remittance processing area.

Frank Melaccio: Then we also have an investment team. I have an investment person that runs into me. We buy and sell securities on our own. We also have some MA asset managers that we work with as well. And so that’s a. Pretty important job for an insurance company as well. That rolls into me. Insurance is another function.

Frank Melaccio: I also have responsibility for our procurement sourcing operations, as well as tax rolls into me. And additionally, I also have an fp and a function for all our government programs. Our Medicare and Medicaid products reports into me as well. So it’s a whole host of areas that I oversee, which is kind of helpful because I have a full range of view of the business.

Mike Richards: When you are trying to spin all those plates, if you like, and keep the team on track that you’ve got cashflow management, capital markets, risk, you’ve got all that, you’ve got tax, you got, how do you do that as a treasurer? What again, for a treasurer listening today and they go, oh God, there’s so much like these onslaught sort of thing.

Mike Richards: How do you keep, what’s the beacon if you

Frank Melaccio: like? Yeah, I, I would say find really good people. That is the most important thing. And it’s funny, you can’t, you don’t learn this in school, but. Building great teams is how you make yourself a really strong professional. And I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple years trying to get better and there there’s always work to do and there’s work that I’m focused on, but I.

Frank Melaccio: Delegating a lot of people, especially in treasury, it’s tough, right? We’re very much quantitative people. We want things done a certain way, oftentimes, and it becomes difficult sometimes to delegate when you are very, because you’re very specific. You want everything done a certain way, and sometimes when you delegate things, it won’t be done exactly your way.

Frank Melaccio: I think you have to be comfortable saying, listen, maybe that’s not the way I would do it, but. It’s getting things the way it needs to be done at work. You have people that can run to those functions for you. You trust them to deliver, and then you can act more like the director say, okay, what are the big.

Frank Melaccio: That we’re working on. And then you have really solid professionals on the team that can carry that out and they’ll deliver the results and execute. And so as you move more and further up in your role, I think that directing the of that team, right, building that team is really more important than I would say some of the technical skills that you’ve developed.

Frank Melaccio: Right? You have the technical skills coming in, but I think to move up, you have to demonstrate that you’re a great team builder and a great leader. And that’s something that takes time.

Mike Richards: Drawing from you, you’ve got all these different experiences prior to healthcare, as you say, and all this different stuff.

Mike Richards: So drawing from those sectors, where do you see treasury shifting? Now? Obviously wet can touch on technology, but technology will be one, might be one element. What else do you see as the challenges coming along? I.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah. I think that one of the big challenges for treasury and where it’s will evolve to, and I think at least the most successful treasury organizations will evolve to, is that a lot of times at smaller companies, treasury is just cash manage, right?

Frank Melaccio: And so that’s fine. There’s obviously an important place for it at larger companies. It becomes not just that, it becomes hedging. It becomes debt funding, et cetera. That’s all important. But where I really think where the ball’s moving to for treasury, and I give a lot of credit to a FP and focusing on the fp and a credentials as well as with the CTP, is that we gotta understand the business because the treasury is the solution, the finance solution lens for the company.

Frank Melaccio: So if there’s a problem that the company needs to. Managed through treasury should be bringing all the financial solutions are available. ’cause many of those solutions are gonna be capital market solutions. They could be thinking about balance sheet solutions, whatever it may be. That’s where treasury comes in.

Frank Melaccio: And so I view Treasury as the responsibility of understanding the balance sheet. Hmm. Managing the balance sheet, your fp and a, your accountants. They’re gonna understand the income and loss and how that all works, and that’s gonna be a good focal point, particularly if you’re publicly traded at PS and everything.

Frank Melaccio: But we gotta understand the balance sheet and how to optimize that and making sure that. That’s the capital of the company that’s working efficiently and that we’re protecting it above and beyond all else. So if you understand what’s going on in the business, how can I bring balance sheet solutions, capital market solutions to empower the business And the treasurers that I’ve known that have done that have been very successful.

Frank Melaccio: And it allows the business to open up keys that they didn’t know they were. There, right? Those external solutions that you bring to the table can empower the business to grow in ways that they haven’t in the past. If you look at some of the most profitable companies that have grown over time, they needed to bring in that capital.

Frank Melaccio: And so treasury is the avenue that brings in the capital into the company,

Mike Richards: and then technology, and obviously it’s front of mind for a lot of people, but. Someone the other day, I said it a few times, that some people don’t really use their treasury management solution to the, if they’ve got one, sometimes talk to people, they’re still on Excel versus people go, oh yeah, use ai.

Mike Richards: It’s like really? Like, come on, what’s it really for? What are you, what are your thoughts? I.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah, I think technology is really important. What I, I’ve built into the team is, and they’ve done a great job, I’ve, we always joke around, we start Treasury 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. We’ve really kind of moved the needle. I think a lot of treasury organizations still use Excel.

Frank Melaccio: Most have kind of, at least larger companies, moved on to treasury management systems. There are a number out there. We have a treasury management system, but. The role of the treasury person shouldn’t be doing the monotonous tasks of moving on. There’s systems out there that will do that for you. I mean, you can get with the treasury management system, you can get all your bank accounts loaded.

Frank Melaccio: Get the feeds. I’ll say, oh, it can actually move the wires for you. Okay, here are your, here’s what’s due. Send it out and get it done. And so the value then that frees you up to bring better value. Okay, how do I optimize my cash balances? Where do I gotta move them between legal entities? What things do I need to do?

Frank Melaccio: How can I forecast the future about where we’re going? And so I think the next step is once you have the treasury management system is. Cash flow forecasting, balance sheets, balance sheet, stress testing, all of those things. And I think that’s where AI can be really helpful. A couple of things, I think everybody’s like, oh, ai.

Frank Melaccio: So one of the things that I’ve seen is there’s a probably a big opportunity for AI in the, in the cash flow forecasting space. I think it’s very nascent at this point in time because a lot of cash flow, particularly for business like ours, it’s very lumpy. And so it’s very much dependent on when you’re getting certain wires and it changes at every certain period.

Frank Melaccio: And so the AI system doesn’t know because you necessarily, you can’t necessarily use historical experience because there’s changes in the business. And so, but it will be interesting to see if you can kind of break down some of those functions into AI and have it empower the analyst to make the job easier.

Frank Melaccio: So I think that’s one space. Another space where. I don’t think we utilize enough, but I think will be a really good opportunity is coding. Now you do not have to be a coder to code, right? Yeah. You can go into AI and say, chat GPT, can you write me a code in Python to do X, Y, and Z? Yeah. Or can you move it from this to that?

Frank Melaccio: I mean, that’s amazing. You don’t, that makes any treasury professional can have some kind of coding and so that that’s will be important. Then another area where we started using automation a number of years ago, and I think a lot of organizations have is a robotic process automation, RPAs. I think that’s really helpful.

Frank Melaccio: I always kind of challenge the team and say, listen, take stock of anything that we’re doing manually today, and let’s see how we can automate it. And I think that’s another great opportunity where a lot of organizations probably haven’t. Really maximize that and that’s a good place to look as well.

Mike Richards: And one of my favorite podcast listens is My First Million, and they talk about this and there was actually just a recent episode with a lady and she, one of the key things she says with her team, and I’ll just bring it up on here, that she was actually saying that.

Mike Richards: When they’re looking at a new opportunity or a new company, she said, that’s great, but also have AI in the back of your mind because what if you enable it through ai? This is what it can do for you. And or can it enable you? Can it do that? That stuff, it was just incredible. Some of the stuff she was doing that actually we could accelerate that.

Mike Richards: We can change it as well. And I was just like, this is great feedback. And you are right. And going back to the programming, I was recently talking to mine. I wanted to redesign a webpage. I was trying to explain it to my web, my web guys. And I went, hang on. Boom, boom. And like within 30 seconds it had coded the page.

Mike Richards: I’m like, right, this is the picture. I want it to look like. This is what I wanna do. Here’s the backend. And they went, off you go, thanks. And I was like, okay. With a bit more tweaking, but it wasn’t gonna replace them. It was just gonna, I could actually visualize it much better. Absolutely.

Frank Melaccio: Yeah. It’s amazing that how good it is at that.

Frank Melaccio: I mean, a lot of times we think like AI is going to fix everything, right? Yeah. And it’s gonna make humans irrelevant. I mean, I haven’t seen that happen yet. I do see it empowering people, to your point, right, where you can take a concept like that and make people much more productive. And so the challenge I agree with you is how do you use AI in these tools to make us more productive so we can do more analytical work?

Frank Melaccio: And the,

Mike Richards: and looking back, I mean. Obviously AI is one of those turning points, if you like, for a lot of people, I think, and it enables people to do a tool and everything else, but any decisions or turning points in your career that as you look back, that really helped your trajectory and that, again, someone listening today goes, I wonder.

Mike Richards: Wonder whether I should do that? Any questions you ask yourselves or any answers.

Frank Melaccio: I think the hardest thing for me was when I decided to take my first opportunity at the health insurance company. My first company that I worked at wasn’t really something I ever envisioned for myself and Mike. We joked about it.

Frank Melaccio: If you would’ve asked me if I was gonna work, work a health insurance company, I probably would’ve said never. Right? And if, if I would’ve worked work in

Mike Richards: health insurance, cut outta

Frank Melaccio: it, right? It wasn’t on my roadmap. Right? Yeah. And now I’m on my second company that I’ve worked for. And I think that the problem becomes, so two, two points of advice.

Frank Melaccio: I always give students or younger professionals that ask me my thoughts is one, I. Just don’t have this preconceived notion about what you’re going to do. Wait to see what opportunities are going to open up for you, and then decipher which opportunity makes the most sense. And also each journey on your career path, you’re gonna have these forks, and sometimes you’re gonna take a fork and it’s not going to be the way you want it to go, and that’s okay, but before you accept that new opportunity, then okay.

Frank Melaccio: If it doesn’t work out, where do I want to go? Right? What’s it, do I wanna go back to what I was doing? Do I want to use this to, so you should always, if you accept a new job, have an exit plan for what your exit strategy is too. And I think a lot of people just go forward. And the other thing is, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this, is.

Frank Melaccio: Money is a terrible reason to leave a job. I just think you can, you wanna make sure, listen, if you get more money taking a job, absolutely. That’s an important factor of the equation. But if that’s your only reason why you’re leaving, then I think that’s a bad move. Because if you’re at a quality company where you have a great reputation and they support you before you go and make that move for more money, look for more opportunity or how you can stay at that company and grow.

Frank Melaccio: Because lemme tell you, great organizations are sometimes tough to come by. Yeah. And so. Be careful about, don’t just chase the money all the time, but focus on the opportunity and think about where you’re going.

Mike Richards: And when I was in Texas again, we, I was then, luckily I’d had the, I don’t have the card to hand, but I remember it off my heart because I was asked by the National Association of Treasurers a couple of years ago, we post covid or was it coming out of it?

Mike Richards: And they said, well, what’s the most important reason? I went, it’s you guys. I like what? And I was like, look, people are happy, unhappy. I said, the reason people aren’t unhappy isn’t because of salary. That’s about fifth, fourth, or fifth. I said, it’s because of you being a better boss. Work life balance is higher.

Mike Richards: Then it’s boss progression and then salary comes in there about fourth or fifth. It’s like, and actually I said, go and sit down with your team, have a coffee with ’em and say, right, are we helping you with your career? Are we, have you got the right work life balance you’re doing? This was before really you, not just about hybrid and things.

Mike Richards: It was actually more fundamental than that. So yeah, you’re right and just going for a job. Or the other thing is. Again, I was trying not to be coy with them, but I said, look, you guys aren’t a rock. You can move. Like you can move. Yeah, you can move for money, but actually you shouldn’t just move for money.

Mike Richards: That can be a reason, but it shouldn’t be the reason.

Frank Melaccio: So yeah, I completely agree. I mean, you know this better than even I do, but I think that’s an important element and so like I always tell people, map out your multi-year career path, right? And figure out what. Whatever the next opportunity is or where do you need to go?

Frank Melaccio: And so that’s where you kind of do a self assessment. And I’ve had, I had a conversation with, with students and others in their younger career, like, oh, I wanna do X, Y, Z. Okay, well in order to do X, Y, Z, you need these three things. Okay? You only have one of the, of those three, right? Yeah. So what are you doing to get the other two and.

Frank Melaccio: I think a lot of times people feel like, oh, well I should just get that opportunity. That would be nice, but that’s not the way the world works, and so you have to set yourself up for. Yes, there’s something in it for you to get that opportunity, but what’s in it for the person that’s going to hire you?

Frank Melaccio: Right? Yeah. And so you have to be very objective about your career and making sure that these relationships or what your career is beneficial, not just to you, but to the person that you’re gonna work for, the company that you’re gonna work for. So you gotta get

Mike Richards: back as well. You, that’s why they’re paying you as well, but Exactly.

Mike Richards: Yeah. What’s the. How well you know, in terms of value, what do you con contribute? And we’re gonna put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. And this is the wrap up, as you’ve heard on the show each week and things, any piece of advice you’d give your younger self or maybe you know, the takeaways from today.

Mike Richards: We’ve covered so much advice there, but any particular ones you think that people, whether or maybe if they’re later in their careers as well. You know what? What are your takeaways for today?

Frank Melaccio: I would say, I think we covered a lot of ground. Yeah, we did so, which is great, but I believe maybe with one thing that I had not mentioned, which was my best piece of career advice I got from a management professor when I was getting my MBA, which was think like an owner and.

Frank Melaccio: I think that to this day it still rings true. I probably heard that 20 years ago now, and it was the best advice I got because the way you differentiate yourself in the workspace is that you’re not worried about your particular area or you’re worried about the team and the company and those people that demonstrate themselves, that they think like an owner, they think.

Frank Melaccio: On behalf of the company. They’re recognized at some point in time. If they work for a good organization, that type of behavior will be recognized and rewarded, and they’ll go very far in your career. So my, my closing thought is think like an owner. Think like an owner.

Mike Richards: Brilliant. Take ownership. Amazing, Frank.

Mike Richards: Amazing. As always, we’ll put your LinkedIn details in the show notes. Thank you, sir, for another great session. Thank

Frank Melaccio: you. Always good to speak with you, Mike. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you. Thank you. Alright,