How did you get into treasury and what has been your career path to date?
Like many people, I came across treasury by accident. I graduated from Kingston University with a law degree, but knew I didn’t want to become a lawyer, so I applied for positions at banks via a number of graduate schemes. At an assessment centre for Lloyds Bank, one of the recruiters approached me about a role within the bank’s Agency Treasury Services (ATS) team, which I pursued, accepting a job offer in 2007.
So, my treasury career began in the Lloyds Bank ATS back office. I was quickly promoted to a middle office role, later becoming middle office assistant manager. ATS proved to be an interesting introduction to the world of treasury. Clients included government special-purpose vehicles and small banks and – given that the global financial crisis had hit us and the business climate had changed overnight – advisory work included managing people’s expectations on interest rates for their deposits and how they might respond to the sudden lack of AAA-rated lenders in the market.
Lloyds Bank’s merger with HBOS was another very prominent factor. ATS was profit-generating, so we were insulated from the main impacts of that merger. Even so, we worked against the backdrop of weekly redundancy announcements, which was unsettling, particularly as this was my very first job.
In 2010, I decided to change direction and do something I had always wanted to do – start my own business. I felt that if I wanted to progress, I should try something new. Along with a business partner, I set up Advantage Ghana – a student discount card business. Our rationale was to take a proven business model and set up a company in an environment where we didn’t have any competition. I worked in Ghana for a year, learning about HR, technology and business operations on the ground. After that, I swapped locations with my business partner, who took up the reins in Africa, while I returned to the UK.
That felt like the right point at which to go back into treasury and I took up a short-term contract at Tesco, focusing on a reimplementation of a treasury management system (TMS). I stayed beyond the original contract term, working within the control team, after which I moved to London & Quadrant (L&Q), the housing association, where I’ve been ever since.
Which of your career moves has turned out to be the most significant?
The move to L&Q, which turned out to be very different to Tesco. Firstly, it was a radical change in size and culture. Tesco had a treasury team of around 25 in the UK plus a shared service centre in India, while L&Q had four at the time I joined. The company has pretty much doubled in size every year since then via expansion and acquisition.
Working at L&Q has been a fast-growth experience with a lot of time devoted to integration issues. It has gone from £2.5bn to £6bn in debt, around half of which is bond issues, and turnover has increased from £300m to £1bn. We have twice won awards at The Association of Corporate Treasurers’ Deals of the Year – once in 2015, and again in 2017.
Treasury is very central to strategy at L&Q, so we get involved in corporate planning. We also field questions from residents and run additional services such as helping some of the more vulnerable residents with tasks like opening bank accounts, via a partnership with our relationship banks.
What experiences have moved you on the most in terms of your career?
Definitely spending a year in Ghana. I had always enjoyed treasury, but until I spent time away doing something else, I hadn’t realised how much. When I returned to London, I had a renewed sense of purpose and focus.
Describe your current role and what you like about it.
I head up all the operational aspects of treasury from payments to accounting and reporting to trading and controls, with one person reporting directly to me and three indirect reports.
L&Q treasury is run as an in-house bank for a few recent acquisitions, but otherwise everything is centralised. This means I get involved with all M&A activity, including the acquisition work.
Apart from that, I look after the intercompany lending arrangements for various subsidiaries, as most of our debt is at group parent level. I also assist with our finance and funding arrangements and strategy.
L&Q is a Registered Society and registered housing association, so in addition to the usual corporate stakeholders, we have a regulator to keep happy. But I love the variety I have in my role – as every day is different. I need to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of all, which appeals to my curious nature.
What are the qualities and skills you believe to be the most important in your role?
Planning and organising is number one. It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or have 30 years’ experience, being able to track and meet deadlines on covenants and around regulatory requirements is vitally important, more so than in most other finance roles. Also, you need to be able to plan for the unexpected.
People skills are also key. This covers everything from persuasion to empathy to passion. Treasuries are often very small teams with a high level of engagement with internal and external stakeholders, so ability to interact with them is crucial. Treasury also often leads change and efficiency agendas, so it helps to be able to persistently drive teams towards these goals.
Technical qualifications – I am AMCT, CIMA and APMP qualified. I believe it’s not enough to know treasury well to be a strategic partner to the business. You also need to be able to understand accounting to better understand account notes, impacts on covenants and the impact of M&A activity, and run projects – whether TMS implementations, debt issuance or M&A – in the most efficient way.
IT skills – these are often underestimated, but being able to automate tasks with Visual Basic for Applications, for instance, can make a huge difference to the team workload.
Liz Loxton is editor of The Treasurer