Back in his home country of Portugal, Sérgio Cruz would enjoy taking time out to surf the waves coming in from the Atlantic. Now, as he begins his new role as CFO of Redwood Bank, he finds himself surfing a different sort of wave, admittedly one that still has its origins on the other side of the Atlantic. But nevertheless, he is able to draw on his treasury and risk management expertise to help navigate the current ocean of business uncertainty.
“With all the changes we see in the market, we always look at them and ask how they will impact the bank,” Cruz explains. “We continually monitor the situation, comparing where we are with where we expected to be, stress testing those positions, and asking what range of scenarios we could face. And all the time, we take a very prudent approach to growth, that’s something that we’ve always done.”
Redwood Bank specialises in providing banking services, including lending and savings, to the SME market, a market that it considers to have been underserved in the past. “The market goes all the way from sole traders to medium-sized companies, plus clubs, charities and other associations,” he says, adding that the bank is still able to treat clients as “names rather than numbers”.
Cruz began his career in finance when he joined PwC in 2004 after graduating with an economics degree from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. While working with the Big Four firm, he learnt about financial services, including the use of derivatives, valuations and structured products. Then, despite seeing a clear career path ahead of him, he decided he wanted to stop “reviewing what other people were doing and actually do it for myself”.
So, he joined a Portuguese bank, where he worked in the middle office, in the assets and liabilities management (ALM) function. “They were developing a treasury function as well, so I had a lot of exposure to all things treasury and all things ALM.”
This was just before the start of the global financial crisis in 2007. “All of a sudden, it was something completely different. The value of securities just completely changed; structured products that once were considered to be very safe, no longer had any value. So, it was another steep learning curve and, as a consequence, the industry changed its views around prudential risk – treasury-related risk, capital management, liquidity management, interest rate risk; everything that until then was not, quite frankly, seen as important – they suddenly became huge.”
Having weathered that storm, Cruz moved to the UK to join what was to become One Savings Bank as its market, treasury and liquidity manager. “This was my first risk role, so I had moved from third line [of defence] at PwC to first line at the Portuguese bank to second line at One Savings,” Cruz explains. “There’s a view that the second line needs to have a good understanding and practical knowledge of what happens in the first line in order to do its job properly, and that was certainly the view at One Savings, so I was happy to take the job.”
Then, after working at Amicus Finance as head of treasury and ALM for two years, he joined Redwood Bank in 2018, not long after its formation the previous year, once more in a risk role. “And the rest,” he says, “is history.”
I still think that inflationary pressures are preventing sharp declines in base rates. But we are also considering scenarios where there’s a wider recession, and what that could mean for base rate
Having been first asked to help build the risk function, he moved back to a treasury role that eventually evolved into him becoming the chief treasury and strategy officer. In September 2024, he took on the deputy CFO role, a position he held for just six months before becoming CFO when his predecessor, Ashraf Piranie, retired.
Now, he has a high-level view of “everything”, from financial and regulatory reporting, treasury, ALM, financial strategy, FP&A, and any capital-raising initiatives, alongside his CEO, Gary Wilkinson.
Looking back at the early days of Redwood Bank, Cruz recalls how the bank helped its clients through some difficult times – notably the COVID-19 pandemic – and how that will now help them navigate the current disrupted environment. “To be honest, that was one of the things I’m most proud of, how we continued to support our customers through the COVID times,” he recalls.
“A lot of banks retrenched from the market, but we didn’t. We continued to support lending and we continued to be active on the deposit side as well. We had the operational capability, having been ‘born in the cloud’, and we had enough capital to continue to support lending activity. This reinforced our position and allowed us to continue to grow.”
But looking ahead, how does he see the current uncertainty in the global economy playing out? “We continuously review market expectations [on interest rates], and that feeds into our own forecasts, our budgets and our stress testing. I still think that inflationary pressures are preventing sharp declines in base rates. But we are also considering scenarios where there’s a wider recession, and what that could mean for base rate.”
Cruz is quick to point out the importance of one qualification that he took a number of years ago that has helped his career journey. He was among the very first cohort to study for the ACT and Asset & Liability Management Association’s CertBALM qualification. “I had attended a number of ALMA workshops and conferences, so knew they were planning a certification on treasury and asset management with the support of the ACT. I was really honoured to be part of the pilot, which took around six months to complete, and it was so successful that they now run two cohorts a year.
“It’s brilliant now that I have people in my team that I can incentivise to take these qualifications as well. It was an opportunity to go back to basics and not take things for granted just because I had been doing them a certain way.”
According to Cruz, these types of qualifications are helping people to evolve within finance. “The boundaries between financial reporting, ALM and treasury are breaking down, and there’s now a path for all those disciplines to put people on to the CFO trajectory. I think it is more exciting now for people starting in finance; they have much more of an ability to move across functions without feeling that they need to take a step back in their career to do so.”
Change has always been part of Cruz’s career, whether it be leaving a Big Four firm, or even leaving his home country, but he sees it as a natural part of his career. “I think change has given me more than it has taken,” he says. “When I look back at all the challenges – the financial crash, Brexit, COVID – I don’t see them in a negative way, because the outcome has more than compensated for the difficulties.”
And what would he say to his younger self as he considered moving jobs and countries? “Back in Lisbon, I was always surfing and body boarding. So, I think there’s one thing I’ve learned – when you are on a wave, you ride that wave. If you get knocked off, you get back on the board and get back on the next wave that comes. But once you are riding that wave, you make the best of it that you can.”
2017 – year Redwood Bank was launched
£635m – total assets (y/e 31 December 2024)
£586m – total liabilities (y/e 31 December 2024)
£2.7m – pre-tax profit (y/e 31 December 2024)
£760m – total lent to support SME businesses (y/e 31 December 2024)
7,400 – number of customers (y/e 31 December 2024)
Philip Smith is editor of The Treasurer
This article first appeared in The Treasurer Issue 2, 2025