How did you get your start in treasury?
Like a lot of people, I suspect, I got involved in treasury by accident. I graduated with a masters in investment management in 2008, right in the thick of the financial crisis. My degree would ordinarily have led to a role in investment banking or asset management, but the banking industry was in a terrible state, so my first role in finance was as part of BAT’s finance graduate programme, working in the Dutch business.
My manager in the programme was BAT’s former group treasurer, and it was through working for him that I began to learn something about the treasury world. He kindly put me in touch with the BAT treasury team, who helped me learn more about treasury, and for my final rotation at BAT, I requested an assignment in BAT’s group treasury function in London.
I spent around six months there as a trainee working on several projects in commercial and corporate treasury, then joined permanently as part of the front-office team after graduating from the programme. BAT’s FX activities are huge. The company is in virtually all countries, and because of the sheer volumes of trades and the number of markets, it felt like I was doing a great deal but with no time to understand the FX markets in a wider, more strategic sense.
After four years, I moved to BHP, still working in London and still trading in FX and interest rates. The big difference was that the scope of instruments we were trading was smaller but with much higher values, and with a very active approach to risk, which allowed me to understand the financial market dynamics much better.
After BHP, I moved to PwC, where I worked as a consultant for nearly two years, before moving to Capita as head of front office. After living abroad for some time, I came back to the UK and am now working at the technology company Sage as treasury director.
Of the career moves you’ve made, which has turned out to be the most significant and why?
The move into a client-facing role at PwC was the most decisive for me, because it gave me a different perspective on how we act at work and how important it is to communicate well. In treasury, your technical skills and abilities are very important, but communication, influencing and persuading are even more so. At PwC, I was part of the corporate treasury team and in fact I ended up doing very little in the way of corporate treasury projects and much more in the banking and banking services world. I was often on my own as the only person with a corporate treasury background, and outside my comfort zone in terms of the work itself. But I knew that I still had to deliver on these projects and move forward by asking the right questions, talking to the client and delivering not necessarily by drawing on what I already knew, but by what I could learn on the project and could figure out. That really changed my perspective on the world of work. Since then I’ve always sought roles with a large change element. Accepting that we often have to find the answers without the benefit of expertise in that particular field, and by asking the right questions and really listening to the answers: that’s the way to deliver and move forward.
What experiences have moved you on the most in terms of your career?
Moving into and then out of consultancy. I’m glad of all the things l learnt in that brief spell of consulting in terms of people and team management. But I realised that all I was doing was banking and banking services consultancy, and that if I wanted to return to corporate treasury I would have to make that move sooner rather than later. I’ve always been attracted to roles where I felt I could make a difference and where I felt I would be outside of my comfort zone.
Since it is a technology company, Sage definitely qualifies as an organisation addressing a change programme. Sage has grown very quickly as a business, and it’s now a matter of aligning how we operate to the size and complexity of the business, while making sure we remain agile and dynamic, in line with how our industry and our customers operate.
What is your current role and what do you like about it?
I am director of treasury at Sage. For me it’s always the change agenda that is attractive. Sage is well established and has had a treasury function for quite a long time, but because the organisation has changed so much, it is time for a review of the fundamentals – how we address interest rate and currency risk, cash and banking infrastructure and relationships in pursuit of more efficiencies. That’s a great opportunity for me or for any treasury professional. Since every aspect of treasury is up for review, it will be a question of how we prioritise. As a business we are all very open to change and recognise that we will be able to get where we want to go by being collaborative and by understanding what everyone requires and wants.
What skills do you consider the most important for this change programme and for treasury professionals in general?
The soft skills, without doubt. To embark on a change programme of this kind you need to be very good at communication. Our stakeholders need to know what we’re addressing and why and what the benefits are. It is important to be patient and diplomatic. I am always keen to move things on, but I have to remember that it’s not the same for everyone. It is important to address people’s doubts rather than ploughing ahead with changes without explaining the rationale or sitting down with them to address the impact on them.
You’ve had a long involvement with the ACT. What has that given you?
I joined the ACT Council in May 2016 and became an officer a year later. I am currently deputy president and will become president on 1 May this year. When I joined the council, I also became chair of the Future Leaders in Treasury group, a role I held for three years. When I stepped down from that, I joined the Policy & Technical Advisory Panel; I felt I had done what I set out to do with the Future Leaders group in terms of providing some direction and engaging with the membership, and I wanted to involve myself with something quite different and play a different role. The P&T committee has some very senior members drawn from legal, tax and accountancy spheres and it is one of the means by which the ACT engages with external stakeholders such as the Bank of England and the FCA, which I have found a fascinating aspect of the work.
Council membership is also very valuable but for different reasons. It is great to feel I’m contributing to discussions around qualifications and membership development, for example. My profile is quite different to other council members in terms of age and background, which gives me different perspectives to the rest of the group. I found it a challenge, at the start, to have the confidence to voice my views, but the experience has taught me to contribute to the conversation even when I feel I have a very different perspective on things. To be honest, even though I am now more practised at this, there are times when I still need to gather my confidence to voice my opinion. From a personal development point of view, it’s important to keep doing that. It’s something I will use for the rest of my career.
Liz Loxton is editor of The Treasurer