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The new protector: Treasurers’ strategic advantage
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This episode is also available as a podcast, search "Global Viewpoint" on your preferred podcast player to watch, listen, and subscribe.
In this episode, Uma Bohne-Gill, Head of Institutional Sales, Asia Pacific at HSBC, sits down with Robert Watts, COO and Head of Finance, Asia Pacific at Marex, to explore the challenges and unique opportunities facing modern treasurers in today's economic climate. Discover how the treasury function is adapting and leading in the current landscape.
Find out more here: https://www.business.hsbc.com/insights/facilitating-trade/the-new-protector-treasurers-strategic-advantage
This episode was recorded on the sidelines of the HSBC Asia Credit Conference 2025. Find out more here:
https://www.business.hsbc.com/en-gb/campaigns/asia-credit-conference
Disclaimer: Views of external guest speakers do not represent those of HSBC.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Series
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to HSBC Global Viewpoint, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
00:00:12
Speaker
Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes. Thanks for listening, and now onto today's show.
Introduction of Rob Watts and Conference Context
00:00:20
Speaker
Hello, my name is Uma Bonegill. I'm the head of institutional sales here at HSBC, looking after global payment solutions. um Welcome to the next episode of Global Viewpoint. And I'm really happy to welcome Rob Watts from Merix. Rob, welcome to the studio today.
Role of CFOs in Market Turbulence
00:00:38
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me This recording is taking place at our ninth annual credit conference here in Singapore. We're going to be talking about the new protector, a treasurer's strategic advantage, really getting into some of the details with regards to the role of a CFO, a head of finance, with regards to navigating through all the underlying turbulence that we're seeing in the markets today, and many other topics as part of the overall role. So without further ado, let's get started.
Building Client Relationships During Turbulence
00:01:09
Speaker
So Rob, first question of the day really is, you know, all the turbulence that we're seeing in the markets today. So much news, right? We started off with COVID, we've moved on to different kind of trigger events, and and today also on the news there's so much going on.
00:01:25
Speaker
What is the silver lining that you're seeing in terms of the business or is there a challenges that you have to navigate? In our business, we expect turbulence. ah These turbulent times are just expected to happen. And it's part of the reason we exist, really.
00:01:40
Speaker
You know, clients come to us because they want access to infrastructure. They want access to tools, um liquidity, insights to help them navigate the markets. So, you know, really the silver lining is that we're able to show up for our customers.
00:01:57
Speaker
We're able to show them that there is value in what we're doing. And we're able to stand out as well amongst other competitors and peers in the market as having a really close relationship with our
Collaboration Across Functions for Resilience
00:02:10
Speaker
clients.
00:02:10
Speaker
the treasury function is able to provide so much more to the business. Now, the business expects more from the treasury function, and so they're enabled and you know are capable and accountable to doing more.
00:02:26
Speaker
And that really helps the organization run a lot better, I think. By having these turbulent times, you know, the business and and other people within the organization aren't just trying to go ahead and make all decisions on their own. They understand that treasury, finance, risk, operations, all of these different functions come together into one piece to make the whole that is the business.
00:02:53
Speaker
And that, I think, helps... In many ways, because not only does it help in the immediate sense, but it helps people to build those relationships, which can then build the kind of collaboration and kind of further dynamic growth that we want to see. And I think when we were chatting about this, you know, and um one of the things was keeping you here very close to the ground in terms of what clients Mm-hmm.
Navigating Liquidity Stresses with Clients
00:03:18
Speaker
um I feel like that really was a key message um that we see across many, many clients, but also particularly for yourselves um in Merix. Absolutely. i think that by knowing our clients really well, and in fact, particularly for us, where we are very much closer to our clients than maybe some of our peers or maybe some of the you know the banking sector providers of the same services that we offer,
00:03:48
Speaker
We have a very close relationship. We understand the business very well. And that helps us to kind of preempt these turbulent times. You know, in particular, I think, you know, with with large swings in commodity pricing, we we're able to work with the client to understand where their liquidity stresses might come from.
00:04:09
Speaker
And then we're able to kind of work through plan to get them through that. And I think that really shows in these times that we are ready to kind of turn up to took for our clients, give them the help that they need so that they don't end up in a much worse situation.
Adapting Plans to Market Conditions
00:04:28
Speaker
With the pace of change and all turbulence that we're seeing, is there a fundamentally a change in how you you plan for these Black Swan events? I think when we're planning for any event, there are kind of there are a few different features and factors that you need to think about.
00:04:44
Speaker
you know, you you kind of look at the past and you're able to kind of look at what's happened and feed that into the models that you have, feed that into the decision-making that you have. And having turbulent markets actually supports us in that process quite a lot.
00:05:00
Speaker
So having the ability to build our models out to focus more on recent events, to test our models, to test the way in which we think about things against those kind of turbulent events today, that really helps.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I think that as we kind of plan, you know, as I said earlier, being a partner to the business is really important. And so if you're now going through turbulent events and you're seeing a lot of volatility in the market, the business is starting to listen to you more.
00:05:38
Speaker
The business is starting to engage with you and kind of turn around and say, okay, how do we deal with a future major issue? And that actually helps to plan. We can plan for having liquidity in the right place.
00:05:52
Speaker
We can plan to make sure that we're making the right investments. We're not having too much concentration in one asset, concentration in one product, etc. And... and Without the turbulent events, you almost don't get the kind of reassurance from the business and from others in the organization to turn around and say, actually, you know what?
00:06:14
Speaker
You're right. Everything you've been saying all this time is right. And of course, they're going to still push you. And, you know, that they want to deploy the liquidity. They want to keep on pushing faster and harder. But it does give you a little moment, I think, where you can sit back and you can say, look, we plan correctly. Now, how do we adjust that?
00:06:32
Speaker
How do we kind of take the next step? it looks like little tweaks. We said the fundamentals are there and then you tweak depending on how you want to pivot. Exactly.
Adjusting Models with Real-time Data
00:06:40
Speaker
Exactly. You just keep tweaking. You keep on feeding real-time data into your model.
00:06:46
Speaker
You kind of look at the model against the real-time data. You kind of just keep adjusting as you go. you know There's no you know point if you know a large kind of volatile event happens and everything's okay. you know Everyone was a bit scared, you've kind of but you kind of got through the other side.
00:07:05
Speaker
Everyone's okay. So there's no point in changing everything. You don't need to change the fundamentals. don't need to change the base. You just need to kind of tweak where you go on that and kind of keep on adjusting that. And the upside of that, actually, for the business, and the the the reason it makes planning better is because it may turn out that some of the way in which you're thinking is too conservative.
00:07:25
Speaker
And you can kind of tweak it and you can release some liquidity. You can release some assets to be able to do something more with them. And to be different. yeahre I think that's really key. It's also words that you talked about, which was insights, having that information that you can provide to your clients, to your internal clients.
00:07:43
Speaker
um It really resonates with me as well and and the bank in terms of insights that we provide. And I find that having that year to the ground is super, super important. yeah um And that kind of leads me into technology because we've got, you know, I i feel like your role is so multifaceted, fastted I should say. yeah you how you've got You've got to have that risk modeling. You have to have the right kind of information to your internal, external clients.
Adopting New Technologies and System Integration
00:08:10
Speaker
um And so the deployment of technology, you know, how has that been for you um over the last like, you know, five, six years now? I think you just cannot stop.
00:08:22
Speaker
yeah That's the main thing, right? um New technology always comes onto the scene and everyone wants the new fancy new thing. And fortunately, we move pretty fast. So fortunately, we can deploy things pretty quickly.
00:08:36
Speaker
But, you know, there's also an element where you have to kind of stop and think, is that the right thing to do? But also on the other side, you say, if I don't do that, what am I going to miss out on?
00:08:47
Speaker
So, you know, when we're talking about technology today, there are kind of, at least from a treasury perspective, there's probably kind of two major changes that we're kind of seeing.
00:08:58
Speaker
You know, we're seeing a lot more drive around real-time payments. A lot of our clients are asking to to see those kind of real-time payment flows. i think that's really driven by kind of the younger workforce, some of our clients with the kind of younger workforce who...
00:09:15
Speaker
are used to kind of the crypto space, the retail space. They're used to seeing their money in their bank immediately or, you know, transferred immediately. And so what we've been doing, you know, is working with HSBC, in fact, to kind of roll out some of those new payment technologies.
00:09:34
Speaker
But the thing about that is it's kind of like back to the modeling piece, right? It's back to the same risk and the Black Swan event. Mm-hmm. you can't just keep on rolling out new technologies unless you've got really strong infrastructure, really strong base. Yeah.
00:09:49
Speaker
So the other thing we've been doing is rolling out a very integrated like treasury management system. It's like plug and play. Exactly. yeah and we've been talking about this, right? It's like a toolbox. Yeah. So you've got something with lots of tools in it. And as i said you know as I said earlier, the important thing is that you can keep on adding tools to it.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah. It's a toolbox and it's kind of empty when you start, right? You've just got the very basics. You've got kind of what we've got now. Fundamental. Fundamental, sorry, not basics. Right. And you can build on top of that. So you can add new tools to it, add new features to it.
00:10:22
Speaker
And that fundamentally is the important thing that you don't want to build a system that's so ingrained in everything you do that you just cannot change it and you cannot evolve it.
00:10:33
Speaker
Because there's one thing that isn't changing, which is that everything is changing. Yeah. Tell me about it. The pace of change is incredible. Exactly. And i'm I'm really looking forward to what's going to happen in terms of new technology.
00:10:49
Speaker
um We obviously hear things on AI. We hear
Importance of Cultural Fit and Leadership
00:10:52
Speaker
things. But I think at the end of the day, and we were chatting about this, about people, right? People are of the core fundamental. it's the It's the glue in our business. So while you have this technology, how are you looking at people actually?
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you're right. People make up the organization. People touch everything that we do, right? And, you know, HSBC is a much larger organization than the Marix, but we have to hire the right people to do the right thing with the right mindset, with the right culture.
00:11:27
Speaker
And that's not easy. It's not easy at all. And one team might have a very different culture, very different requirement to another. One individual may have a very different mindset, different culture to another.
00:11:44
Speaker
And if you don't take a really proactive, really engaged approach to building our team and building out, you know, the people around you, I just don't think you're going to be so successful.
00:11:59
Speaker
You, you know, you see people, you know, hiring. And they're just always going after technical aptitude and they're looking at CVs and saying this person can do can do the job technically. And to ah very large extent, to me, that's not actually as important. yeah Can they fit in?
00:12:16
Speaker
ah Do they know what Marix wants? What Marix is like? Values, right? The value of the culture. Yeah. Yeah. And also you might not fit into all organizations, right?
00:12:29
Speaker
And I think that's actually quite an important thing that you you know you have to notice, which is that Merix really pushing to become very inclusive and very accepting and really looking at its hiring processes to get more and more viewpoints in.
00:12:43
Speaker
But at the same time, there are some... people's kind of mindsets or culture that might not necessarily kind of align every kind of step of the way along the way in terms of kind of our aspiration to grow and our very kind of driven approach to build things out.
00:13:00
Speaker
And so you have to be kind of very honest with yourself and say, who are we looking for? How do we want to continue to grow the business? um But absolutely, people are right at the core of it.
00:13:14
Speaker
And if you don't get the hiring right, then it and becomes much more difficult. Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, particularly like I see it in my team where we need to have the right kind of...
00:13:24
Speaker
you know, the right culture, very big in culture and at HSBC. You know, we we really look at even in the pillars of leadership, we have six pillars of leadership and to really make even better leaders.
00:13:36
Speaker
Great leaders make even better leaders. Yeah. I think that's really important. And I find that, you know, in supporting Merix, we need to make sure that we have the right teams to support each other, like to support you, to make sure that everything is working really well.
00:13:50
Speaker
And that building of trust is really, really fundamental and really key. Yeah. But it's interesting you say about leaders, right? I think leadership is where it comes from. Yeah. You have to set it all from the top. um If you want a culture to exist and a culture to persist, the culture has to be set by top level management.
00:14:11
Speaker
And that needs to really flow down to everything. If you want people to be collaborative, you have to show collaboration. Yeah. And that's the only way I think that you can get teams which are resilient enough to withstand some of these issues.
00:14:27
Speaker
I guess bringing it kind of back to everything we talked about, you know, the treasury function, the finance function, the risk function, all of these different functions that come together. are so valuable and so important because when you have these turbulent events, they can kind of deal with those those issues head on.
00:14:45
Speaker
They're able to adapt. They're able to be dynamic. They're able to kind of deal with situations that they've never seen before. And the only way, you know, that you can really do that is to have people open to new ideas, open to change, open to all issues. Pulling each other up and really wrapping, yeah, like we're going to get this issue sorted or we're going to like move forward even though times are tough. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's super important.
00:15:09
Speaker
It really resonates. So Rob, like looking at technology, that's something that I know it's multifaceted as part of your role. And we talked about this in New Protector. Mm-hmm. You have to make that cash work. You've got to look at, you know, how you um support your internal and external clients. And then you also have to decide on new technology or how to deploy investment.
00:15:34
Speaker
um Are you able to share a little bit more about how you've been able to do that in Ericsson? Yeah, I mean, I think that's extremely important. Today, we're seeing more and more of our clients desiring faster payments.
00:15:47
Speaker
They're requiring everything to be faster, really. You know, it's more dynamic. Things are moving so much quicker. And I think a lot of that is driven really by the clients who are coming in They've got a younger generation of, you know, new traders, new joiners in the organization.
00:16:04
Speaker
And they're used to this in their day-to-day life. You know, especially in the retail space, you know, they're expecting to make payments immediately. And when they come into the institutional space that we're working in, and they're saying, well, why does it take, you know, through the SWIFT network or whatever, a day or two to to receive my cash?
00:16:22
Speaker
And so that, I think, is something that really keeps us on our toes. We need to keep on evolving to accept and deliver and really drive ahead of new payment technologies.
00:16:35
Speaker
And if we can continue to do that and integrate them into all of our different treasury management systems and into all of the systems that we have, then it becomes a huge advantage as a function, but also as an organization.
00:16:50
Speaker
It's amazing, right? The pace of change. Yes. I remember the old yellow envelope that used to get passed on in your first. And now it's like you click a button and everything happens throughout different platforms.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. Across markets like real-time payments as well. You know, you see, you know, funds going across yeah into different markets. Yeah. But that ability to provide data, insights, true technology, I suppose that's really the end of the day where we're at. And I can't imagine what going to be like for the future, whether or not we'll be having, you know, classes and just tells us exactly where our positions went. That'd be amazing.
00:17:24
Speaker
I think we just have to keep on keeping up right yeah and just keep changing and keep on evolving with everything. Yeah, absolutely. As part of your role, it's so multifaceted, um so much to think about, you know, different events that are happening, technology, people. um Really, in terms of where you've been able to look at, you know, leveraging opportunities or looking for opportunities in the future, what are the key things that would be important to you in this, you know, at at this moment?
00:17:51
Speaker
As I've been talking about, Treasury is a real li and really important partner to all the businesses internally. And that is kind of in the DNA of our organization and how we think about our clients.
00:18:05
Speaker
We work with our clients very closely so that we can understand their issues and that because so that they do not become really large issues and cause issues for us. And I think if you kind of take it and flip it on its head, we therefore need to partners and support from all of the people within our ecosystem, all the people that we work with, to be able to deliver that same level of high quality service to our clients.
00:18:31
Speaker
And so as we've been kind of discussing today, one of the things that's quite key to us is liquidity management.
Role of Partners in Quality Service Delivery
00:18:38
Speaker
And with HSBC, we've been working really heavily through payments that we mentioned earlier.
00:18:43
Speaker
um On the panel, I mentioned, you know, some cash pooling that we're putting in place, all the treasury management systems, which feed in from, you know, data from HSBC, data from our internal systems.
00:18:56
Speaker
And all of that ecosystem, when it comes together, needs to work together. Every time. So if you don't have a partner who is able to turn up and show up for you, then you are unable to show up for your partners.
00:19:10
Speaker
So we're very aggressive in how we want to deliver the best service for our clients. And so therefore, we're very aggressive with how important it is for our partners to be able to deliver that good service to us.
00:19:24
Speaker
And I don't think that anyone in this world, in the financial services industry, can get by without partners, right? you You need other people, other organizations, other systems to be able to deliver the things that you want to be able to deliver.
00:19:42
Speaker
And so it's really important, I think, when you're choosing those partners, that they also understand what you want to do and understand where you want to go and what you want to deliver to your clients. I think the people aspect is definitely a glue.
00:19:55
Speaker
And you have then the beauty of layering it with the toolkit with different types of solutions. Exactly. And that kind of then, you know, we're able to deliver really, really well for our internal and external stakeholders, both from both sides. Exactly. So in saying that, Rob, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:20:15
Speaker
Thank you for all your support and in our partnership together. It's been so fantastic having you here in the studio with us. Thank you. um And in this episode for Global Viewpoint. um For the audience at home as well, thank you again for joining us here. Thank you for joining us at HSBC Global Viewpoint.
00:20:32
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed the discussion. Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.