Valerio Trinchi 0.05
All right, thank you. I mean, thank you for attending. I mean, the treasure is always familiar to a few folks. So as Ryan said, we’ll keep it interactive at the end. But we want to spend some time today to talk about the next type in Treasury. Paul and I have worked together in the past and only focused on technology. And so right now, I mean, we want to also discuss today, the metaverse, and now it’s possibly gonna affect Treasury if will affect Treasury ball. I’m not sure about that. But maybe before we do that, we also want to go into a short memory lane of what Treasury technology has been in the last 20-plus years. But before that, maybe I mean, a little like note, oh, I don’t know if you want to comment on this about how technology can help or should help the day-to-day operation?
Paul Bramwell 1.06
Yep. So way back in the day, I worked in corporate treasury for many years in the UK, you can tell from the accent, not from the US originally, and spent a lot of time working in Treasury very manually on spreadsheets. And those were kinds of spreadsheets are probably most people who have never heard of, like smart and symphony and all those things. And, you know, a lot of the time was really well, how do you automate to get that 80% kind of fit for certain technologies, and you would tend to not focus on the 20. So it’s always the opposite around, you spent 80% of your time doing 20% of what you needed to do. And the idea was to reverse that,
Valerio Trinchi 1.47
what I would say portfolio in the last so many years, this has slightly changed, right? I mean, we have seen a lot of automation coming on board. I mean, starting from the original on-premise systems, I mean, and then I mean, evolved into like, software as a service. And then I mean, toward the latest, before we do that, maybe we’ll talk about like barrier barriers in embracing new technology. And I mean, what stops folks do to going for the next evolution?
Paul Bramwell 2.20
Yeah, I mean, it’s something that, again, harping back, back in the day, the Treasurer in the organization I worked for, was a little bit of a Luddite. I’m not sure if everybody’s aware of what a Luddite is. But somebody who is not really a fan of technology, a Luddite would condemn motor vehicles, for example, because it would kill the horse and cart raid, etc. So technology was always seen as a barrier, something new that was dangerous, could really open you up for risks that you couldn’t understand, etc. And, you know, and so in addition to all these other things, like the kind of budget constraints, there was always that fear of job loss or the fear of error, on doing something from a technology perspective that you didn’t really understand, if I can’t understand it completely, how do I know what the risks are? In the software? And that’s why you got things like, you know, SAS, accreditation, soccer, accreditation, etc. To make sure that factors like that were accredited and kind of hacked, and things like that.
Valerio Trinchi 3.20
I mean, of course, I mean, I would say, if you don’t adapt and adopt, I mean, you definitely incur the risk to remain behind, right. So I think one of the risks has always been true. Whether you’re a lagger or you’re like, an organization that goes for the new thing and explores it. First, among others, I think technology changes how things are done. And then at some point, I mean, either you decide that you want to stay ahead of the curve or behind the curve. Yeah. And then there is some risk in between, I don’t know.
Paul Bramwell 3.57
Well, I think if you don’t proactively decide to be ahead of the curve, you’re always going to be behind. And, you know, again, back in the day, the company I worked for had a multilateral netting solution that they’d built on APL. APL was an advanced programming language, it wasn’t really advanced at that point, but it took three people, two weeks, every quarter to run the multilateral netting cycle. And it was rounding to one point well around about a million dollars per month effectively from a rounding error perspective. So I felt like I could probably do that on a spreadsheet. And did take me about a month to do it. And it took one person 15 seconds to run multilateral netting once a quarter instead of two people, three weeks every quarter. And so the treasurer made me run it in parallel for a year because he didn’t believe it was possible. And it was Excel. So it was correct to 15 decimal places, so actually 15 decimal places or millions is sense. So it was actually completely accurate as well. So unless you decide to embrace technology, I think you’re always destined and doomed to be behind. And that’s never comfortable. A place to Be especially with Treasury payments. receivables.
Valerio Trinchi 5.03
Yeah, I think I mean, today’s I mean, we want to just give you like two minutes recap of what’s what happened in the last 20 years, right? Starting from the 80s. I mean, that’s more your age in our mind.
Paul Bramwell 5.15
I appreciate you pointing that out. I did start Treasury in the 80s, admittedly at the end of the 80s. So way back in the days of DOS, so you had PC DOS, and you had MS-DOS, which was Microsoft, and PC DOS was the IBM version. And then he came up with Windows and you had Microsoft Windows, and you had IBM zone version, or older OS two, which lasted around about six months. But yeah, way back in the days of DOS, I used a treasury system. That were all sorts of tools for managing files that you would push around, security was great, you would put a floppy disk into a computer and upload stuff. And then, you know, the bank would pay things on the basis of that. And of course, you could tamper with it and do all sorts of stuff. Really not very secure. But that was way back in the DOS days.
Valerio Trinchi 5.59
Then after that, I mean, we move into the legacy trs, I don’t even know what that was. But you have a recollection?
Paul Bramwell 6.07
Yep. So yeah, I used one of the first Treasury systems that were around it was Bank of America, international treasurer. And it was built by a company called swallow systems. And I don’t know if anybody else used that. But basically, if you typed SQL on it, this little swallow would fly around the screen in the DOS window. To show you it was built by a swallow. And that was the first version of a screensaver that you had to run kind of that kind of legacy technology. It was clunky. And then you started to see SunGard, quite a few people, maybe if you’ve been in Treasury long, would have used things like ICMS and TW s from XR T, all very entry-level Treasury systems back in the day, but they were always supplemented with spreadsheets. Because there was always a floor, you couldn’t get the data out, you get the data in every report, etc. So spreadsheets were pretty much had to be there as a wrapper around your treasury system,
Valerio Trinchi 7.01
I think we got to we need to get to the end of the 90s and 2000, to start to have the first on-premise more grounded systems like it to the city’s financial the integrity,
Paul Bramwell 7.14
you don’t want you had the advent of Software as a Service. So a couple of vendors, which is excellent. Oh, yeah, there you go again. So yeah, so you actually got them towards the kind of early teens, sorry, not teens, the early 2000s, where you had the advent of sass, so he used to work for a SASS company. I worked for a SASS company, and that’s offering multi-tenant applications to multiple clients in one single database. And that really sped up the computing power, it sped up how you would support the applications as a vendor. And as a client, it would actually significantly improve your life, in terms of upgrades, because previous to that, and still, there are lots of legacy technology companies out there that you have to upgrade periodically. And those upgrades are painful, and to be avoided at all costs. And so SAS has really taken hold from the early, the early 2000s really becoming kind of de rigueur for me,
Valerio Trinchi 8.14
was a new thing. I mean, there was some skepticism even back then, I mean, if you recall, I mean, companies were reluctant some companies to do to enable the data outside their premises and let alone in the cloud, right.
Paul Bramwell 8.26
And still, that’s the case. I mean, still, if you’re a defense contractor, very often, you’re not allowed to have data outside of firewalls. So you have to buy an application that you can install inside. The architectural decision around software as a service means that if you’d like to have your own version of it, it becomes incredibly complex and difficult, and expensive. So a lot of the SAS vendors won’t actually sell you a standalone version of their application. Just because, you know, you end up supporting multiple versions, you have hotfixes, service packs, all of these things that go on a regular basis, and it becomes more problematic. But it’s still prevalent, I would say, in the universe of treasury solutions that are out there of I don’t know, maybe 5000 companies that use a treasury system, probably two and a half 1000 of them are a software as a service, I would think maybe a little bit less is probably still less than 50% Yeah, I
Valerio Trinchi 9.14
think I mean, the most interesting thing for me sometimes is to understand okay, what is going to stick and what is not going to work? Right? So if I look at the latest type in the last 10 years, so we go into blockchain I mean to use for settlement in Treasury that didn’t mean materialize just yet probably there is like some jurist the regulation, this restriction, then you have other things like AI and ML, which I think instead probably are already applied. I mean, I read Yes, we are like, huge promoter of this kind of technology, at least for Cash Forecasting. And, and then what else? What’s coming up next. Right, so now we’re starting to get about metaverse. I don’t know if he’s a far stretch or not, and if there’s gonna be some like real Potential applicability, let’s say in reporting, I don’t know, much geared toward reality can be applied outside gaming. But what do you think?
Paul Bramwell 10.07
Well, I think it’s potentially a great application. I’m thinking, if you look at the way Treasury systems have evolved over time, you’re looking at reports. I mean, back in the day, when I started in Treasury, the Treasury system I had, you took screenshots or you exported to Excel to get your data out. And that was back in the days of Lotus 123, and then Excel with WYSIWYG that you had to press Ctrl F 12, to attach WYSIWYG, and that was made it look a little bit better. And then you could print it. And, and the advent of kind of the next level is better reporting. And then you had Crystal Reports. And then you had still excel as a reporting tool, etc. And then you’ve got business intelligence tools, you got BI tools, you got Power BI, you’ve got Tableau, you’ve got all of these different tools that are out there as well. And what the metaverse gives us an almost absorbing kind of data view that you could actually have, while you’re actually immersed in the data, as opposed to actually just looking at data on a report.
Valerio Trinchi 11.07
When do you think you’re gonna lead the sort of infrastructure underneath in order to fully leverage something like that? I mean, it was going to support that. So I remember back EBM, the next big thing we’re going to manage bank account automatically as an interface through our bank management module in the in our TMS never happened, because I mean, for the reason that we know, the bank didn’t want to give up on the portal blah, blah, blah. Yep. So what do you what barriers do you see for something like this to happen?
Paul Bramwell 11.36
I don’t think it’s necessarily a barrier, I think, I think a lot of these things aren’t need-based. They’re kind of how cool could it be? And what could I look like? And how can I visualize this? I think that’s where that’s where BI tools have been really strong. If you’re a treasurer and our CFO, and you’re looking at all of your data, looking at a Crystal report or an Excel sheet, it’s going to allow us a lot of data and just looking at visited one company a few years ago who built a chatbot. And they built a treasury chatbot, and the treasurer was showing me how fantastic the chatbot was. So you’d say hey, look, how much cash do I have in Germany, and the chatbot would tell you how much cash you had in Germany. And then he said, How much cash do we have at Deutsche Bank in Germany? And under chatbot would respond? And then he’d say, Well, how much cash do we have at that legal entity in Germany and the Chatbot would respond again, but it would half the time not really understand what he said and give you something different. So completely and absolutely pointless, because you could have just looked at a printed report and all that information would have been there. He had he took about 10 minutes to ask the question of how much do I have in cash for that legal entity in that country? So it was a great idea, but it was a solution without a problem. And so they put it out there with the metaverse. It’s becoming more and more real. Is everybody been on the metaverse take a look? Does anybody know? Anyone But into decentral and. So decentral and is where JP Morgan has a branch in the metaverse. It’s actually just down the road from I think Snoop Dogg’s bar. So you can go into Snoop Dogg’s barn and you can go to the JP Morgan branch in decentral and. If you go back, when you get some time, have a look at decentral and. You can log in, create your own avatar, and then you can walk around, can look at all the banks and you can look at all of the stores that already own real estate. And so I think if you’re in there, and you can see these things, if you go into the JP Morgan branch, you’ll see Jesse, Jamie diamond is in the branch walking around. And there’s a tiger walking around as well. I’m not quite sure why there’s a tiger walking around. But it’s kind of interesting. And if you think of it from a treasury perspective, if you’re the treasurer, and you come in, in the morning, you stick your goggles on like that. And you’re thinking, Okay, how much cash Have I got? Or what’s my FX position? You know, what’s my risk position, if you could put your goggles on, you walk into your treasury department, and your treasury department is in the air and you’re walking down the high street, in your company’s treasury. And you look to the right and there are all the banks, there’s Bank of America, CitiBank, I walk into Citibank, and it actually shows me all the balances. I’ve got Citibank.
Valerio Trinchi 14.10
Yeah. But I mean, it’s all good. And I, you know, I’m always fascinated listening to you. But one thing that I still have to make my mind around is that even if I look at API right now, right, API is something solid. But you don’t have your bank able to support all the payment types, and then be able to leverage an API for the interface. So I mean, you’re talking about going to Mars, and I cannot even get to this.
Paul Bramwell 14.35
But you see this, all this requires is the data. So there, it’s just manipulation of data and visualization of the data. So again, you had BI tools, and you could look at BI tools, and you move your mouse over a part of a pie chart or a bar chart, and it all moves and you can click on the pie chart, and it drills down it shows you the data you can drill down. It’s interesting, it’s more dynamic, instead of giving somebody a printed sheet, you do your presentation on Treasury by You’re showing a very fluid BI tool. So you move your mouse over it, how much cash and you move the mouse around, you can see what I’ve got. What about any effects deals? What about my forecasting? How do I look at that? So it’s a more interesting way of looking at the data. So as long as you have the data, if you were to pitch it into something like the metaverse, it’s just 3d immersion into the data, where you can actually rather than pointing a mouse at a pie chart, and the pie chart changes. You’re actually in the metaverse, you look, right. Okay, there’s a Citibank branch. I walk in on my city bank accounts, I can see what accounts I’ve got. Or you can use your tools usually got a finger there. But if you’ve got to the little tools that you have within all the kids are probably with your kind of virtual reality things. And you point at something. And what happens? Well, then it gives you a list of all of the banks, and your legal entities, you click on it again, what bank accounts are we got? Well, who are the signatories on these? So it’s actually a way of actually touching the data. Everybody sees TV shows and movies where the show the FBI, and the FBI always have glass screens where they get things and we throw them around the glass screens. And, you know, that’s not reality. Yeah. Well, I got some elements.
Valerio Trinchi 16.10
You need a data lakes, federated data, shared database to leverage these technologies you
Paul Bramwell 16.17
do. And but once you’ve got that, you’ve got the data, as long as the APIs are there, and you’ve got the data, even if you’ve got data that’s a day old. You can visualize that within the metaverse and actually look at well, what was my positions as of yesterday, and you could actually show it, and then the CFO says, Hey, guys, in Treasury, you know, what is the current deposition, etc. Okay, if you got goggles on, yes. And then you can actually show Okay, well, this is long-term debt. This is the kind of debt secured against assets, etc. So it’s that visual immersion in data? Is it real? Will people buy it? I’m not sure. But it’s real. People are buying real estate in the metaverse JP Morgan has a branch. And you can buy and sell stuff in the metaverse. So you know, should the treasure I think it’s obviously a niche. Is there a niche? I need
Paul Bramwell 17.08
it’s, I think it’s just very interesting. I think very often things are developed that maybe take it to a logical conclusion. And the reality is that you can develop something which is maybe partway that actually gets you there. But the whole idea of data visualization, where it’s around you, I think is really quite interesting. And it’s a different perspective. I think I think the most what people have asked me in the past, what do you think is the most prophetic movie as to what the future will actually look like? And I think it’s Wally. I don’t if you’ve seen the film, Wally, where basically they just float around and they have the robots to do everything and all the data, well, that’s probably what we’ll end up with. The Treasurer comes while doesn’t even come to work anymore. He stays at home, which was half mostly doing anyway. When he gets up in the morning, he puts his goggles on. And he just looks at everybody in Treasury. And when you have a meeting, instead of going on to zoom or, or teams or anything else, all of the team join in your own avatars. It’s not really you anymore, you can be whoever you want to be. And you all sit around a virtual table in the metaverse in your treasury department. And then you discuss stuff when somebody says how much cash you forgot? Somebody goes, Okay, let’s just open it up. And then you actually point in all the cash. I buy it.
Valerio Trinchi 18.23
I think that’s it. Let’s see what the audience I think we need to move forward to question. And let’s see what they think there’s any question from the audience? Please? It seems more complicated. Welcome to JP Morgan.
Paul Bramwell 18.45
I mean, I’m not saying Well, I think when you’re used to it, you would find out I mean, if you look at games, yeah. A lot of kids play games with they got a keyboard. And then they got a PlayStation thing. And now the future of games is really moving to the Oculus, a kind of virtual reality, where you’re no longer looking at a screen. And it’s like a third-party view of you running around doing stuff. You’re actually in the game because you’ve got, your glasses on, everyone’s seen all the videos on YouTube of people smashing the tallies, because they’re in this and they’re doing all this and then punching things. And it just becomes more immersive. And whilst you might think that right now, you know, is it easier to look at a printed report? Well, potentially it is. But what if somebody actually wants you to go in and show what data you’ve got, be able to drill down in I know, you’ve got to set up a WebEx or a team meeting or, or a Zoom meeting to actually take them through it and walk them through it. Whereas if they’re in this, and they can actually see everything, all of the data? I don’t know it could be really quite compact. I would
Valerio Trinchi 19.43
add that. I mean, undoubtedly, it’s important to keep an eye on our technologies evolving. Because if you think things were done 30 years ago, and how we do it today, I mean, it’s fundamentally changed and possibly if someone was talking about SARS or data in the cloud, you would say okay, I mean If it’s not safe, I’m never gonna do that. And now we are in that reality. Right? So I think, of course, there are things that need to happen for possibly Metaverse to be fully exploited. But at the pace that technology advance these days and our like a certain like, we’re looking companies immediately adopted that technology. Some of these solutions, I’m not sure if Metaverse is gonna be part of that, but definitely, they’re gonna have a play, and they’re gonna have a role. I mean, I think the exercise for me when I was a practitioner for 15 plus years, and then a consultant, who always like to take a look at what’s happening, and trying to make sense of that and see if I can deploy in my environment, measuring like the results, right. And sometimes you need to wait in order that something to mature to a certain level. Some other times, I mean, you shouldn’t realize is just an open, never gonna go anywhere, for the good or the bad.
Paul Bramwell 20.58
Yeah, I mean, EY has a facility down in Phoenix. And it’s quite a sizable workspace environment. And what they’ve done is they’ve reinvented that or envision that also when the metaverse so if you can’t have an in-person meeting, you can invite all of your clients to actually join you in the metaverse. So when they log into the meeting, it’s a natural replication of the physical environment. So you have a meeting, and we send the goggles to the client, the client comes in, they pick an avatar, and then basically you all go to the facility, you walk into the room and you’re all sitting around the room. And you can look, just by moving your head, you can actually see different people speaking, and everything else. And it’s really quite powerful. So you can actually be in the metaverse version of our actual physical Phoenix utility, having a meeting with clients. And, you know, one aspect of that is if you are showing PowerPoints or presentations within that, well, if you can immerse them in the data as well and show a far more immersive display of what you’re trying to show as opposed to just getting reports out and printed things. I don’t know. It’s, it’s really quite interesting, and quite exciting. I think. Is it for tomorrow or the year after? Probably not. But at some point, it may well be.
Valerio Trinchi 22.11
Any other questions? Who do complain? I can ask them a question, please.
Paul Bramwell 22.28
Yeah. I’ve never tried all day long. But I’ve tried. I’ve tried for a couple of hours. I mean, the grandkids have got some pretty cool games. I’ve tried those. And it’s very disorientating when you put it on and everything else. But you know, it’s also very tiring to sit in front of a laptop screen for eight hours a day or nine hours a day. And
Valerio Trinchi 22.53
yeah. would say I wouldn’t during the pain. If in two hours. I saw my eight hours of work, then okay. Yeah, I’ll keep you down for two hours. But that’s not the case. Right?
Paul Bramwell 23.12
Yeah. You guys, if you’re all aware of like the Gartner Hype curve, but the Gartner Hype curve is it’s kind of this curve going like this. And basically, it’s looking at new technologies and the adoption of newer technologies. And the Gartner Hype curve goes through various stages of new technologies. So blockchain cryptocurrency, robotics, etc. And, you know, it talks about suddenly, a new technology comes on the fore and everybody thinks, Oh, my God is gonna solve it’s gonna be the panacea for all the world’s ills, etc, everything I’ve ever needed. And you get to this kind of peak of inflated expectations. So all of a sudden, like blockchain, yeah, Arriba. It’s gonna solve everything. And it’s surely everyone’s going to adopt this. And then when it gets up to this peak of inflated expectations, it drops off onto the trough of despondency or despair or whatever it is, when everybody realizes it’s not exactly what we were hoping it was going to be. And it may well be that, you know, the metaverse goes that way, you get to this peak of inflated expectations and it just suddenly drops, and then you find practical use of it. That actually makes business sense. Bi is one of those maybe I started that way, Blockchain is the same. Everyone thinks of Bitcoin. But you know, is there a reason for not Bitcoin necessarily, but a cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology,
Valerio Trinchi 24.30
I would say I mean digitalization of fiat currency blockchain I think that’s the next thing.
Paul Bramwell 24.34
But that hit that peak of inflated expectations as well. We can eliminate currencies in the world, we can just adopt Bitcoin and then drops down and everything’s well the computing power needed to do it is horrific. And, and therefore, it’s probably not a very good means of exchange plus the regulators don’t know where it’s all going, etc. And I think the metaverse is similar to that. From
Please Are you just reacting to the wrong things faster, eliminating the things that can go wrong. That’s, well, that’s quite a philosophical philosophical
Paul Bramwell 25.30
but that’s what they said when he invented the car. If you go faster than 12 miles now, which is an awesome car, you’re gonna die of speciation because you won’t be able to breathe. You just don’t know. I mean, your ability to absorb more information and actually take quicker decisions is really unbelievably good. I mean, you can adapt and change. I mean, right now, you’re looking at your phone, you’re probably managing another three or four social platforms at the same time you’re managing your work email at the same time you work in your personal email. And if you’re working from home, you managing the dog and the kids and everything else, you can do it, and you can adapt more quickly. So I think there’s very much a fear of information overload, where you kind of gets overloaded with it. But I think people adapt and get better at using their ability to cut through a lot of the fog of war, and actually make better decisions. I mean, if you’ve got better information to make better decisions, and you build tools that enable the optimization of better decisions, which is Treasury technology, or technologies. And that’s the whole idea. Nobody’s invented a system yet that makes life harder, or more prone to problems. People buy Treasury systems and create more problems because they don’t implement them properly. They don’t give enough forethought, forethought, into what they were trying to solve in the first place. But again, that’s a project planning, project management kind of exercise that you need to go through.
Paul Bramwell 27.03
Yeah, everybody, most people hate change. And technology is constantly changing. And, you know, I mean, how many times have you had you on your phone and it says, you want to update and you know, I don’t know, inventario here was using an iPhone three, up until about two years ago. And, you know, but because he was too scared of change. Just free will. But you know, but obviously, a lot of people who new operating system comes out, you know, on who’s got windows 11 New. My computer is upgraded to Windows 11. Most people look at it saying, Oh, it’s terrible. It’s rubbish. Well, why is it rubbish just because I don’t know how to work it. But you will learn how to work very quickly. And that’s what happens. People are reticent to change. So better means different things. But if people had the way, the most people you would nothing would ever change. I would still have been doing APL multilateral letting it Allied Domecq rather than automating the process because it was safe and that’s kind of what we knew. So we’re all very poor overall Sorry. Yeah. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
