Running an Award-Winning Treasury… From Home

When Hitachi Capital UK’s treasury team planned the implementation of a host of new business continuity processes and digital treasury tools, Covid-19 was unheard of. Fast forward to March 2020 when lockdown began in the UK, and the five-strong team was well-prepared for these most challenging of circumstances. Here, they share highlights and learnings from their journey so far.

Sometimes, the right ideas are acted upon at just the right time. For Hitachi Capital UK (HCUK), a provider of financial solutions for retail, motor, business and consumers, its judgment could not have been better.

During 2018/19, HCUK’s treasury team had planned and executed delivery of a new funding strategy – including an oversubscribed first public bond issuance – implemented a new treasury management system (TMS), installed a VPN-accessible Bloomberg terminal, further automated its treasury processes, and gone paperless. But this was not just the project list that helped HCUK win the TMI Treasury Team of the Year 2019 Award. It was also the transformation initiative that enabled treasury to keep delivering as lockdown measures and the imposition of homeworking started to bite.

Jeremy Johnson, Group Treasurer, HCUK, explains: “All of the projects we undertook prior to lockdown were the right thing to do, especially for our business continuity planning [BCP]. We were keen to transform into a digital and resilient treasury function – and our timing on the delivery of this was extremely fortunate.”

Solid groundwork

The move to paperless was driven by Sam Robinson, HCUK’s Deputy Treasurer. “Existing paper-based processes were frustratingly inefficient and potentially risky – given the potential for errors in manual workflows, as every treasury professional knows.”

By building ways of tackling these inefficiencies into the larger TMS-replacement project, it was evident that document digitisation and automated digital signing and sharing would present a massive time saving. The curse of printed documents being lost or forgotten until the mad scramble at audit would also be lifted. “Things are so much more straightforward now,” says Robinson. But as the UK went into lockdown, so HCUK was heading into its year-end. And without the new paperless set-up, he acknowledges “it would have been very difficult to tackle from an audit perspective”.

Jeremy Johnson

Lockdown moves

Although the idea of lockdown in the UK seemed almost inconceivable in the weeks before it happened, Johnson had become increasingly concerned about the family situations and travel arrangements of different team members should it happen. “I suggested that some of the team could try working from home for a few days, just to see how it went,” he recalls. “By the Friday, it was just me in the office. I thought, ‘There’s no point being here,’ so the whole team had effectively stopped coming into the office just before lockdown was announced the following Monday evening [23 March]. So, again, we were just ahead of the curve – and that was incredibly helpful.”

While most of the team had laptops with them, it was necessary to move other essential hardware, especially larger computer monitors, to their homes. With an office refurbishment that had been going on at the time, Johnson was able to exploit another fortunate circumstance, liberating and dispatching unused equipment that had been locked away for safety in a storeroom. With the team suitably equipped from an IT perspective, what was the personal experience for those at the sharp end?

Sam Robinson

Finding silver linings

Gavriela Tsentzou had only joined HCUK as Treasury Assistant on 2 March 2020. Between then and lockdown, she had accumulated fewer than 10 office-bound days. As a junior, knowledge of her daily tasks was limited. “At one point, I was at home with a laptop not knowing what to do,” she recalls. “It was a stressful situation.” But she had a helpful colleague, Milos Gibson Ralevic, who was conducting a Treasury Placement (and worked with the HCUK on its award-winning transformation project), with whom she could talk daily. “Without his guidance, I don’t know how I might have coped.”

In the first couple of weeks, Tsentzou knew she had to forget about being at home and focus instead on the tasks at hand – which was tough, given the rapid transitions. “But looking on the bright side, I’m currently working remotely from Greece, and I have much more time to spend with my family.”

With Ralevic having now returned to his university studies, his contribution, especially in handing over to Tsentzou under difficult circumstances, is fully acknowledged by the entire team. Organising a lockdown leaving event over Microsoft Teams was somewhat strange says Johnson, but nonetheless celebratory drinks took place!

For Habib Nasim, Treasury Analyst, having in fact contracted Covid-19, his family also affected, and his father even hospitalised, the outbreak was “very real”. Fortunately, all have now recovered. He reports too that the homeworking experience has been “quite smooth” from an operational perspective. “I’ve missed seeing the team. We have calls every morning on Teams, but for the first couple of weeks it was strange to wake up and be immediately at work.”

With Tsentzou having joined just before, Nasim says the plethora of screen-sharing and calls to ensure everyone was on track required numerous workarounds, but this was never an issue. Even with a double laptop failure a few weeks in, and Nasim having to return to the office to collect a new machine, he views treasury’s IT systems as more than “having passed the test”. The entire situation has, he says, also made him more of an independent thinker, choosing to work at solving more issues before calling on a colleague for help. Homeworking has its social advantages too, he adds, echoing Tsentzou’s experience. “Before lockdown, I spent a lot of time travelling, but now I get to spend more time with my family. So there are silver linings.”

Best foot forward

With the almost inevitable difficulties of working solely on a laptop mitigated by the supply of monitors and other hardware, and the teething troubles that inevitably followed migration to Windows 10, Sam Hawkett, Treasury Analyst, says her homeworking experience has been mostly “really good”.

Hawkett has been using what would have been her commute time to “get a bit more exercise”. She also makes a point of getting out of the house regularly for her own wellbeing. The daily meetings on Teams have been beneficial too, she says. “It’s good to see everyone in the morning and catch up.”

Habib Nasim

Not living too far from the office, Hawkett is able to visit once a week, taking the opportunity to sort out the post. “From a BCP view, that’s something we just hadn’t thought of,” comments Johnson. Indeed, he says it took a couple of weeks to realise that physical mail was still being delivered. With bank login security devices needing replacement, for example, weekly visits were quickly instituted.

Meanwhile, Robinson echoes his colleagues’ sentiments, noting how the company has been particularly supportive at this time. With his relatively long commute now on hold, “it was nice not to have to do it, nor have the expense of the train pass”. However, with uncharacteristically poor timing, having ordered a company car just before lockdown, his cost-savings have now mostly been absorbed, he quips.

Although he has been into the office, Robinson admits it is challenging, mostly because of the requirements created by social distancing. “There are many more things that have to be considered,” he explains. Indeed, when it means queuing for the lift or remembering to stick to the one-way system, even everyday activities can be challenging.

Changing treasury

Under these conditions, there is no doubt in Johnson’s mind that working life has changed –permanently. “Once the Covid crisis is over, I certainly intend to work from home more often, at least once a week, and I’m convinced lots of people will do so in the future,” he says. “But we do need to find the right mix of home and office working.”

One particularly interesting effect of the homeworking phenomenon is that HCUK, being based outside of London, has sometimes seen staff lured away by the brighter lights of the city. Now, however, with the homeworking mindset established, Johnson feels that “the geographic spread of where we can employ people from has suddenly gotten much larger – which is an unexpected benefit.”

Sam Hawkett

On that note, it seems that if lockdown has taught us anything, it is that companies and their treasuries must do all they can to prepare for the unexpected. It’s true that HCUK’s treasury, under Johnson’s guidance, had taken some well-judged steps prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. As such it had in place the right tools to keep going.

But the team has also been flexible in its approach to new working models and, significantly, has seen first-hand the value of maintaining the social element of working practice. Indeed, as Johnson says: “I thought it would be important, but I’ve been surprised at just how important keeping in contact with the team has been, and raising spirits through social conversations. It’s the people that truly make a successful treasury team.”