Time to Get Personal

Forging an ACT for Everyone

In addition to welcoming a record 1,346 attendees, offering its largest exhibition to date, and calling upon some well-respected speakers, the annual Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) conference, held this year in Liverpool, showcased a broadening of the Association’s programmes. With new ideas around study, membership models, and accessibility, it’s all about building on treasury’s appeal, says Janet Legge, Deputy Chief Executive, Director of Education & Membership.

Commenting on the ACT’s “biggest event yet”, Legge is drawn to note that the atmosphere even at the beginning of this year’s ACT annual conference “was starting to get quite buzzy”. Indeed, she reports how many delegates were taken aback by the “energy” experienced when arriving for the first time on the exhibition floor.

Of course, such positive feedback confirms that the ACT organiser team, who Legge says “always worry about hitting the right tone” for each event, had undoubtedly formed a strong and balanced programme for the treasury community. Not least of the encouraging comments, she noted, were made by treasury delegates who found that interacting with suppliers on the exhibition floor was “less of a sales-driven experience” and more one focused on exploring needs and “finding use cases”.

There were many positive comments reserved also for “the volume of AI on the agenda”. The feeling is that this has now shifted from speculation and theoretical application to a reality. Treasurers, she notes, are now actively engaging with this technology, building those use cases, and some are now pushing ahead with live applications.

And in much the same way that AI had been an exploratory topic in previous ACT annual conferences, Legge says it is apparent – through both the conference agenda and the exhibitors at this event -  that tokenisation is following hard in its footsteps. “In both cases though, we know it’s there, or we know it’s coming, but we don’t yet have a good enough understanding of either in a treasury context. That’s why I believe this year we hit the right level in terms of depth and scope of coverage, and use, for each.”

Don’t be so ‘doomy’

The opening Keynote, delivered by veteran British journalist and security expert, Gordon Corera, was well-received by the packed house of delegates. Having concisely spelt out the current global challenges, Corera called upon his knowledge and experience to frame how events might develop over the coming year. His use of the word “doomy” served to capture the general mood in business, but Legge countered that the sessions spread over the two-day event, were designed as a pragmatic counterpoint to ongoing uncertainty.

Of course, there is a need to ensure treasury is armed both with the right tools and the right people to deliver this response, now and into the future. Within Legge’s own day one presentation, she talked of the ACT’s push to capture the next generation of treasurers.

Acknowledging that this is a pursuit and challenge “every professional body is dealing with”, she spoke of the need to meet the needs of a digitally-native generation of treasurers. Used to a rapid and flexible consumer experience, their expectations are now feeding into their professional lives, and so, she acknowledges, their interactions with the ACT should be no different.

As part of its plan to be more accessible, and therefore inclusive, the ACT’s education portfolio is now being delivered using “micro-credential” learning. “Members can now dip in and out of our courses, or pause their study for a while. And whether they just want to up-skill or take on the full qualification programme, they can now do it in a much more flexible way that works for them.” This, she explains, supports the changing way people work and the diverse range of pressures they may face in life.

Accessibility and inclusion

As part of the revised education approach, Legge announced during her presentation that the ACT is also currently reviewing its practical delivery of learning. In particular – mindful of the needs of the digital native - the emphasis is on ensuring the process is “mobile friendly” and carries “a more modern, fresh and digitally accessible appeal”.

Going into detail after the event, Legge reveals that this will see the ACT launching its new website in phases throughout 2026. A key aspect of its redesign is the proposed member portal. This is being provided with the aim of vastly improving its accessibility and user experience.

By providing members with more control over their own data, they will be able to directly manage many aspects of their account. This will include reviewing their own qualifications and studied modules, events and course attended, for example. The aim here, in part, is to create an easier way for members to demonstrate their achievements to potential employers.

The push by the ACT to further support the next generation of treasurer is a deliberate contrast to its prior strong focus on the qualified senior-treasurer membership. While the latter remains a valued pillar of the organisation, Legge remarks that the ACT “has not done enough for the people studying with us but possibly still not sure of their career direction”.

The ACT is seeking answers now as to how to recruit and retain a greater diversity of membership. As with other professional membership bodies though, Legge is under no illusion that when it comes to increasing numbers among so-called Gen Z, for instance, overcoming perceptions of these as old-world gentleman’s clubs can be a challenge.

Having a website “that works, and is modern and attractive” will help serve as a more appropriate ‘shop front’, but membership level differentiation is also under review. While the award of individual chartered status is being explored, at the other end of the spectrum, qualified affiliate members are able to use their designatory letters even before becoming fully-fledged associate members. “We’re also looking at creating a stream for tomorrow’s treasurer,” says Legge.

Career care

With the ACT seeking to support treasurers at any stage of their professional life, early-stage career development is now fully in scope. The ACT is establishing partnerships with a number of industry recruiters. This will see, for example, careers evenings for junior members featuring talks by established group treasurers, and focused career and workplace development tips. “We want to build a programme that works for members at entry-level, as well as continuing to support our senior colleagues,” explains Legge.

A major aspect of the early-stage programme will raise the profile and importance of soft skills. While many younger members are tech-savvy, many lack the social skills required in professional life. The ACT aims to offer coaching, for instance, on how to grow in confidence, not just in work meetings but also when networking at industry events.

Another way for the ACT to reach younger members is through higher educational establishments. The ACT has accreditation partnerships with six universities in the UK and globally, three of which attended the ACT Annual Conference  (Kingston, Birmingham Business School, and Sheffield Hallam). Accreditation requires course content to be mapped to the ACT’s own education programme. Where the right content has been studied, students can potentially gain exemptions and faster-tracking towards ACT professional qualifications.

By introducing students at these institutions to professional treasurers through guest lectures, it presents a real-world vision of how their careers may develop. The ACT also invites five students each year to join the annual conference and experience first-hand how the industry itself is developing.

While the aim is clearly to capture the hearts and minds of youth at an early stage, Legge recognises that students may not wish to rush headlong into professional exams so soon after their degree studies. “The university approach to membership is quite a slow burn. But the feedback I’ve had when they’ve come to the conference is that it is a fascinating space that really brings treasury to life for them.”

Event horizon

Over the next 12 months, the ACT is planning to deliver more focused events, not least one targeting the junior membership. For the past three years the ACT has organised a quarterly FTSE 20 treasurer-meets-banker event. This off-the-record conversation is a chance for frank face-to-face exchanges. One theme that has arisen each time from the treasury attendees is the lack of diversity among the banking representatives. One suggestion was to bring more junior bankers to the event, and to allow them to address the meeting with the same degree of openness.

Driven by the ACT’s push for inclusivity, for the first time, the next meeting (June 25th) will in fact invite junior members from both sides to meet. They will be encouraged to openly discuss topics such as the level of responsibility given, career development opportunities, and the degree of recognition of differing personal needs within their respective organisations. As with the senior meetings, it will be conducted under the Chatham House Rule.

The aim of these meetings is to gather and process the thoughts of the wider treasury community, with the collated information intended to form part of the ACT’s ongoing development plans. Sometimes though, members need information about their association now. This is where the new ACT AI Adviser comes into play.

Question time

Introduced at this conference, and open for delegates visiting the stand to experiment with as they wished, it was the first chance for the ACT so see how members interacted with their new AI assistant. These spontaneous sessions will provide insight into the kind of questions being asked, and how well users navigated its simple interface.

Commenting on the level of interest and support generated for the system at the event, Legge noted that members “seemed really pleased that we have created it”. With the app still at an early iteration (it has not yet been exposed to the ACT’s full website content), current usage is vital for its development. “It did get stuck on a few questions, but that’s okay as we’re still training it,” says Legge. However, the system will soon be available to the wider community. “When it goes live on the website, I’m keen to discover how non-members, including students, use it.”

For those concerned by the pervasiveness of AI, the intention is to incorporate the ACT’s robust privacy policy within the system’s structure. This will feature a fail-safe mechanism that steers users towards a human advisor when overly sensitive inputs, such as personal or commercial data, are detected.

Of course, the ACT is more about people than technology, and for Legge, the ACT annual conference is driven by that belief. “One of the best features of this event is just the way it brings people together,” she states.

“It’s a great opportunity for everyone to talk and reconnect with each other, and it’s an occasion too for those of us within the ACT that don’t often get talk to our members on a personal level. For me though, just seeing first-hand how everyone enjoyed it, and felt the energy on the exhibition floor, is really rewarding. We can all take so much from these situations.”