TreasurySpring – Music to a Treasurer’s ears

As I reflect on all the well-wishers who have interacted with me on LinkedIn to say “well done on your four years at TreasurySpring”, it’s somewhat therapeutic to think back to the beginning of this journey, what the business was when I joined, and how far we’ve come since then.

In 2020, I joined a team where I was employee number five, since then our numbers have swelled to 50 and counting; We had one bank and two Government FTFs to subscribe to, and our counterparties are circa 80 across 14 Governments, 26 banks on an unsecured and secured (reverse repo) basis and also have corporates borrowing cash through our platform and infrastructure. All in all, I think the story is a phenomenal one and one that should be celebrated.

There have been some notable milestones on this four-year journey too, including the addition of the following as clients:

• Currently have six FTSE 100 listees investing excess liquidity with TreasurySpring. There are more in the pipeline.
• Currently have four FTSE 250 listees investing their excess liquidity through TreasurySpring.
• Banks (investing their own liquidity)
• A UN Agency
• Multiple insurance companies, charities and UHNIs
• Multiple Private Equity managers and Asset Managers
• Corporate borrowers (in partnership with LSEG)

To recap for those who are not familiar with us: TreasurySpring is a cash investment platform, utilised by many institutional clients across the full spectrum, that allows businesses to access multiple high quality homes for cash, in order to maximise return whilst minimising risk on cash balances. The products offered via the platform allow businesses to choose from a menu of top-rated obligors, including banks, governments, corporates and counterparties from the supernational, sub-sovereign and agency market. Maturities available range from one week to one year and everything in between and products are available in a range of currencies. Never has diversification been more important, and TreasurySpring allows you to do this, simply and effectively.

It goes without saying that these numbers not only demonstrate the significant success and growth of TreasurySpring but also illustrate a change in client behaviours. I would like to use this blog to ponder why that’s happened. What are the reasons or what experiences are ultimately driving a treasurer or professional cash investor to change their thoughts around cash investments from investing in unsecured bank deposits and other traditional mutual funds and instead, adopt TreasurySpring’s Fixed-Term Funds as a third leg for their (s)tool kit?

Personally, I think the answer is two-fold. First of all, I think the collapse of SVB and Credit Suisse sharpened the minds of treasurers from a credit-risk perspective. There was, for the first time in a long time, a stark realisation that unsecured bank exposure isn’t as safe as they thought it was and that diversification and exposure to other, better risk-adjusted money market instruments would be considered a good idea. But, in addition to this, I’d like to think that TreasurySpring has also benefited from what I would affectionately like to call “the Spotify effect”. What I mean by this is that the user experience we offer to clients is very similar to Spotify. In the same way Spotify provides a medium to subscribe to music – simply, effectively, efficiently, and with no painful buying process, TreasurySpring provides its clients with the same experience too, enabling institutional investors with excess cash to gain access to governments, reverse repo, or SSAs in a simple, effective, and efficient manner too.

And why is this so important? Do you remember the stampedes over the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller back in the 80s? (If you’re old enough you will remember the news footage). Crazily, people would sit/stand/camp out overnight outside Our Price in Trafalgar Square, just so that they could get their hands on the 12” vinyl as it hit the shelves. It not only cost a lot of time but was also a total pain, especially if you got to the front and they had sold out!! Even aside from releases like Thriller, the choice in a record store was limited, the shelves could only stock so much and only for a few popular artists. All in all, not a good customer experience. But with the onset of the digital age, with first MP3 players and then later, superseded by iPods and iPhones, Spotify took off, changing the entire way in which people bought and consumed music forever. It has become the huge success that it is, not only because you can buy albums quickly and efficiently, but because of how much choice you get from one entry point AND even more crucially, with an easy process and experience too. You also, for the first time gained the possibility of easily finding new music, new experiences and finding new genres to listen to, as well.

And why do I put TreasurySpring in the same comparative universe as Spotify? Well, we aim to offer that very same experience for our clients too. A single digital onboarding with us will instantly give access to over 70 money market counterparties that offer risk-adjusted money market exposures across governments/SSAs, banks, and corporates. We, just like Spotify, offer new choices that augment your existing treasury policy, simply, effectively, and efficiently, just like Spotify does with music.

And what does this all mean to you? Well if you go back to the Our Price analogy, it means you no longer have to metaphorically queue “outside” anymore. That you have new choices, that you have efficiency, that you have a range of new options available to you that provide you with security, liquidity, and yield, and some you may not have otherwise come across. You can quickly see the appeal.

Now isn’t that music to a treasurer’s ears?