Trovata + ATOM: The Future of TMS Is Here

Brett Turner 

Hey, great to be with you. This is an exciting moment. It’s fun to kick off what we’re going to do as a Legends of Treasury series. We got our first two legends right here. So this, the context here and the setup is that, so I’m the founder and CEO of Trovata. We have acquired Financial Sciences. We have the co-founder and CEO of Financial Sciences, Alf Newland.

We also have our very own head of enterprise treasury, Paul Bramwell with us. So the two legends, and we’re going to go into a bit of the origin story behind the scenes of this acquisition. Why did we do this and where are things going? Why do we all think this is profound? Why is this exciting? So there’s a lot of talking points we’re going to go through, but that’s the start of it. So I think for now.

I would like to kick it over to you, Alf, and really tell us a little bit about Financial Sciences. Tell us a bit about your background and really the origin of just what has been kind of decades in the making leading up to this point.

Alf Newlin

Sure, thanks Brett. So a couple of origin stories that might be helpful. First of all, we started, I and two other founders, one of them also works at Trada now, Behrouz Vafa. We started, the three of us in a loft in Soho, New York, which was a great place to start a company. We were all single. 

We had $10,000 of cash to kick in each of us. And we had tolerant girlfriends. So we decided, and advanced degrees, Behrouz has a degree from MIT. I have one from Penn. And my third partner was on the business side. And we decided to start a software company. We didn’t have any customers. We just had expertise. 

Our first customer was a French bank, Credit Lienet, that’s now part of Credit Agricole Bank. And the New York branch IT manager took a chance on us to build a system because he needed help with commercial paper. We decided to build the system. And the first lesson we learned is that you could actually come in and build software for a client and make sure that you own the software, which we did. 

So we retained rights to the software. And then we were able to sell it to other banks. So that was lesson number one is you need somebody to take a chance on you. You need to own the intellectual property and you better do a good job, which we did. We came through, he went live. He was very happy. 

Our second client was Security Pacific Bank. I don’t know if you guys remember Security Pacific. They’re no longer around, but they’re a white glove, California-based bank, very white glove, but their New York operations were run by Italians, Brooklyn Italians, and not the friendly, you know, well-met, no, these were Brooklyn Italians. 

And we came in with our software, and they’re all sitting around, pretty, yeah, they look like Brooklyn. And the first thing the guy said, and I’m gonna clean up for this podcast, he said, “So what’s this piece of blankety blank blank you’re trying to sell us?”

And we all had crickets like, what? And then just looked at them and then of course they were kidding us. You know, that was our test. Could we work with them? So we laughed a little bit. We talked about the project and they said how they’re trying to build a business. We worked, listened to these guys and then they said, well, what if this goes south? And we just looked at them and then the head guy said, you know people.

We know people, we’ll fix it. We’ll take care of it. And myself and my partners look at each other, we don’t know anybody. It’s like, okay, we better do a good job with these guys. 

And we did fortunately. So that eventuality never came into place. But that’s how we started. We started working with banks, we started working on commercial paper. And that’s still one of the strengths of our system today is commercial paper.

Brett Turner

To get everything right was the fear of screwing it up because there’s gonna be people looking over your shoulder.

Alf Newlin

Yeah, it was definitely an incentive. You don’t want to come home and find a fish head in your bed or anything like that. But there was nothing, of course, close to that. But you know, it’s New York, so you’re careful.

It’s a true story. And these guys were great guys. They were just great to work with. With the interaction between the New York way of doing things and the California sort of white glove way of doing things, there’s a very important lesson about how companies work and how to get along with people.

Brett Turner 

Well, I also love too about like, again, there’s a little bit of that New York story, that New York grit. I mean, you have to have grit when you start a company and also be as, you know, have so much sustaining as long as you did with that kind of success with the kind of customers that you have. So that’s not easy. I’ve been in the startup world a long time. And so clearly you guys have that and it kind of made it through. But I think also you guys brought, you know, what was unique, you know,

And we’ll talk about this little later in terms of the product itself, but more computer science backgrounds as well. Maybe tell a little bit about your background. Also, I think that’s profound in how the user functionality has come about, maybe that background and how that’s kind of translated into how you built such a good hardened product.

Alf Newlin

Yeah, we always try to make it productized. So you would have these big companies come in with their big requirements. And we always would try not to go down rabbit holes and build things that were maybe very important to them, but not reusable, resellable, or too customized. So we would always try to think about what the market want? We would always take risks to be a little bit ahead.

Not get too much of our skis in terms of functionality. But always think about being able to resell at a generic size. And actually, the customer base really liked that. They didn’t want something custom. And we never really had to do custom software. But we always looked to spread out and go into other industries. We then moved to the corporate side. And I’ll just say that we work with a number of very big corporates. One of them is GE Capital.

The great GE capital before its demise. And we work with them under Jack Welch. What a tremendous organization, very lean, very quick, very innovative. Ultimately, they had some issues after Jack Welch, but before that time, and they got us started in treasury, they got us started in cash, more commercial paper, more capital markets, Six Sigma. So they really helped us on the not software development because that we had, also best practices and meeting corporate standards. And we’ve been able to leverage that even today. So that’s how we got out into corporates and we started working with many more corporates, mostly word of mouth with people that knew us and would use our software.

Brett Turner

Yeah, what an amazing opportunity to work with the caliber of GE Capital. I mean, I think there’s a lot of people, I think Paul, you can attest to a lot of people who have kind of come out of GE Capital from the Treasury Group there. You know, you caught a combination of Six Sigma, which you don’t usually hear that term in finance or, you know, in Treasury, but they seem to have that that permeates in every aspect of that org. I think that, you know, comes from Jack Welsh, right, that whole operating mindset. Even so, my first interaction with corporate treasury when I was at Amazon 20 years ago was Jason Briscoe, who’s a long time treasurer there ran that for 14 years in those days and he came out of GE capital. So there was very much that I kind of had a little bit of that context to my first interactions on the treasury side. So what, what a, what a great basis to build a company around really.

Alf Newlin

A lot of capital graduates throughout the industry in top positions, absolutely.

Brett Turner

Awesome. Well, maybe just kind of cap off the origin story, or fast forward now. You’ve got an office in Jersey City. Maybe you’ve evolved a bit over the years, where are you at now and kind of how, and then maybe we’ll kick in a little bit of where we kind of come into the scene, but what are the things maybe that you feel like you’re most proud of to kind of get to this moment of where you are kind of now in these last few years?

Alf Newlin

Yeah, I think first of all, the people we work with, both on the customer side and our employees, we get along really well.

Very collegial. I like that way of decision making. The customers like it too. They trust us for telling us the things they’re trying to go after. No one won’t betray any secrets that will take their objectives very seriously. We try to do that with employees too. And I’ll tell you, that’s one of the things we were very attracted to Trovata about because you have a very similar ethic. And I can tell you that’s just not the case. We know many companies out there, including competitors.

That’s usually not the case. So that’s something that resonated something we’re proud of you asked me about said something that resonated very strongly with the Trovata team including You know everybody we’ve we’ve met and worked with so we really like that and we’re proud of that and we know that’s gonna You know not only continue a bit be leveraged We we love the Treasury space. We know the the complexity in a good way sophistication a lot of these companies. They aspire to automate. We know we can do it. We have a great base. And where we are today is we think we can take that base, putting it with Trovata advantages and really maximize that.

Brett Turner 

Awesome. Well, good segue to Paul. Paul, met like, you know, also wanted to know a little bit of the origin story of just kind of where you kind of emerged in the scene with Turvada. You know, we’re growing. We’re, you know, we’re focusing on more emerging treasury, I would say. And then we meet in San Diego at a coffee shop. I think I was a little skeptical of how you wanted to meet, you had, you know, fully left your old company. And of course, you know, they’re a competitor and there’s lots of competition in the space. I’m being fairly guarded of what we have because I feel like we’re kind of coming on the scene. And you’re like, no, no, no, I really, I really think, you know, I could, you know,

your, the breadth and depth of your experience, which also we could sit in multiple podcasts, even talking through that. So maybe let’s, let’s talk a little bit about like us connecting and then also your, your thoughts of, you know, seeing that, Hey, this is a moment.

Paul Bramwell

Yeah, no, absolutely. Like I’ll mention the whole GE capital, I mean, that was kind of like Treasury University in North America. my origins in Treasury go way back, worked in finance, trained to be an accountant. And somebody asked if I’d like to go help set up a Treasury Department. I said, yes. Well, I asked what it was. They said more money. And I said, when do I start? And that’s how I got into Treasury all the way back in the late 80s.

And, you know, so I’ve been in corporate treasury for about 11 years and then, moved to SunGuard at the time, in 2000. And it was always fascinated with the technology piece of it. I’m not a technologist for the sake of technology. I don’t have a particular affinity for whether somebody’s Java.net or anything else. don’t care. what I care about is the, the kind of end user experience. So what, what companies use the technology for, how we make that easier, how you can get better access to data.

et cetera, because, you know, over the years I’ve spent many, many, many projects where I’ve seen companies start out with a project. One of the primary goals is get away from spreadsheets, automate all of your processes. And then at the end of every project, they end up with the system and the spreadsheets that they probably started with because getting the data out. So always really, really painful. So when I was in San Diego and saw that you guys were in San Diego, I figured I’d reach out, see if you fancied a coffee.

You’re very evasive to start, but I persisted. you know, I always, I think I pride myself in being brutally honest and, we had a good conversation about where Trovata was and what my thoughts were around it. So it was very interesting first few meetings.

Brett Turner 

Yeah, no, I love the just, you you spoke early on and just when we got going over coffee, it was like you were walking me through like this origin of pretty much every TMS on the planet and just the knowledge and of all the different systems and the breadth and depth of of your knowledge, but also of what these systems did. a lot of things that obviously, you know, similarities over the years, kind of where we stand now.

doing a lot of different things. I think you even mentioned too, this term that, I don’t know if anybody, you used it a few times. I actually looked it up. It was Hobson’s Choice. was like, he said, there’s just a Hobson’s Choice out there. I actually looked up the origin, but maybe I’ll tell you, what does that mean? And why is the landscape what it is today after a few decades? And yet things are moving so swiftly in terms of tech and digital transformation and all of that.

Paul Bramwell 

Yeah, as you say, I’m a kleptomaniac for facts. And I just have to remember everything that’s useless for most people. I can’t remember my grandkids birthdays or anything else, but I can remember every single Treasury management system, who the ownership structure was, what the functionality was over the years. And I used my first TMS in 1989, which was a DOS based system. It was called Bank of America International Treasurer at the time, had the Bank of America logo on it.

It was DOS based. We later went to a Windows OS 2 version, a Microsoft OS 2, then Windows NT. And so over the years, I joined SunGuard in 2000 and worked on all the treasury products there. We had seven at one point and then brought it down to really two. And then I joined Ernst & Young. So at EY, I was brought in to kind of build a treasury technology practice. And so rather than trying to figure out, you know, triangulating where all the other vendors fit in the ecosystem of treasury.

Being in EY meant that I had the opportunity to go and talk to all of them. Not just being at SunGuard and, now, typically in a vendor situation, whatever the question, the answer is whatever I’ve got to sell. And, joining a consulting firm was the ideal opportunity to go find out, what, is the reality? What’s the true story of every vendor? you know, what are the pros and cons? What’s the business model look like? how many clients, et cetera. So it’s absolutely fascinating. 

I was like a kid in a candy store and, you know, kind of drinking from a fire hose of all this information. And it was really quite fascinating. But what I also saw then as well is an awful lot of systems come and go. So, you had a lot of market consolidation where vendors would buy certain systems, but the intent was to put them into maintenance mode or even get rid of them because it was too competitive. And so what you’ve seen now is, we’re in this marketplace where there’s only a handful of vendors. FIS and ION own more than one product. ION has seven. FIS had seven down to two.

But there’s been this incredible market consolidation over time where Hobson’s choice, as you talk about there, is if you’re a client in North America, sorry, a company in North America looking for a treasury management system or access to your bank data, you really had a very small choice. Right now you probably have a choice of maybe five different systems and some of those are owned by the same vendor. 

So, you know, it’s been that way for quite some time now in the US and part of why we started that conversation and why we ended up talking with Alf is to remedy that and give companies another choice and actually get out there and really market what we believe is the future for the TMS world. You know, Hobson’s choice, I don’t know if that’s an Englishism. I use a lot of Englishisms.

Brett Turner

It is so I looked it up. I looked it up. So a little factoid for if anybody out there in the audience cares. I think it’s kind of interesting is that so Thomas Hobson in the 17th century, he ran like this stable business, know, horses. He’d run out horses.

And so when customers are coming in and they want to pick the horse that they want to ride, he said no, because it would wear out the horses. So basically it was this, whatever the horse was nearest to the gate said, take it or leave it. And so that was it. You didn’t get to pick. You had to take it. It’s Hobson’s choice. 

So I think it is, you’ve used that term, but it is to a point where there’s a lot of, you know, saturation. I think there’s a, there’s so much that’s going on in the space around tech, but it’s you know, nobody’s built a new TMS, you know, in 25 or more years. I think that’s a little bit of Trovata coming into the scene. I mean, again, why is, you know, I’m a former CPA, CFO, most of my career, you know, building companies in the startup world. But cash liquidity is still important, you know, on that side of it. 

I think as companies get bigger, as you guys know, treasury sometimes doesn’t. It starts to sit outside even the corporate finance function. There starts to be maybe a little bit of tension even between the three areas of finance with accounting, FP &A and treasury. Sometimes there’s dueling forecasts. So with all of this moving toward digital transformation and the root level of data, we’re moving off of what used to always be functionality, feature function, to more like data transformation and innovation on top that a new experience is changing. 

And now with AI, it’s what is that even going to look like? Is that going to be rendering on the fly? And that’s super exciting. So, but at the end of the day, you have to have the data. You have to have more of a, you know, cloud native technology to be able to do these things. I think we’re in a super interesting time. 

So that’s Trovata’s story. We’re coming up. People had even asked us as we’re serving, obviously a lot of treasury functions at various companies would be like, when is FX hedging coming? When is debt management coming? Interest rate risk management and bank fee analysis and there’s a lot of complexity there. 

Early on I looked at this really early on whether it was early advisors and it was There’s a reason why nobody’s built a new TMS in 25 years because it’s really really hard and my estimation it would take at least You know $200 to $250 million as a startup builder to go raise that capital from VCs and then it probably takes you 10 to 12 years to build it.

Nobody’s ever going to do that. Nobody’s ever going to fund that. Anybody who’s going to do that in this modern era is crazy and it won’t work. So because you’ll kind of die on the vine, you’ll be attracted to the opportunity, you’ll raise some capital and then you’ll just sizzle out. There’s no way you’ll be able to, anybody will have the stamina to get there because the complexity is so high. You can’t also just build one small module. You have to have a lot to really get going. And so I had a tremendous amount of respect for that in terms of how hard that is. And that’s really why our focus was really focused on data.

This is why it’s Trovata: Trove of data. And everything else is going to continue to come and build on top. So I think this was really the intrigue and, you know, all of the breadth and depth of what you had, Paul, and knowing these systems and also knowing how important it is still though. It wasn’t because I didn’t think it was important, just definitely had an eye on it. We had to do it in the right way. So I think with the cool parts over that coffee was like, okay, Paul, this is a, this is a moment. Let’s go do this. Can you go find a strategic partner?

who out there is that where can we get a really good intersection and kind of pair up in a way, it’s gonna be hard, but let’s go and it’s sort of this commissioning and then you went off and then I think that’s where, you know, maybe pick up the trail a little bit with Alf, you you.

Alf Newlin

You read our module list, debt management, debt hedging, almost verbatim.

Brett Turner 

Ha ha.

Paul Bramwell

Hehehehehe

Brett Turner

Well, and honestly, there’s we’ll kind of get to it, but there’s even been some really cool surprises. I mean, there’s a litany of reasons why and we’ll get to why I think, you ‘ve all kind of felt this is so profound to fit and all that. But even the aspect of just even additional things that I think you guys see as you’re getting to know more about us, we see more we’re getting to know about you guys. So I think that’s been just these cool, pleasant surprises, even post acquisition. And I think that’s, you know, part of the fun of this. 

So Paul, so how did you find Alf?

Paul Bramwell 

Yeah. Well, I mean, even a precursor to that. Yeah. I mean, one of the things we looked at initially was to launch treasury management system capabilities like the, the partner of I model. 

And I remember conversations with Joseph, as you mentioned, the complexity and we built some documentation around minimal viable product. And I remember Joseph asking why on earth did treasurers have so many business day conventions? What’s the point? It just seems unbelievably complicated for some reason known only to treasury people. 

What I started to look at, we looked at a lot of companies, we talked to a lot of companies, but you know, treasury has been very similar for a long time. A piece of debt is a piece of debt, a foreign exchange deal is a foreign exchange deal, but the stuff around it, the accounting for it, the reversals for it, if you’re doing effective yield calculations on debt issuance and things like that, they’re just so complicated and they’re so important to the business. 

So, you know, accounting is all well and good, but also the core components of treasury being liquidity and cash and forecasting and actually hedging risk. It’s so critical to the life of the company. If you’re an orange juice manufacturer, is the treasury department going to help you process and sell more brands of orange juice? No, they’re not. But they’re the ones who keep the cash coming through the door, manage the cash, manage the exposures, manage the risk, etcetera. So I would say that treasury is one of the most important jobs in any company because it’s managing the lifeblood of the company’s cash.

If cash disappears, the business goes because you’re in default and you can’t run the business. So after looking at all the vendors, one thing that struck me, came, I got introduced to Alf through another treasury legend who is at Trovata now, Keith, and I talked to Keith somewhat about his experiences. You know, Keith and I have been around the same world for an awfully long time in the U S and, now, he said he’d be happy to introduce me to Alf. I didn’t tell him why I wanted to speak to Alf…

And, you know, he said he’d be happy to introduce me and I asked him about the TMS components. And he said, to be honest, it’s one of the best systems I’ve ever seen. It is really flexible, has great functionality, et cetera. So I thought, okay, I’m intrigued. And, I set up a first call with Alf and, you know, got even more intrigued, the more time, I spent with Alf and looking at the system. Also the ethos of the company, yeah, it’s, it’s not just about producing a piece of software.

At the end of the day, it’s a software that has to do something for a particular company and has to do it well. And putting customers first is something that I love. It’s something I focus on. The customer has a need. You’ve got to put them first. You’ve got to make sure they get their value out of the investment they’ve made. And it’s not just an economic relationship. It’s a partnership. both sides of any partnership should feel like, as Alf mentioned, collegiate.

It has to be some kind of an atmosphere where there’s a duality of trust between the parties and that really stands out with Alf’s organization, the staff, just a super group of people working at Financial Sciences. And so I just saw this as potentially a great fit for what we were looking for.

Brett Turner 

Well, trust and transparency is kind one of our core fundamental pillars in our company. I think that was quickly kind of seeing that with something similar to you, Alf. But so maybe that transparency, you’re probably hearing maybe a lot really upfront about this company, Trovata, we’re having these conversations. 

What was your sort of first reaction, you know, meeting Paul and then hearing about Trovata and then, you know, what really kind of, you know transpired in terms of our relationship, getting to know each other, then obviously combining the companies?

Alf Newlin

Yes, first, of course, speaking with Paul, I had to go back to our mutual contact, Keith, and check him out. This suspicious guy didn’t have a New York accent, so immediately I was suspicious to check him out. And Keith said complete thumbs up. Seriously though, one of the things that I really liked is Paul’s expertise in treasury, because I test people.

If you’re building these kinds of systems, mission critical systems, you can’t get by on smoke and mirrors. You better know your stuff or you’re going to have a production disaster or it feeds a ledger. And I can tell you there’s nothing more upsetting to a customer if they get embarrassed with their financials. And it’s a big deal. People get fired. And if the system causes it, you know, it’s on you.

So treasury expertise is extremely important. Paul has it. You know, I tested them on all sorts of areas, some of which I know, some of which I don’t. And it was very important to me that you guys had that expertise. It was critical. So that got me interested. And then Brett, your vision on the AI big data, upsetting the treasury market, the hops in choice, breaking that choice.

So Hobson is dead, is very attractive. So we love that. We’re very anxious to take advantage of that opportunity. And that was a big draw for me as well.

Brett Turner

Well, I think also going back to Paul, same thing on my side. It’s like, you know, we’re going to have to vet all the aspects of the software. I mean, any time you do due diligence, it’s hard. I think, you know, on both sides, we’re trying to figure out… there’s got to be a good fit. Usually, and if you kind of look at the stats, even in &A at large, oftentimes, you know, combinations or don’t actually work all that well. And there’s so many different facets to it. 

Here’s us, we’re growing, we’re growing fast, but normally a startup at our stage wouldn’t necessarily do an acquisition. But I think that also speaks to how perfect of a fit this was. And I think also, my trust in Paul as well that you saw, but I had is because we have a kind of funny story early on with when Paul joined. It was, I think he had said, Paul, you’re probably wondering, what is he gonna say?

I recently bought this camera. I think it’s like a high end Nikon camera. And so I said, like, how are you going to figure out how to use that thing? Because there’s so many, you know, bits and bobs to it. He’s like, yeah, I read the manual. I read it now. I think the story of reading you reading the manual cover to cover now is there’s even a legend within the company. I think I heard that recently in some of it. yeah. Paul reads manuals. He read the manual to his camera three times. So now it’s grown from one time to three times cover to cover. So but I think at the end of the day that just that trust, think that you’re validated in kind of who we are, Alf, and kind of what we’re bringing to the table. Also, you know, our understanding of what you’ve built and that, you know, also in the context of that, you know, respecting that, how important that is with your customers, you know, Paul, a big part of that, the two of you guys getting together was a big part of this. 

And I think that what makes it fun, because it also made it lot easier for me to trust and our company kind of see, and really this bridging is something that this modern technology company, making sure how this is going to work with something that now expanding to add this TMS functionality that’s so needed. I don’t know. I think it’s, yeah, I can just say that’s been, so maybe just the transition here is to why do we think this is such a perfect fit? I think we’ve used that term a lot, you know, over the last many, many months or last year, you know, going back to really starting.

Getting to know each other even a couple of years ago that’s sort of building this relationship, but that’s sort of crescendoed in the acquisition. We’ve used that term a lot. 

Why do we think this is such a perfect fit? Why have we also kind of focused on, you know, pragmatic things? Like we’ve also got to hit the ground running on day one. How is that even possible? How could this be a perfect fit? 

Alf Newlin

Yeah, so we were obviously very focused on selling day one, getting out there in the market and making sure we had those discussions way back when to make sure we could do that. And that was not necessarily easy to do. But I think we’ve been able to do that pretty successfully so far, even though it’s early days. 

The software blends in nicely, the ability to integrate. We’ve already had two pretty demonstrable achievements on getting integration ahead of target, which is really good. So far, the market response has been very, very encouraging. People seem to like what they see. I think they really like a new competitor, a new choice, you know, get around that Hobson thing again. So, you know, it’s it’s very encouraging.

Paul Bramwell 

Yeah. I mean, mean, further to that, the two systems are incredibly complimentary as well. And from a technology perspective, what Trovata brings to the table is a knowledge, an in-depth knowledge of what is an AWS serverless environment. And all of that stuff can be brought to bear as well in modernizing the TMS platform as well to make it more efficient for clients and for prospects. And, you know, I love treasury. I’ve been in treasury now for 35 years. Love it so much.

And I just want treasurers and treasury staff to get a great experience out of a solution. And I’ve strived for that ever since I joined SunGuard back in 2000. You know, I want companies to really feel they’re getting value out of the solution. And what I see in terms of the way these two systems will work and interact is that we have a truly viable alternative to the Hobson’s choice that’s out there right now.

And I think it’s good for the market to have something which is different, which is going to be new because we’re marketing it very, very heavily. And, you know, not just myself, but to the folks within Trovata as well, who came from different vendors who’ve joined Trovata to work on this TMS project have validated my initial findings as well. You know, it’s a great feeling when you have somebody who I kind of employed way back in about 2013 or so as a pre-sales expert on a high-end treasury system. And he joins Travato. He takes a look at what we acquired and his first reaction was, wow, how have I not known that this was here all this time? And that’s a great validation of the fact that we’ve made this great choice and that we’re well set for a partnership. you know, I think the treasury market deserves some new competition, some new blood. And I think we’re going to actually bring that. And I think the combination of the two components

just means that we are probably, well, not probably, we are best suited for the future of Treasury.

Brett Turner 

Mm, no, well put. Yeah, I think, you know, the teams, all the aspects of even though we’re doing different things, how congruent we were from a team and just, you know, ethics, culturally, all those things was such a great fit. I think what was so cool to see for the first time, seeing the software was how thoughtful the user experience was. And even though, yeah, in today’s time, you know, a lot of people kind of look at look and feel and

Some people say, you’re over indexing on that, but the optics matter and that’s part of that aspect. But the thoughtfulness and just like a few clicks to get to something. And I think that gets missed because user experience is hard to craft. And you have to have this almost the strong advocacy for the customer and a little bit of humility where you’re driving toward because

You have to put the customer center in mind to do that and I think that shows in terms of what you feel because If you’re just crafting it or you’re just engineering something and you’re not really, you know Obsessed with I want to make it super easy for the customer One click instead of three goes a long ways when they’re in it every day and spending all that time cutting down that work. 

And I think that’s what bounced off the page early on seeing that and I think that was something where yes will there are things that we’re going to do, you know, from a roadmap perspective that are exciting. You know, there’s a lot that we’re going to transform. We’re going to really leverage a lot of what we have, kind of this modern data core, and we’re going to use the functionality and ultimately kind of recraft that into that. So it’s truly combined and leveraging a lot of those kinds of things. And I think then you get the best of both worlds and that’s already underway. But I think that only gets done if the way you’ve architected was so thoughtful. 

And I think the way even seeing how we’ve got thousands of APIs because we’re a fully componentized architecture with Trovata. But the way even how you’ve built it to allow for those kinds of things architecturally to where that kind of seems in really well. You know, it’s I think that was one thing that we loved about it. I think that it showed how customer centric and focused and customer obsessed. think, you know, you and your team have been over the years was something that was just kind of spot on, something that resonated and something we knew that this is, yeah, this is the perfect fit for us as well.

So when you look at such a time as this, this is dealing with this, options choice. Now we’re working together. We’re excited. We see this perfect fit. We see work and where it can go. Nobody’s really done this before. We’ve talked about how nobody’s built a new TMS in 25 years. We’re dealing with all of these new things that are coming on to see APIs, which now they’ve been around for a little while connecting directly. Your bank has been fairly unique, but there’s still, it’s still early days.

You’ve got AI that’s coming on the scene and how can you take advantage of that fully, you know, with data and architecture? And that’s, that’s a challenge, but something that has enormous promise. And then you’ve got stable coins and stable coins now with the circle IPO and banks talking about digital money and the digitizing the financial system and where’s that going to go? And that’s still early. All these things are really, really exciting. And I think when you look at digital transformation, the rise of cloud that really goes back, you know, more than 10 years. Now it’s kind of 2000 or 15 years or more, but all of that’s permeated every aspect of tech now, and now it’s finally kind of here, financial services, banking, corporate finance, corporate treasury especially. Like, how do you guys see this? Like, why are you excited? You know, the classic question, why are you excited to get out of bed in the morning? 

What are some of those reasons that you see now? We’ve put this together. Where do we go from here? Why are we excited about really capitalizing on what’s a really incredible opportunity and potential?

Alf Newlin

So for me, I think the opportunities for AI, applying AI, proven AI techniques to all these data components in treasury is just like incredibly target rich. Anything, any aspect in treasury would benefit from getting some AI love anywhere from bank fees, which is massive amounts of data with all sorts of conclusions just lurking there that most users can’t get at to managing debt funding costs and looking at debt performance for the various debt funding vehicles. To how much cash you keep in the bank. Are you really getting value for those cash balances in compensating services or should you actually be cutting down balances, pay hard fees and do investments?

It takes so much manual treasury expertise and some basic AI applications spread throughout these modules is going to be a huge game changer. And it’s very realistic. I study AI as a graduate student. I won’t say how far back and many, times there have been promises of AI. This time it is different. And I think, you guys have that. We together have a lot of data. We can bring that to the market in production very quickly, I think. So that’s something that really excites me.

Brett Turner

Awesome.

Paul Bramwell 

Yeah, similar for me. It’s a use of new technologies and has been a better time to disrupt the market as is. And there are so many emerging technologies which kind of come and go. You know, several years ago, everyone talked about robotics, then it was blockchain. Everyone should buy a blockchain, but nobody quite knows why they should buy a blockchain, et cetera. AI I think actually is truly emerged as a new tech that everybody is seeing incredible value out of. 

Right now, all the treasury use case stories you ever hear about AI are cash forecasting, as I said, what about the debt? What about interest rate swaps? And that stuff’s really hard. Even understanding SQL to get the data out of your system in a usable format, the fact that AI actually can write SQL for you is almost like a Google Translate, where you could tell it what you want and it will actually go and assemble a SQL query to extract the data. 

So you can now get information out without having to be a black belt at report writing or a particular tool that you’ve got. But the fact you can overlay that then with incredible calculation tools available as well. If you wanted to know, for example, on your debt portfolio, what’s the difference in valuation between doing this on a cubic spline, par-linear or quadratic bootstrap method, it would tell you in around about five minutes. That would have probably taken you a consultant a couple of weeks to actually go through and do all of that. But now you can do that in five minutes. And so it’s really exciting that we actually get to use this technology over a much bigger data set than just bank information, but also your debt, your investments, your in-house bank, your inter-company loans. 

What are all my local tax rates for trapped cash, et cetera? What’s the most optimal in-house banking structure I could have to minimize my taxes? So, you know, there’s so many different things that we could bring to bear. And I think the way we’re taking what we’ve acquired here, building it into what Trovata has already started building just opens so many doors that makes it really, really exciting over the next few years.

Alf Newlin

Well, let me ask you, do you think any treasuries, even the top treasuries, are doing anything like this today?

Paul Bramwell

No, no, I think they are playing at it around the edges, but I think the vast majority are still looking to find the practical use case for how it could work. And, know, a lot of consultants are doing a lot of consulting and advisory work to do two to three months worth of work on analyzing something that AI will do in five minutes. And that’s what we’ll relentlessly focus on because it will just change the game completely from a treasury perspective, even with agentic AI.

Brett Turner

Mm-hmm.

Paul Bramwell 

Yeah, I mean, if you could then trust the AI to actually find something and then take an action on that, maybe for the first two or three times, you’ll want to approve something before it happens. But after that, you’ll grow in confidence and you can have some level of autonomy within the Treasury Department that basically acts on rules for information that it’s found to stage things. And I don’t think anyone’s truly doing it as of yet, but we will soon.

Alf Newlin

I want to know one comment is that both Paul and I are, I wouldn’t say cynical about things, but very conservative about believing these visionary things that come to the market every so often, just because of our experience in these ideas that come along that never make it even to production. I think both of us believe this is a tremendous opportunity, but it’s also a very realistic opportunity.

I don’t know any other way that’s better positioned to do it.

Brett Turner

Yeah. Well, I think this is one thing we’ve been saying from the beginning. I, in some ways I’ve kind of been shocked at the lack of understanding the difference between cloud hosted and cloud native understanding how critical data is. I think what happens, there’s a lot of talk around doing things, but I think honestly, the existing space and even, even customers don’t really know because whether it’s the existing ecosystem,

You know, being able to try to, you know, sell or whether it’s FUD, holding folks back. And I think partly even with the banks, as much as they want to innovate, it’s hard. They’re working off of, you know, mainframe systems, you know, with their core systems. So there’s naturally a lot of stuff that’s holding back. But I think all of that, we’ve kind of been slowly going, we’ve been trying to go as fast as we can, but it’s hard to innovate in this space. And it’s leading up to these moments. And I think this is a moment where we’re truly saying like, this stuff really matters. Data,

Cloud Native, the technology really matters because you can talk all you want about these things, but you’re never going to be able to do them. I promise you, unless you have the right fundamentals, the right foundation to be able to work off of. I think that’s what we’re so excited because now we’re able to move up market. 

We’re able to have the right functionality that’s required. These are table stakes, but we can bring a lot of these modern aspects of what Trovata brings to the table that we’ve really put together in a really powerful way. And I think this is where you using the term disruption is very much appropriate. That’s what’s in front of us. I think we’re all excited. You know, I think we’re all, you know, all of our backstories, we’ve got a little chip on our shoulder, you know, we want to, we want to, you know, compete, we want to show what we’ve got, we want to win. I think all those aspects are in front of us. And we know that all that is really for the benefit of the industry, the customers and all the things we can drive for. 

So it’s a super fun time and excited about what’s in our future. And so maybe we’ll end with this. think, you know, the other thing maybe I call out is I remember going up when we started the process and signed the LOI up to the acquisition. 

I think Paul, you said you’re, you started letting your beard grow out. I think it got to a point where I was saying like, are you really like not going to shave your beard until like closing? And then closing took a few extra weeks. How long is this gonna get? So I think we had some motivation now if we needed to hurry up and close the deal. 

So Paul didn’t have, the beard wasn’t too long, but he’s got it nice and trimmed now. I think closing this deal was a big moment for us and working. But I think the biggest thing is just what’s ahead. The future is bright. 

And I think what’s fun is even the things that we saw in leading up to this, it just feels like it, you know, more excited as we kind of dig in more, you know, have hit this sort of day one, we’re selling this now. So I think the word is also like, if, you know, if you’re interested in this, if you’re hearing this, like you’ve got to check this out, we can walk you through the demo and see what like what’s, you know, Alf and his team, the brilliance of really what’s been built, you know, for your customers and and what carries out really quickly when you see the product. 

And then all the aspects that Trovata is gonna bring to the table that’s gonna continue to innovate and continue to make it better and better and really make it shine in a way that’s gonna be really disruptive for the industry. we’re excited for people to really, you this is a moment. This is really started something special and excited about where we go from here and also being able to show the world starting with demos and going from there.

I don’t have any other final comments, otherwise we’ll look to wrap up another episode of Fintech Corner with two Treasury legends and really still a big story yet to write.

Paul Bramwell

Yeah, I’d say give us a shot and give us an opportunity. And if you’re looking at TMS selection and we’re not on your shortlist or we’re not on a list of vendors you’re looking at, somebody advised you badly. Give us a call. We’d be happy to show you what we’ve got.

Alf Newlin

Well said, guys.

Brett Turner 

Awesome, thank you guys, appreciate it. Till next time.

Paul Bramwell 

Thank you.