Where Is My Cash? What Leading Liquidity at J.P. Morgan Payments Involves

Quick Summary

Mali Bartlett, Managing Director, Liquidity & Account Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, explains what her role involves and why clients call. Her teams design the liquidity product suite to be delivered locally but designed in a globally compliant way, and their job is to help companies answer three questions: where is my cash, how can I access it when I need it, and am I using it as effectively as possible? Most clients, she says, are not calling about a cash problem. They have a complexity problem.

What does leading liquidity and account solutions involve?

Bartlett is responsible for the creation and design of the product suite. That means driving innovation, continuously improving the products and making sure they operate in a compliant way. Under her remit sit the product design and product management teams, working alongside solution specialists who translate the products into the real treasury needs of clients.

The guiding principle, she says, is that products should be delivered locally but designed in a globally compliant way.

Which three questions do treasury teams need answered?

At a simple level, Bartlett says J.P. Morgan Payments helps companies answer three main questions. Where is my cash? How can I access it when I need it? And am I using it as effectively as possible?

What have clients usually run into when they call?

Bartlett says most clients do not call because they have a cash problem. They call because they have a complexity problem. Their businesses have grown, they operate in more countries, and they manage more currencies, legal entities, accounts and systems. Understanding and managing liquidity becomes far more complicated than it used to be.

That is where J.P. Morgan Payments comes in, helping clients gain visibility and keep control, and automating what can be automated so treasurers spend less time assembling the picture and more time acting on it. She points to the combination of local market expertise with the ability to connect liquidity, payments and FX across more than 160 countries.

FF NEWS TAKE:

"Where is my cash?" is a deceptively simple question for a multinational, and Bartlett's framing is useful: the problem is rarely a shortage of cash, it is the complexity around it. The aim of automating the assembly of the picture, so that treasurers can spend their time on decisions, is a theme that runs through the rest of her interview and is worth keeping in mind as Sibos approaches.