In this episode of The Open Ledger, host Stephen Ireland sits down with Patrick Dwyer, Director, Assistant Treasurer at Valaris Limited, to talk about what it takes to run a modern treasury function. Patrick’s path ran from finance systems to FP&A, capital structure, and finally treasury. That systems mindset shapes how he approaches everything from bank fees to banking relationships to AI.
For treasury leaders, the conversation reminds them that the job is bigger than executing transactions. The teams that add the most value understand the business drivers behind their numbers, prioritize by risk instead of by checklist, and use new technology to sharpen their judgment rather than replace it.
Treasury runs on business drivers
Patrick thinks in systems. Building finance systems taught him the value levers behind results, which led naturally to FP&A and, later, treasury. He pushes his team to think the same way, focusing on business drivers rather than only on how cash moves. That’s how a CFO thinks.
What surprised him most in the treasury world was the coordination required across legal, tax, and treasury. In some countries, opening a bank account means shipping documents worldwide for wet-ink signatures. Patrick questioned this: “You begin to wonder, is the business need for this account going to pass before the bank is able to open it for us?”
Automation needs people, not just software
Patrick has “a natural allergy to doing anything manually that can be automated.” But he warns that automating too rigidly makes a team inflexible when the business changes.
That’s why he weighs the people’s side of every technology decision. “When you go and look at the pitch deck from the TMS vendors, they don’t show you adding headcount for developers,” he says. Teams that implement a treasury management system are usually happy with it. Teams that inherit one often aren’t, because they lose the original business case and have no one in place to adapt the system as conditions change.
Bank fees follow business activity
Managing bank fees starts with knowing what they are, at a granular level. “If you just see one rolled-up number, it doesn’t really tell you much,” Patrick says. Teams need fees broken down by the bank and by the drivers underneath.
Budgeting next year’s fees with an inflation rate is a guess. What really moves fees is business activity. This could be new assets, higher utilization, payroll, and operating expenses. Patrick’s advice is to work upstream with FP&A, layer their drivers onto your fee data, and project from there.
Entering new markets or deploying a wave of expats can shift fees too, and sometimes banks raise prices without notice.
“There’s just no end to the ways that bank fees can surprise you.” – Patrick Dwyer
Be the customer your banks want to help
Banks want different things and offer different services. Patrick recommends discussing wallet distribution when banks join the revolver, then revisiting it each year as priorities shift.
Being a good customer comes down to one idea: “You’re trying to make the banks want to work with you.” When a bank pushes a last-minute letter of credit through, thank the person who did it and copy their manager and the relationship manager. Banks are far more responsive to customers they know are fair.
He also notes “there’s a big difference between the A team, the B team, and the C team.” Strong relationships let you escalate fast when the C team can’t help. And when a low-activity bank wants more business, the treasury can set the terms.
Progress means avoiding the big wrong
Some teams measure progress by how many items they cross off. Patrick doesn’t. He says that, “To me, what’s progress is what drives down the risk of a bad outcome.” Updating 50 U.S. signers takes an afternoon, but a foreign account tied to a customer contract tends to slip.
His example is a three-month KYC deadline with two months lost to an unresponsive bank. Bring legal in with two weeks left and your options are gone. Loop them in at the start and small problems stay small.
AI is a thinking partner, not a replacement
Patrick sees AI’s biggest value in solving new problems in real time, where teams need to weigh trade-offs and decide quickly. His team uses it for customer credit reviews, building models that go a layer deeper than analyst consensus or rating agencies.
He encourages his team to use AI freely but holds them accountable for the results. “You want to use AI to update your mental model. You’re not trying to use AI to replace your mental model.” Each weekly staff meeting includes a standing item on how the team is using AI.
Will AI replace treasury? Patrick says no, though manual point-and-click work may go away. The judgment, tacit knowledge, and relationships behind that work are harder to automate. “AI is an amazing answer machine,” he says, “but so far the most valuable results come from the people asking the right questions.”
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