How BNY Simplifies Global Money Movement With Jennifer Barker, Global Head of Payments & Trade & Depositary Receipts | Episode 492

Welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast, where we talk to sea level leaders from across the payments landscape. We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments. We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Leaders in Payments Podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Myers. And today's special guest is Jennifer Barker, Global Head of Payments and Trade and Depository Receipts at BNY. So, Jennifer, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show. Thank you, Greg.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. So if you don't mind, can you give us a quick snapshot of your personal background, maybe where you grew up, where you call home today, a few things like that?

Sure. So my father served for 30 years in the Army. So where I'm from is a bit of a tough question. I went to nine different schools, three different high schools.

I grew up all over in the US, grew up in Europe, spent a good part of my formative childhood years in Europe and Belgium. So yeah, that's a bit about me. My mom was a nurse and always or is a nurse and always worked as we moved around. And so that really taught me a lot about a resiliency, adaptation to new environment, you know, being the new kids nine times in a row, you know, actually like really like is very humbling.

And so it teaches you also a lot about empathy and others who are going through change. It teaches you great change management skills. And it also just teaches you about the importance of community. You know, the military community is very supportive and you know, there's a lot of welcomes and everything for all the new families.

And so that's a bit about my background and have taken on a new role at BNY in addition to the two roles that you mentioned as head of Europe. So London, I now call home as of very recently, and continuing with the other two jobs that you mentioned, but really excited to uh, you know, as of June, really dig into the new role as head of Europe. Well, your plate is very full then, I'm sure. So if you if you don't mind, can you walk us through your professional journey and how you got to BY?

Sure, absolutely. So I started my career with Accenture, and I've always been really interested in the intersection of technology and how it solves business problems and how it solves operational problems and how you translate all of those things because you can be a really deep expert in technology, but unless you know how to apply that into a situation, it becomes, you know, sort of less useful to you. And so that's why I started my career with Accenture. I've always liked really hard, complex problems that technology can be a part of the solution.

And I've always really enjoyed working with clients to A, understand what is it that they're trying to achieve, and then B, how can I help them achieve that problem? And that's why for me, consulting was so interesting. So I did that for about five years. I did that before business school.

I went to Ross, which is the University of Michigan School of Business, and just really strengthened my subject matter expertise around some of the core, I was on a business major undergraduate. So some of the core fundamentals, accounting, you know, econ, et cetera. And then went back to Accenture after business school to work in their strategic services division to help, again, in the theme of helping clients solve problems. And one of the, you know, many, many tools that we can do that is through technology.

So then I joined JP Morgan. I was there for 19 years, all inside of the payments business, everything from front office, you know, client coverage to building products to running some of the operational infrastructure. So really seeing a 360 view of the business. And then I joined BNY in 2022 as the head of the global payments and trade business.

I also then uh a few years later became the head of the depositary receipts business. And as we just talked about, I'm now then the head of Europe as well. Okay. Well, if you don't mind, will you tell our audience sort of summarize what those three sort of business units do?

So let me start with what BNY does overall, and then I'll talk about the specific businesses. So we operate at the center of the financial services ecosystem. We are the largest custody business. We have about 60 trillion in assets under custody or administration.

And so we safeguard in services a lot of the assets are pension funds, insurers, asset managers. We're also the primary trade settlement provider for the US Treasury market. So we support the safety and liquidity of the world's deepest and most liquid bond market. And we're also the world's largest collateral manager and securities lender.

And we have a leading business in payments, liquidity, foreign exchange, investments, and wealth. So what we do is we manage money, we move money, and we keep it safe. That's how we summarize broadly what we do at BNY. So focusing on the global payments and trade business, we help clients move their money.

We provide payments, cash management, trade finance, and think about how we holistically help them achieve their needs. Just for context of the business, we're at top five US dollar clear globally. We clear about 2.5 trillion in US dollar payments a day.

And that was at the end of March. Depository receipts is one of the ways that we help connect issuers and investors across borders. It really enables companies to access global capital markets and investors to access opportunities beyond their home market through this infrastructure of depository receipts. We're the number one global depositary receipt bank in terms of the number of sponsored depositary receipt programs.

We've got about 433 billion in assets under custody, again, as of the end of March. And so together, these businesses really reflect the scale, the strength of what it is we do, not only in both of those businesses, but more broadly in the financial services ecosystem. Okay. Well, if you don't mind, tell me about some of the challenges that you see in the payment space and then how you're addressing them for your clients.

Absolutely. I mean, it's such an interesting time to be in payments for many, many reasons. I would say one of the biggest challenges is complexity. There's a lot of different payment systems around the world.

Clients want to operate, you know, in longer hours, 24-7, and they need partners to really help them simplify all of that infrastructure and bring it in a way to help them operationalize a what most clients want to have eventually is a 24-7 operating environment. So that's the first one is just how do you navigate all that complexity? The second is the tension, I would say, between trust and speed. And everything in payments, you know, folks want it faster.

We as consumers want things faster. As of course, in the wholesale space, people want things faster too. And so, how do you have that natural tension between, you know, fraud management and other types of things that happen when payments are faster? So we focus a lot on how do we help really solve that tension and provide clients tools that they can move fast, but also have the same set of controls and other things that they need to be able to administer payments safely.

The third is cross-border. It is still a major point of friction in the industry in terms of how long it takes for payments to go cross-border through different regulatory environments. Of course, you know, foreign exchange rates fluctuate. And so, how do we help our clients navigate that really efficiently?

And then fourth is just how do we think about the always-on financial ecosystem? And that's not just for what I'd call traditional fiat rails, but it's also in the digital asset space. And so it's how do we help our clients manage through all four of those things? Those are generally the four biggest topics that we're that we talk with clients about today and that we hear about in the industry.

Okay. Well, in the context of BNY's payments business, what would you say differentiates you from your competitors? I would say a number of things. First is our role in the financial services ecosystem.

I mean, we are deeply embedded. I mentioned, I mentioned the collateral business, I mentioned the US Treasuries. We are deeply embedded in all of this infrastructure that supports money movement around the world. So the second is we are not adding to the complexity of the financial ecosystem.

We're actually helping our clients solve it through interoperability. And what we really want is our clients to not have to worry about like the multiple different clearing systems. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of clearing systems around the world. And so we are actually taking on a lot of that interoperability for our clients.

We're not creating another thing that they have to, you know, continue to interoperate with. And, you know, we're thinking about the world that's coming, not just what's there today. If you think about everything from digital assets, AI, API integration, all of these things, it's how do we really put all these things together to deliver a safe and resilient set of solutions for our clients? And the fourth one is just we are a very innovative company at BNY.

We've won a number of awards for our innovation, and we pair that with our institutional great infrastructure. You know, I mentioned some of the statistics and a lot of the core piece of the financial ecosystem. So those things can coexist, and that's a lot of what we focus on. Okay.

So where do you see the biggest growth opportunities in your segment of payments? Yeah, it's definitely helping clients get ready for an always-on world in a 24-7, 365 world. So whether that's working on the existent payment rails, you know, making them 24-7, you know, the existing kind of product set that exists today, whether that is, you know, working through the digital asset ecosystem, but you also need an entire operating model. So it's not just the technology capabilities, it is the, you know, how do you make sure that you have the staff to answer questions 24-7?

You have the operational staff, et cetera. You have your treasury team. And so it's just that is a major, major growth opportunity today. The second is cross-border payments.

You know, it still remains a significant opportunity in the industry, and particularly as you look at retail flows. People are, you know, more global than ever. So they want to be able to get money home. They want to be able to travel.

And so, how do we really make that as seamless and cost effective as possible? And then really, you know, we talked about fragmentation in an ecosystem, but like how do we really build that infrastructure that connects? Because you could argue the world is going to get more fragmented in the near future in terms of a number of different operating systems, you know, popping up, particularly in the digital asset space. And so, how do we bring all of those things together we see as a really big growth opportunity?

Because you know, clients don't want to navigate all that complexity. They really want their banking partners to do that. So that's a big opportunity. And really, how do we help think about AI and positioning AI to help?

Um, there's just so much opportunity with AI in the payments industry. And so we're we're thinking a lot about that. Okay. So, how much of the always on, because I think it's an interesting topic, but how much of that do you feel like is driven by the consumer side?

I know that's not, you know what I mean? That's like, you know, I have a daughter's about to graduate from college and like everything is instant, immediate, and it feels like that's kind of bled over to the B2B world. That's absolutely she probably doesn't have a checkbook. So uh which way right?

She doesn't know how to write a check. She doesn't even know probably what it is. And so no, that's not uncommon, of course. But you're exactly right because as consumers, you know, if you look at how we shop, how we pay, how we pay our bills, and you know, I always tell the story of my daughter who's who's 17.

It's like, you know, if she walks into a store, she just thinks everybody she can just put her phone on everything, like the physical credit card and the check and everything is, you know, so you're right. That's bleeding into, you know, especially as a new generation of folks come into the workforce in things like, you know, finance and in who are coming into the treasury organization, that is the expectations. Consumers are now vendors, right? And so vendors want to be paid faster.

And so it absolutely is shaping how we think about those capabilities. You know, people want their money as fast and as safely as possible. Okay. Well, what does success look like for your payments division over, say, the next three to five years?

So, yes, absolutely. So I would say, how do we really get to an always-on world? And there's, and that is a very, very complex question because you've got, as I mentioned, all the different payment ecosystems that you need to connect together. And it's not just in an always-on world, but how do you take advantage of the data and all of the, you know, AI and how do you use all these tools to really help make clients better?

Because at the end of the day, clients want banks to help them be better, whether that's save money, reduce risk, help grow their business. And so that is really what I would define success is how have we been able to put these pieces together to really help our clients and bring them insights about themselves that they did not know before. And so the other thing is complexity can actually be an advantage if you know how to use it and leverage it in an organization. And you think about our clients, whether it's a bank, a non-bank financial institution, a corporate, they're all going through the same thing in terms of they want to grow their business, they want to grow their top line, they want to get more efficient.

Their clients, their customers are everywhere, they're demanding, you know, mass customized solutions. And so, how can we turn all that into an advantage for our clients by having a truly interoperable structure so that they can send a payment? And most clients don't really worry about how it gets there, what rail, if it's you know, a digital asset or if it's a you know in a real-time payment, a FedNow, an ACH transaction. Most clients will tell you that's the secondary concern.

Their primary concern is how do you get it there fastest, safest, and the most economical and with the most data associated with that. So I think that's really like our job to help translate for them. And then finally, and I mentioned this earlier, is just pairing innovation with scale. I mean, we're a 241-year-old bank, but we're also quite innovative at the same time, right?

And so it's like we have all of this wonderful history of first of many things. And so, how do we continue to pair innovation with the large resilience and the role that we play in the financial services ecosystem? Okay. So, what do you think are some of the biggest trends that are reshaping the payments industry?

Yeah, definitely 24-7 is a huge one. And I've mentioned it before. It's not just your how do you have the capabilities, but what is your operating model look like? Because you can have 24-7 payments, but if you don't have the infrastructure to actually get those out the door, then that's a huge trend.

I would say data is becoming as important as the payment itself. And that's a lot of what ISO 200 to 2 is trying to accomplish too, is how do you have richer data that comes with the payments? Because there are so many examples where the payment and the data don't travel together. And so that's a huge trend, is the data is becoming almost the more important thing as opposed to the actual rail itself that it's executed on from a payment perspective.

And then, of course, AI and automation of things that make sense. But the artificial intelligence space is just presents incredible new opportunities for anomaly fraud detection, smart routing of payments, and a lot of other insight at scale that is just really, really new and exciting for the industry. Okay. And you mentioned earlier cross-border payments.

So just curious your thoughts on the kind of the trends there. Cause I've done a lot of episodes recently around stable coins and that being a solution for the challenges across border. Just curious your thoughts on that trend. In the conversations that I have with clients, they care less about what the thing is that goes cross-border.

It could be stablecoin, you know, it could be a different tokenized asset. It's just all about how do you get things there transparently, faster in an economic manner and have more reliability up front that you know how much it's going to cost and when it's going to get there. So I think there's an number of different industry trends that are happening and industry groups that are forming to talk about this. I think there's a lot of different ways we're going to solve this problem.

But I do think it's an incredible opportunity for the industry, particularly as the world gets more global, people are moving all around the place, businesses, supply chains are shifting all of the time. I do think it's something that will get a lot of attention or is getting a lot of attention, but I think there's not one answer to that question. Okay. Well, a couple of final questions.

If you could go back and give yourself advice at the start of your career, what would that be? I would say to be a bit bolder earlier in my career. The roles that I've had, you know, I moved to Singapore with JP Morgan, and it was a brand new function, and I was leading a business, and I ran 14 countries, and that was a huge stretch assignment for me personally and professionally, but it was one of the most rewarding decisions I've made in my career. And so, you know, growth and comfort really don't coexist most of the time.

And so I would say to just be a bit bolder in some of my decisions earlier on in my career. The second thing I would say is communication is absolutely key. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career, it doesn't matter if you're running, you know, three businesses like I am. What is important is how do you make sure that you have a really, really strong communication strategy.

People understand what it is we're trying to achieve, how are we going to get there? And you provide folks, you know, the excitement and the vision of what it is, and then you help them get there. But you have to communicate along the way on what you're learning, how are we adjusting? Because the communication is absolutely essential.

And it doesn't matter if you run a big, small team or no team for that matter, because everybody's a leader in their role. Okay. Well, one final question before we wrap up. What's the one thing that payment leaders that might be listening today should really be thinking about right now?

I would say is there's so many things to focus on in payments. And whether it's digital assets, artificial intelligence, and how artificial intelligence is really impacting the payments industry and presenting all these new opportunities, there's multiple new payment rails around the world. I would say it's figure out strategically what it is that you want to focus on. So I mentioned it being why we're focused on interoperability and we're focusing on reducing complexity while still managing all of the underlying complexity for our clients and leveraging things like digital assets and AI to help us do that.

So I would say it's place your strategic bet and figure out what it is that you want to do and focus on that because you can't possibly do everything. And the financial services industry, there's lots of partners that you can partner with to help you do that as well. I mean, no one bank does everything. And that's what I think the really interesting, unique thing is about this industry is you know, work with your partners and figure out how to work together.

Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show. I know your time is very valuable, so I really appreciate you being here today. It's my pleasure, Greg.

Thanks so much for having me. And to all your listeners out there, I thank you for your time as well. And until the next story. Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments Podcast.

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