Name: How BNY, founded by Alexander Hamilton, became a $50 trillion bank for other banks
Uploaded: 2024-06-11
Duration: 6 min 12 s
Description: CEO Robin Vince says investments in technology and culture are key for the 240-year-old bank.

CEO Robin Vince says investments in technology and culture are key for the 240-year-old bank.

How BNY, founded by Alexander Hamilton, became a $50 trillion bank for other banks

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by BNY.

Leadership

We're surrounded by documents of your history that highlight some of the key points of that 240 years and including Alexander Hamilton's ledger right over there. It's an impressive display. That was his account. We have President Washington's account for those two years when this was in fact the capital of the United States. We have Warrant number one, which is particularly fun. They call it the origin story of the $35 trillion worth of national debt today. Welcome to leadership next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray and I'm Mia Well, we've been part of the fabric of the United States and actually the world's financial system for a lot of our time, we lent the first money to the new nation to help uh the nation get going. And so that's where we started. We've been involved in helping to enable infrastructure of various kinds, New York City subways, Erie Canal all over the course of us history. And then when we went global and we've been in countries around the world for 50 60 70 years. Uh in some cases serving clients around the world for over 100 years, 40% of our revenues come from outside the US. We now view our business as serving our clients by managing money, moving money and keeping it safe. And we provide a whole range of financial services to clients under those headings. But it's kind of like plumbing. Right. I mean, there's no, there's no corner uh, Bank of New York Mellon. You know, I, I see JP Morgan. I see city, I don't see Bank of New York Mellon on my corner. We're not a retail bank if that's what you mean by corner, but we're really ever present in the financial system. We power platforms for our clients that really support the pensions of the world, the savers of the world, the investors of the world all through the financial system. And so we have $50 trillion or thereabouts of assets under custody and administration. We touch about 20% of all investable assets in the world. So you may not see us on the corner front, but we are probably part of your financial life. How do you think about culture and what is the culture of bank, New York people often ask me, uh you know, what is your focus on strategy? How do you think about the importance of it? And actually my answer to that is to sort of borrow the quote from, from, from another culture, really does eat strategy for breakfast. And I'll add to that by saying and execution, eat strategy for lunch. Because without people and without the right alignment and without the right sense of purpose around what we're doing and without a sense of we're really trying to nurture a learning environment and environment which is really focused on being high performing, no company can succeed. And that's one of the things that I've really loved about Bny Mellon, we have a culture that's incredibly client centric and that holds the firm also in high regard. People cherish our history. We've got this 240 years of having really powered financial markets and people take a lot of pride in that. It's people coming here wanting to be part of the financial system, part of improving things, helping make things work better for individuals and companies all around the world. And there's a lot of culture in that. So with a footprint that large um Bank of New York, Maryland has to be central to the safety and soundness of our financial system. Um Resilience has been a big theme for companies over the course of the last few years. We've seen lots of ups and downs uh geopolitical threats that trans can translate into cyber threats. Um We've had financial uh uh uneasiness. How do you, your job is to make sure that the financial system survives through all of that. How do you do it? Well, you said the most important word Alan, which is resilience. We view resilience as a commercial attribute for our company. But it really is also table stakes for a large modern day participant in capital markets. And we had plenty of lessons of that last year when we look back to 2023 the ups and downs in some of the smaller and medium sized banks in the United States that occurred some of the ups and downs and expectations for interest rates. We had geopolitical events that either started or continuing. So there are plenty of things going on in the world and you only get to be 240 years old. If you think about things, what lies around the corner really being prepared and recognizing that resilience really matters? Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about cybersecurity because obviously that's part of the geopolitical threat. Uh uh Russia, China, Iran, all sources of cyber threats. Um New technology is accelerating the possibility of those threats. I hear people talking about quantum, the day quantum comes there will be a quantum leap in cyber threats. Uh How do you keep up with the rapid escalation of the threats? Well, cyber is an incredibly important topic uh for any large company, any government, by the way, for individuals as well, talk a lot about fishing and smashing these things are their own version of a cyber online threat. And so everybody needs to pay close attention to making sure that they're well protected. Now, for our part as a company, of course, we spend a lot of money, devote a lot of attention to making sure that we are being prepared. And we're thinking about what lies ahead in defending against the various different threats that come along. We're also focused on helping our clients to do those things because we have the benefit of a scale that allows our clients to be able to rely on us for some of those things. And they find a lot of comfort in the fact that we are trying to think steps ahead on the board for that.