On this episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, co-host Alan Murray sits down with Robin Vince, CEO of BNY, formerly the Bank of New York Mellon, which is the oldest company on the Fortune 500 list. Murray met Vince in his office, where they sat surrounded by memorabilia from the bank's founder, Alexander Hamilton. Their conversation ranges from why BNY was founded to what the bank does today. They also discussed the ongoing threat of cyber attacks and why Vince believes it's essential that employees and managers spend more working hours than not in the office. Co-host Michal Lev-Ram joins Murray for the pre-interview chat.
Murray and Vince met just before the bank's 240th anniversary when it announced a major change in branding, going from BNY Mellon to BNY. The change, Vince said in a memo to employees, will "clearly communicate our value proposition across the full breadth of our business platforms — as one BNY." As part of the rebranding, "BNY Mellon Investment Management and BNY Mellon Wealth Management will be updated to BNY Investments and BNY Wealth, better representing the array of services these businesses provide beyond pure asset management, and Pershing will become BNY Pershing. The company’s legal parent name will remain The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation."
Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.
Transcript
Alan Murray: Leadership Next is powered by the folks at Deloitte who, like me, are exploring the changing rules of business leadership and how CEOs are navigating this change.
Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray, and Michael Lev-Ram, I have a question for you.
Michal Lev-Ram: Yes.
Murray: The question is what is the oldest company on the Fortune 500 list?
Lev-Ram: Oh, my gosh. I have the answer in front of me. So, can I cheat? It makes IBM look really, really young and it makes Fortune look very, very young. Spring chicken.
Murray: Two hundred and forty years old. It’s BNY, the bank. Robin Vince is the CEO. We did an interview in his office surrounded by memorabilia from Alexander Hamilton, who actually created the bank. I'm really sorry you weren’t there Michael. It was a fascinating dive into a really important financial
institution that most people don't know much about.
Lev-Ram: I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a fascinating conversation, and I'm especially sorry hearing that I missed out on seeing all sorts of artifacts. But what did you talk about? What's the
company got going on today?
Murray: Well, it's it's interesting. It kind of runs a lot of the plumbing of the global financial system, massive amounts of money, something like $50 trillion in assets. There was a big computer screen on the
wall where you could see how many Treasury securities they had traded that day and again, it was measured in the trillions. So a lot of things that you don't see on a regular basis but are handled by the bank behind the scenes.
Lev-Ram: Well, I am looking forward to hearing this conversation. And again, I'm sorry I missed it. I'm sure it was fantastic. And just a note to listeners, this interview was recorded before BNY Mellon changed
its name to BNY.
[Interview begins.]
Murray: Robin Vince Bank of New York Mellon. Thank you so much for being on Leadership Next.
Robin Vince: Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here also in the building.
Murray: Well, it's good to be here. This is an historic place. Bank of New York Mellon has been around for, what, 240 years?
Vince: That’s right. We turn 240 this year, in fact.
Murray: Oldest financial institution in the United States, started by Alexander Hamilton. I'm not sure everyone knows that. And started probably just a few blocks from where we're sitting right now, right
Vince: That's right. The vision was born in downtown New York City, down in what is essentially now the Wall Street area.
Murray: So in spite of that and by the way, we're surrounded by documents of your history that sort of highlights some of the key points of that 240 years, including Alexander Hamilton's ledger right over
there.
Vince: That's right.
Murray: So it's an impressive display.
Vince: 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.
Murray: Yeah. So the remarkable thing is that in spite of that incredibly long history that sort of begins with the creation of the republic, Bank of New York Mellon is not that well known by most people. So
explain what it does and what it is.
Vince: Well, we've been part of the fabric of the United States and actually the world financial system for a lot of our time. And we started, as you pointed out, right with the birth of the republic. And the first thing really that we did for the republic in those early days, right after the British left New York, (it's a little bit ironic that I have some British heritage but we’ll skip past that) was we lent the first money to the new nation to help the nation get going. And so that's why we started. We've been involved in helping to enable infrastructure of various kinds. New York City subways, the Erie Canal, all over the course of U.S. history. And then we went global and we've been in countries around the world for 50, 60, 70 years in some cases, serving clients around the world for over 100 years. Forty percent of our revenues come from outside the U.S. 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.
Murray: But it's kind of like plumbing, right? I mean, there's no corner Bank of New York Mellon, you know? I see J.P. Morgan. I see Citi. I don't see Bank of New York Mellon on my corner.
Vince: 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.
Murray: And so who's your competition?
Vince: Well, we have competitors all around the world and different types of competitors depending on the business that we're in. We have large competitors in the custody business, but we have different
competitors in the payments business. We were the first bank in the United States to make real time payments on the new real time payment rails a few years ago. We have a very large software and services platform that supports wealth managers and registered investment advisors all across the United States. We help the U.S. Treasury and the Fed to run the U.S. Treasury system. So we really have different types of competitors in different places according to the business.
Murray: So you make your money off of fees and off of interest rate spreads.
Vince: Yeah, we are a fairly low-risk balance sheet that is generally focused on making sure we're supporting our clients’ needs, and fees and net interest income are the two big cylinders in our revenue
engine.
Murray: Yeah. So talk about technology because we all know we're in the midst of this remarkable technology revolution. We've seen that everyone's imagination has kind of exploded with the introduction of generative AI and the possibilities. Technology is clearly—I've seen it walking around your offices here—at the core of what you do.
Vince: Well, it is. It really helps us in everything that we do for our clients. I would describe clients as being what we're about and really the core focus. But technology gives us this incredible leverage to
be able to help our clients. And we think now of ourselves as a platforms business, essentially a set of software and services that allow our clients to build on top of us, to do everything that they're doing. Very exciting on the topic of AI, but technology for us is so much more. It is about networks and
connectivity to clients all around the world, and we have the ability to really give insights to our clients about what's going on in their business and to be able to allow them to leverage the efficiency and scale that we have as a company.
Murray: And when you talk about clients, you're talking mostly about financial and other financial institutions.
Vince: Well, we serve nearly all of the top 100 financial institutions in the world, but we also support something like 90% of Fortune 100 companies close to that for all of the largest asset managers in
the world. And indirectly, we support the vast number of Americans and global participants in financial markets who are savers. Sixty percent of Americans have some type of investment in the stock market. They may have it in a 401(k) or they may have it in an IRA or they may have it in their own savings account. But underlying that somewhere is probably a touchpoint to the various different businesses that we have.
Murray: Yeah, so with a footprint that large, Bank of New York Mellon has to be central to the safety and soundness of our financial system. Resilience has been a big theme for companies over the course of the
last few years. We've seen lots of ups and downs, geopolitical threats that can translate into cyber threats. We've had financial uneasiness. Your job is to make sure that the financial system survives through all of that. How do you do it?
Vince: 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 were 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 what lies around the corner, really being prepared, and recognizing that resilience really matters.
Murray: Yeah. So can we talk a little bit about cyber security? Because obviously that's part of the geopolitical threat. Russia, China, Iran, all sources of cyber threats. New technology is accelerating the
possibility of those threats. I hear people talking about quantum (computing). The day quantum comes, there will be a quantum leap in cyber threats. How do you keep up with the rapid escalation of the threats?
Vince: Well, cyber is incredibly important topic for any large company, any government, by the way, and for individuals as well. We talk a lot about phishing and smishing. 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 and devote a lot of attention to making sure that we are being prepared and we're thinking about what lies ahead and 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.
Murray: But it's a race, right? You've got to keep ahead of the bad guys and there are a lot of them out there.
Vince: I think that's been true since the days of the first bank robbers that the good guys have to stay ahead of the bad guys. But you're right.
Murray: So give us just some magnitude here. In a normal day, how many cyber attacks are you dealing with?
Vince: Well, we're constantly under attack, as is any large enterprise these days, unfortunately, because we're being probed for various different gaps. Is there a way that people can come in? And that's why
we have a large team and a lot of resources that are devoted to making sure that we're fending off anything that happens like that. But that's a very standard thing for any Fortune 500 company these days. We may be the oldest Fortune 500 company, but in that we're all in the same place of having to be
prepared.
[Music starts.]
Murray: I'm here with Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US, who had the wisdom to sponsor this podcast. Thanks for joining me, Jason.
Jason Girzadas: Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you, Alan.
Murray: Jason, the pace of technological change is mind boggling these days and it's really hard for people and human organizations to keep up with it. So how should CEOs prepare their teams for
this pace of constant change?
Girzadas: Well, the impact on the workforces of organizations is profound as it relates to technology. And there's probably nothing more important for CEOs, no matter what organization they’re leading to
really be thinking about technology's impact on our workforce. It's really a function of how do you think about technology in concert with your workforce. We at Deloitte talk about it as the age of technology with your workforce, and really embracing this idea of the co-dependency of technology and workforce. We're also an environment of a very tight workforce where there's a scarcity of top talent and an increased pressure on a diversity of top talent. That's going to be the challenge for organizations to demonstrate to top talent that they can grow and evolve the work that they do. Working with leading technology in a very aligned way. Finally, it's what top talent really wants in an organization is to learn and grow and to be part of an organization that's supportive of them actually embedding technology in their
work.
Murray: Jason, thanks for your perspective and thanks for sponsoring Leadership Next.
Girzadas: Thank you.
[Music ends.]
Murray: So let's talk a little bit about you. How did you get here? How did you end up at the top of this this huge company? How many employees do you have, by the way?
Vince: We have about 50,000.
Murray: So this is a huge global operation. What was your path? Did you wake up one day and say, I want to run the biggest financial institution in the United States or did it wind more than that?
Vince: Of course it was more than that. I'm very lucky with my past. I grew up in a different institution, but through my time in that…
Murray: Goldman Sachs, right?
Vince: That's right. That's right. I joined right out of school and that proved to be a really terrific set of experiences for me. And I say set of experiences because I had the good fortune to work under leaders who really moved me around the company and gave me different exposures to things. I had the opportunity to work in different places. I had the opportunity to work in many of the different parts of the company. I grew up on the trading side, had a set of experiences there, and then I had the opportunity to work in risk and in Treasury, help participate in sort of a regional view of the company. And these experiences really did help me and they created this sort of cumulative set of knowledge, tests, financial crisis, going through, I remember the Russian default, I remember Long Term Capital Management, I remember September 11th. Each one of these things were sort of their own crucibles of learning, if you will, and then working with the people in that institution prepared me very well. And one day I had the opportunity to come here. And that's really been just a tremendous opportunity to put a lot of that and those skills to work.
Murray: Those crises you're talking about seem to come faster, more frequently, more diverse in origin and having the right culture to deal with that, when you talk about resilience, we know culture is at
the core of it. How do you think about culture and what is the culture of Bank of New York Mellon?
Vince: People often ask me, 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 another: culture really does eat
strategy for breakfast. And I'll add to that by saying execution eats 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 an 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 your history. We've got this 240 years of having really powered financial markets and people take a lot of pride in that. And so when we're out on campus recruiting people, when we're talking to our people about what we do and why it matters in the world, you talked about the scale and breadth that we had, and I've illustrated it with some numbers, but at the very heart 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.
Murray: There's a great culture experiment going on here in downtown Manhattan as we speak. We still haven't completely recovered from the pandemic and the effects of that and distributed work. Your former employer just down the road, Goldman Sachs, has been saying, by God, we want you in the office every day. Right across the street from them, American Express, another financial company, is saying it doesn't have to be every day. We could probably get by two or three days a week. Where do you fall in the great debate about office work? How often if you work at Bank of New York Mellon in the office, how often do you have to be in?
Vince: So the short answer to the question is, more days than you're not. But let's just step back for a second and remember, what are we trying to achieve? I would like our people to be here to be able to really serve our clients. It's hard sometimes to fully serve clients when you're actually not in the office because you may not be out with your clients as much as you otherwise would. What else are we asking our people to do? We're asking them to pay it forward for the next generation. We've hired the largest
analyst class of new incoming analysts that we've ever had as a company, which is double what it was the year before. And that was double what it was the year before that. We can't have all of these new summer analysts close to 2,000 and new full time analysts close to 2,000 joining us and then not have people to learn from, not to have those hallway conversations. I want them to be able to come in here, observe and absorb the culture. And in order to do that, we need to have a lot of people here. So that's what we've asked our people to do. Be here more than you aren't. And for people who have management responsibilities, be here even more.
Murray: Yeah. Robin, these days, what keeps you up at night? What worries you about your ability to keep this great institution going for another 240 years?
Vince: Staying humble and staying a bit paranoid was one of the things that I learned as I was growing up is a very healthy state of mind for a CEO to have. So never being comfortable and always worrying a little bit about what might lie around the corner. Now, what are we doing about that? We are obsessively focused on our clients. We are really making sure that we're running our company in a great way and never losing sight of the importance of culture. Now, in order to do all of those things, how do we put it out in the world? Yeah, we're thinking around the corners. Will the Fed raise rates? Will the Fed cut rates? Will the Fed stay the same? We're not pinning all of the company on one of those outcomes. We’re being prepared for the different eventualities. The same thing's true on cyber. The same thing's true for the geopolitics of the world. You've got to be prepared for how the world can zig and zag, and that is ultimately…
Murray: I heard someone say recently that the single point forecast is dead. Anybody who runs their business based on a single point forecast of the future is ignoring the realities of our time.
Vince: It's risky and one might be right, but it's very unlikely that you're going to carry on being right, certainly over hundreds of years.
Murray: Yeah. And what excites you most about the next 10 years? What do you see in the future of this business that really gets you going?
Vince: Well, I'll say two things that we're really focused on as a company. One, for us, it's that opportunity to be platforms, rentable scale, insights into markets, capabilities that our clients can then go build their businesses on. There are so many things that we take for granted today that are essentially platforms that we all use every day. That maybe 10, 20, 30 years ago, if you're a company, you might have done for yourself. And so having those market leading positions across payments, across custody, across wealth assets, across collateral, across the U.S. Treasury market, across various forms of markets, these are all very real scale things where we are potentially the largest in many cases at what we do, and that allows clients to be able to borrow our scale and to be able to get wrapped in our technology and our capabilities so they can focus on what they really want to be doing and what makes them really great.
Murray: There's obviously an enormous amount of pressure that goes with this job that you have. What do you do to unwind? What do you do to relax? What let you breathe?
Vince: I heard Jamie Dimon say something the other day which actually really resonates with me, which is he sort of has two focus areas. One is his company and the other one is his family. I'm very much like
that. It was once said, and I think this is not a bad expression, that you can have it all. You just can't have it all at the same time. And I think that's right for me and so I've really devoted myself to saying this is an incredible franchise. I want to serve our clients and serve our people as well. And at the same time, equally, maybe more importantly for me, is my family. And those are the two things that I do. There are plenty of other things that I enjoy, but those are the two things I deliberately make time for.
Murray: Robin, what's the biggest challenge that workers today are facing?
Vince: Well, there's a lot of anxiety that I recognize can exist for workers. There's a lot that's going on around the world. AI is, of course, an ever-present thing. I like to think about this is the responsibility of an employer to make sure that we're really helping our employees to navigate. We made every employee in our company a shareholder about a year ago by giving them stock in BNY Mellon because they're part of our journey. We've been leaning into benefits. We've been created new mental health benefits for all of our employees as well, because it's that essence of culture to bring your people along on the journey.
Murray: Great institution, big job. Thank you very much for taking the time to be with me on Leadership Next.
Vince: Great to be with you and thank you for being with us.
Murray: Leadership Next is edited by Nicole Vergalla.
Lev-Ram: Our executive producer is Chris Joslin.
Murray: Our theme is by Jason Snell.
Lev-Ram: Leadership Next is a production
of Fortune Media.
Murray: Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune’s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.
