Katherine Lucas: To stay ahead of financial market and regulatory shifts, it's important to have easy access to real-time, powerful insights, and business critical information. And today here with me is Owen Nichols, senior managing director in our financing solution business. Owen, it is fabulous to see you as always.

Owen Nichols: Nice to be here. Thank you.

Katherine Lucas: Excellent. Good. So if we could let's just let's just start right off, okay. Talk to me a little bit about some of the top concerns that you're hearing from our clients. You're out there with them every day.

Owen Nichols: Sure. I'd maybe bucket them as three core themes I hear, right? So first, am I comprehensively looking at my exposures across short time investment and financing products? Second, I think there's a real focus on am I effectively optimizing my portfolio, so as to preserve cash and preserve access to high quality liquid assets that could be easily financed. And then lastly, probably would focus on can I be nimble, right? So nimble, meaning can I, in relation to cash investment, can I de-risk or diversify better or importantly if needed to raise cash, do I have appropriate number of contingent sources of financing on hand?

Katherine Lucas: That's a lot. That's a lot. So talk to me a little bit about how State Street is helping clients navigate market volatility when it comes to cash management.

Owen Nichols: Sure. Maybe first on exposures, I think it's two things, like really expecting us to be out there proactively and looking at those exposures, right. So really having a keen view into do I have non-cash collateral on hand that's going to link back to areas of focus. Am I appropriately looking at what exposures are in my re-investment vehicle, those type of themes. And then second we make a real effort to try to put our risk management professionals out there, right, to offer a view on the market and say, okay, you may have your hands around what's in focus now, but here's what we're looking at maybe the next kind of secondary or follow on effects. On the optimization theme, right, I think we try to help clients really take a peek at do they have a comprehensive view of their inventory overall? Are they using tools to optimize assets pre-trade? And then do they have analytics that will allow them to then, you know, transform collateral, raise liquidity, or just be more thoughtful about looking at the entire portfolio? So I think the last piece of this is the ability to be nimble. And by nimble I mean do they have a lot of cash options. So within State Street that could be a deposit, a relationship with State Street Global Advisors. Or maybe they utilize our money market portal Fund Connect. But increasingly they're looking at the repo options. So the Fixed Income Clearing Corp sponsor member repo program was one option, treasury collateral, or our peer program where they can trade a range of their buy-side clients. And then the other piece of that links back to on the repo side, couldn't they use those same structures as contingent financing, right? So finance treasuries within the cleared space or trade with peer repo counterparts for short term financing.

Katherine Lucas: I think it's you know, it's fascinating to me. I think the combined strength of our global footprint and local expertise definitely helps our clients respond as quickly as possible. And I love that kind of breadth of options that we bring to the client across the whole one State Street. So finally, and you know me, so you know what I'm going to ask. You knew it's my favorite question. So where do you see us going next.

Owen Nichols: Yeah I think maybe three things. I think back to analytics. We're going to continue to invest in those analytics, really present it as a set of modular solutions, make sure that they link to all the market utilities linked to our clients risk systems pretty efficiently. You know, second in the theme of centrally cleared structures, continue to invest in those, right. So this year we added Term and Agency Mortgage Backed to the Fixed Income Clearing Corp program. We're looking at different models in Europe. So continue to have those solutions for our clients. And then maybe you know lastly back to the peer structures, right? Clients are keen to see us support them in those trades. That could be from asset servicing perspective. It could be a guarantee of the repo sellers performance. But keen to broaden that solution out, so it includes other currencies and other collateral types that can be financed.

Katherine Lucas: Owen, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a great conversation, and I loved the chat about how we're providing clients with tailored solutions that really enable them to make better informed investment decisions confidently. Thank you.

Owen Nichols: Great. Thanks.

¹ State Street as of 31 December 2023