Innovations

Treasury Office 4th Quarter Initiatives

by Chris W. Malins

As the year winds down, it seems as if the Treasury Office is just getting started! There are some exciting things going on in each area of the Treasury— Investments, Investment Reporting, and Debt Financing. Here’s a quick update on some recent changes and improvements.

There is major news on the investment side. UW has hired its first-ever Chief Investments Officer to oversee the investment program. His name is Keith Ferguson and he started work at the University on the third of January. Prior to moving to Seattle, Keith worked at Fidelity Investments in the Hong Kong and Boston offices. Being a native of Seattle and a UW alumnus, he is glad to be home and excited to take on the challenge of managing a large endowment.

Within the investment reporting group, the thought was that while too many cooks might spoil the soup, too many editors were delaying the process. The Treasury Office produces multiple reports for the Board of Regents and UWINCO. The reports are generated by a team effort, combining the expertise of many individuals in the office. Pressing time deadlines resulted in multiple and different copies of drafts and "final" copies being circulated. The group was wasting precious time re-reviewing work.

Beginning this quarter, a single individual is in charge of controlling the production and reviews of the reports. This change has made the reports more focused, saved paper, and freed up limited time for more important functions.

It has also been a busy quarter for the Data Warehousing team. They successfully developed and implemented a new, simplified method for transmitting data from the University’s custodial bank in Chicago. This will make the process easier to maintain over time. They’re also been working steadily to recreate quarterly reports using the data warehouse instead of using legacy Excel spreadsheets. An important milestone occurred in the last few weeks, as well; the Data Warehouse technology consultant delivered 150 pages of technical documentation, and the Data Warehouse team completed and tested about 50 pages of documentation that describe the process for the monthly data load.

The debt financing group kept busy as well, and has closed financing transactions in excess of $100 million over the last six months. The biggest news here has been the University’s first foray into variable rate debt. Variable rate debt can reduce the cost of borrowing over time. While the variable rate debt issued this time was “hedged,” meaning that the full savings potential of variable rate bonds isn’t realized (but the risks are lower!), the University has plans to issue additional variable rate debt in the future.