While the 2008 financial crash turned out to be a reliable source of career lessons for many of our finance leader guests, Joel Campbell may be the first CFO to share with us a customer support lesson learned from the crisis.
Back in 2006, Campbell, a seasoned treasury executive, had been recruited to help to build a robust treasury function for Ameriprise Financial, the recently spun-off financial planning division of American Express.
“Those first 2 years were really about finishing this spin-off process, but the day that’s burned infamously into my mind is September 16, 2008,” remembers Campbell, who reports that this was the day when a money market fund widely used by Ameriprise customers “broke the buck.”
“It became the first money market fund in investing history to let its net asset value drop below a dollar—and this had just never happened before,” continues Campbell, who adds that the fund served more than 300,000 Ameriprise customers who had routinely deposited their excess cash into it with the intent of using the proceeds to pay a variety of expenses, from mortgages to college tuitions.
Not more than 10 days after the fund “broke the buck,” Ameriprise’s management team committed $400 million from its own balance sheet to support those customers impacted by the fund’s sudden collapse.
Besides underlining the prioritization of customer care, Campbell notes, the experience also shaped his perspectives on treasury and finance.
“It helped me to think about how to look forward,’ remarks Campbell, who continues to laud Ameriprise’s response, “and I’m saying ‘look forward’ with regard not just to what’s happening in a business but also to trying to understand where the market is headed. It’s all about reading the signs so that you can step back and make sure that you’re making the right decisions from a risk or liquidity standpoint to be able to both run your business and support your customers in the right way.”
Says Campbell: “It’s the response that sticks with me. It was how the executive team quickly pivoted and said, ‘We need to take care of the customer, period. Full stop.’” –Jack Sweeney
