Rachel Slade

General Manager, Global Transactional Services at Westpac Group

Sydney, Australia

@Westpac | LinkedIn Profile

I lead Global Transaction Services for Westpac Group. As a member of the Institutional Bank Executive Team, I lead teams with accountability for transactional banking and trade products and sales globally, serving financial institutions, government and corporate and institutional clients. I also lead Qvalent – a wholly owned subsidiary that provides web-based software and support services that enable medium to large enterprises operating in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to streamline financial business processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and superannuation.

What influenced you your decision to join the company and start a career in banking?

I was a failed engineer, a failed economist and a reasonably successful management consultant before finding my way into banking and I’ve come full circle back to transactional banking (where many of my initial consulting engagements were focused). Transactional banking puts you right at the heart of a customer’s business – helping them, partnering with them to solve really critical customer and business challenges. Having accountability to help businesses grow is a pretty good reason to get out of bed every day!

Westpac has been aggressive in adopting ‘digital’ as a key focus for the bank. What challenges and lessons learned stand out to you as part of this transformation?

The biggest lesson is that digital is useless and boring in and of itself. BUT, it provides an amazing tool kit for creating better experiences. You can practically do anything you can imagine. When that comes together to deliver great experiences for customers and for our people and processes, magic happens.

Westpac sponsored a hackathon in Sydney during the summer of 2015. What role did the bank and in particular you have in this event?

We partnered with IBM (media release). I was the business sponsor of this event. It was quite interesting with respect to the diversity of the participants. We had developers, as well as representatives from product, sales and marketing. We had all levels of the organization from graduates up to executives, 27% women participants.

We ‘recruited’ for the Hackathon in a really open and inclusive way, largely via our internal social media platform, Yammer, which ignores traditional hierarchies.

What key leadership advice do you provide to those you mentor or are considering a career in Financial Services?

Be yourself – it will wear you out quickly trying to play a character all day every day.

Find sponsors, but they will only advocate you if there is substance there so build your story, your narrative. They can be way more impactful on your career than mentors.

Ask for help, not only because you need it, but because it is a really powerful way to build a network. People genuinely like to help and they like to be asked.

You’ve been a strong advocate for working mums and contributed to an article in ‘The Australian’ with respect to your own personal experience. Can you elaborate on this?

I like to think I’m an advocate for working parents (men and women). Lots of people mid-career and beyond are also parents and people that can bring their whole selves to work are better at work and better at home. We need as a society to stop asking people to choose and to stop talking about work-life balance and ‘having it all’. It’s just life, and it should include family, career, well-being, health, spirituality and whatever it is that is important. We all need to feel empowered to create the portfolio of experiences that work for us and for our family. Leaders and workplaces like Westpac that facilitate this will attract and keep the very best talent.

Who(m) do you believe has had the most influence with respect to your own career?

Definitely my parents. I grew up with two working parents and a brother. They supported me in everything I wanted to do and never limited my thinking about what I could be, where I could go and what I could do. Most importantly they treated my brother and I like siblings, not like a boy and a girl. We both learned to fish, to cook, to change a tire, to swing a hammer, to ride a bike…..

Who do you consider to be strong women leaders in the FinTech space?

That’s a hard question. I had to think about why. For me, 3 reasons.

• I don’t think about it a lot, even though I’m very passionate about diversity and gender diversity.
• It’s still ‘emerging’ so I don’t think we’ve yet seen the Steve Jobs or Elon Musk of fin tech. Blythe Masters comes to mind but she’s running a start up, so we’ll see how that goes.
• I think this is really the hard truth – there aren’t many obvious candidates. Work to be done!

There are more women coming to the fore in banking and in transactional banking, but I do need to share a story. I was at a payments industry meeting a couple of weeks ago, senior executives in payments in Australia. A group of around 20. There were as many people in the room called “John” as women, so there’s a bit to do!

What do you see as the 3 leading future trends for FinTech?

• Banks and start-ups partnering
• Blockchain yes, crypto currency no
• Marketplaces