Things I learnt at ICICI Bank

I've sat on the other side of the table from CEOs and CFOs, helping them hedge currency risk. The job title says Senior Manager, Treasury. What it actually taught me had less to do with FX and more to do with how people make decisions when money is on the line. A few things stayed with me.

The product is certainty.

I'd watch a CFO terrified of a 50bps rupee swing on a $X payable, and structure a forward contract that locked in a rate — sometimes one that wasn't even obviously better than spot. The math didn't always justify the premium. The peace of mind did. I used to think hedging was about optimizing outcomes. It's mostly about optimizing how someone feels about an outcome they can't control. That's not a flaw in the client. That's just how risk works.

The best deals don't look like wins on day one.

Some of my proudest hedges — the ones that genuinely protected a client from a brutal currency move — looked foolish for months before they paid off. Meanwhile, plenty of "lucky" unhedged positions looked brilliant right up until they weren't. I learned to stop judging a decision by its immediate scoreboard. In markets, and honestly in most of life, the quality of a decision and the quality of its short-term outcome are only loosely related. Confusing the two is how people learn the wrong lessons from both their wins and their losses.

Trust is built in the boring meetings, not the dramatic ones.

Anyone can show up sharp when a deal is closing. What actually built relationships with corporate clients was the unglamorous stuff — the meetings where you just chitchat, the call where I flagged a risk that hadn't materialized yet, the follow-up nobody asked for. By the time a client actually needed me to be right about something important, the trust was already sitting in the bank, so to speak. You can't build credibility in the moment you need it. It has to already be there.

Never work for anybody who doesn't have basic human decency.

If you ever happen to work for someone who is a walking case of mental harassment in human form, take it to HR right away. If HR can't help, move out. The exhaustion of babysitting a man-child doesn't stay contained to your professional life — it bleeds into your personal life too.

A useful gut-check: look at how often people quit that team. If half a dozen people have left within three months of joining, that's not a coincidence. That's data. Start looking elsewhere.

People don't buy from salespeople. People buy from friends who happen to be selling.

A good deal rests on three things — credibility, trust, and understanding.

Credible: Are you good at what you do? Trust: Can I trust you? Understanding: Do you actually understand what's best for me?

Once you've convinced someone you're good at your craft, that you're honest, and that you understand what's best for them — the deal is already locked in. Everything after that is paperwork.

I came into treasury expecting to learn about markets. I leave having learned more about the people standing in front of them.