Our commitment to service

Heather: Welcome to another episode of treasury market minute I'm Heather Froehlich national sales manager of state treasury pools at Federated Hermes and today I'm thrilled to be joined by Wayne Perry an Americo Serna, who both serve as unit managers for our participant services group. Wayne let me start with you Federated Hermes has such a strong reputation in servicing local government investment pool participants but are you able to provide more detail around our service infrastructure and what makes us really stand out to our pool participants?

Wayne: Sure Heather we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional customer service all of our participants receive the same level of service regardless of their account size. We make our account access sites available 24/7 for transaction processing and money movements. Our participant services team is spread out across the country. We have three locations one in Boston one in Pittsburgh and one in Houston. The benefit here is that if we have a weather related event such as a blizzard in Boston or a hurricane in Houston we continue to offer this seamless servicing experience to our participants. In addition we have a very seasoned client service representative team. Those individuals invested in our pools receive not only an efficient and liquid investment vehicle but they also receive first class customer service through our seasoned team. So once a participant has joined us they have they can guarantee that expertise within the pool that they were invested in.

Americo: Yeah and for those who are curious about enrolling or participants who won't enjoy being more hands on we offer a lot of our resources just right on our homepage no account necessary, you can find an enrollment guide that covers sort of the step by step process of enrolling directly with us, as well as market insights, newsletters, fact sheets and literature and real participants also get access to probably one what I think is our greatest value add is the LGIP academies.

Wayne: The other benefit that we have with our service teams is our sales representatives that are canvassing each of the states so is there a boots on the ground they're working with our participants both in an in person fashion or virtual meeting fashion. There might be some service needs that arise during conversations where our teams can work with those participants to ensure that they receive the information that they're looking for in a timely manner.

Americo: And if you can't we get to those events we also have offer biannual webcast focus on each of the specific pools, treasury market minute videos like the ones you're seeing here today and then insights on our website.

Heather: Americo you just mentioned there's those value adds one of them being those LGIP academies can you elaborate on that feature a little bit for those who might not be as familiar that?

Americo: Of course so our LGIP academies are presented as an educational tool but I think they're a little bit more than that. Think of it more as sort of a pathway for you to really get the most out of you know your relationship with us. We provide 24/7 access to guided courses that go over many of the challenges and opportunities present in today's sort of business world. We believe that informed participants make empowered decisions.

Wayne: Within those Academy sites that we offer there's a great course library that's available for our participants some examples being financial literacy stress management for those in like a management type role there is how to be an ethical leader. We have the phishing and cyber security awareness courses, and that library of available courses is reviewed on an annual basis to see if any adjustments are needed based on the current market.

Heather: I've taken a couple of those courses myself and they were very valuable.

Americo: Yeah and the big one too to Wayne's point is that we have a new addition to our catalog called AI revolution looks at sort of the current and future impacts that artificial intelligence has to our economy.

Heather: So if I'm a participant Americo what is one piece of advice that you would want me to keep top of mind as I'm navigating my business day-to-day work?

Americo: I think that really touches back to cyber security. Our client services team tries our hardest to make things as easy as possible for our participants as far as servicing account goes but if there's something that our participants can do to help us is to remain vigilant for a lot of the bad actors and the fraudsters that sort of made a life for themselves in our digital economy.

Wayne: And to help with that our pool sites offer a financial fraud prevention page, and it offers a number of tips to be aware of when it comes to protecting your accounts. All of that information is found in our resources tab on our websites and another important note to share is that it's imperative that our participants protect their pin numbers, pin numbers you're getting into the wrong hands can certainly do damage that one doesn't want. So being aware of those situations and having that close relationship with our client service representatives ensures I'm strong relationships.

Heather: Wayne what is the best way to get in touch with the two of you with any questions or concerns or need help with anything as a participant?

Wayne: So our pools have toll free numbers that come to our teams the phone calls are answered immediately by our seasoned staff. There's also the contact us pages that are on our public websites. That information is delivered to us immediately and we return the same day response, so we ensure that any questions that are being asked of us are answered within the same day. I also encourage folks to review our quick reference guides available on our websites that provides other ways to contact us, provides our mailing address, fax numbers and a number of other resources available on our sites.

Americo: And for matters beyond the scope of the day-to-day or issues of high importance Wayne and I always like to make ourselves available you know for those needs so always ask for us by name or even e-mail us directly.

Heather: Perfect thank you Wayne thank you Americo we hope you found today's discussion to be very helpful. Please feel free to reach out to your pools representatives if you need help with anything and we really look forward to connecting with you at our next treasury market minute.