CIO / CTO / Program Manager

Reported to the CTO Trading and member of senior management, led all the FICC (Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities) technology & digital strategy, development, and operations teams for Capital Markets & Treasury, incl. Forex Front & Middle office. Responsible for the development and delivery of a world class FX Trading platform. Ensured that the business technology strategy and roadmaps were developed to enable business to achieve its objectives while following regulatory requirements. Achieved the objective to become the best e-FX platform in Scandinavia. Built, led, mentored, and developed 8 talented teams totalling more than 90 people, distributed across 6 countries, and completely re-build a state-of-the-art, highly available FX Technology platform.

Implemented several innovative service offerings like Customer FX Algo suite, AutoFX and APIs.

Responsibilities:

• Stakeholder management on C-level
• Own the technology vision and strategy, Operations, Software Development, Testing, Infrastructure
• Responsible for all Front & Middle Office FX Systems (Markets + Treasury) plus payments infrastructure, more than 30 Business Critical applications incl. In-house developed and 3rd Party: Broadway Technology, Barracuda FX, D3, ION, WallStreetFX, Murex, Refinitiv Electronic Trading…..
• Full FX trade lifecycle (Pre-, Trade & Post-Trade), cross-border and payment flows.
• Programs, budgets, innovation, Vendor Management & Fin-Tech collaborations
• Ensured that all the platforms were designed to be highly resilient, flexible, scalable, performant, and secure.
• Responsible for Digital Channels, APIs (FIX Protocol, REST, WebSocket, Open Banking), Liquidity Aggregators, Price Generation & Streaming (RfS & RfQ) Trade / Order Management, Execution and Distribution, Algo Engines, Algo Execution, Real-time Position, Liquidity & Risk Management, Auto hedging, post-trade workflows, Cash Management, Payments, Collateral, Positions, Risk, Settlements, RPA, Internal Interfaces & Web Portals ……
• Products: FX Spot, NDFs, SWAPs, Time Options, MM…
• Regulatory compliance (MiFID2, Global Code, PSD2…)

Major Achievements (extract):

• Rebuilt teams that were completely dismantled at arrival, scaled up the teams massively, and created several high-performing agile teams.
• First in the bank to be approved for intra-day releases (at arrival: 1 release every 2-3 months) on business-critical systems by building a DevOps team and transforming the division to agile (SAFe).
• Introduced: CI/CD, Containers, Microservices & Hybrid + Private Cloud
• Successfully moved/implemented several key low-latency components to Hybrid & Private Cloud.
• Factor 5 increase in availability of the platform in 9 months by introducing "Design for Failure" and personally investing huge effort into finding and resolving root causes.
• 8 times shorter issue investigation times by Implementing (hands-on) Splunk.
• Saved 20% of infrastructure costs while doing a total refresh of Hardware (140 Servers) and new Datacentre.
• Reduced costs by 1M€/year and increased functionality by successfully replacing OMS in 6 months.
• Decommissioned 20 legacy software components.
• Successfully replaced 30 legacy low-latency components with new in-house developed microservices.
• In only 7 months successfully developed (greenfield) and introduced the first Customer FX Algo Execution Offering in Scandinavia ([link] starting the project years after main competitor and going live during the same month giving the bank an additional revenue stream.
• Driver of Innovation culture: First in Scandinavia to offer FX APIs via Open Banking (PSD2), Developed "AutoFX" for Corporate Cash Management (winner of innovation award).

Co-Founded the FinTech Lykke to build a global crypto exchange utilising DLT (distributed ledger technology) & Blockchain that would offer the possibility of issuing and trading anything as a digital asset.

Reported directly to the Board of the FinTech, Led the development of a product line offering Front, Middle and Back-office Systems as well as professional services around electronic Trading Systems, stock exchange and Broker connectivity.

Built, led, and mentored the software development and professional services / consulting teams. Joint ventures and strategic partnerships including FIS Front Arena, Ullink and Cameron FIX.

Provided Professional Services and Consultancy at various Swiss Banks for:

• Our own products (Advanced Integrations)
• FIS Front Arena
• Trade and Order Management Systems, Market Connectivity, FIX Protocol
• Due Diligence, M&As, RFPs

Product Owner for all products IT Infrastructure, Network Design, Technical architecture Led the development of equities trading solutions: Service bus (SOA) for the Front to back integration of financial systems; Complex Event Processing; Global order monitor; Connectors for Data, Back, Middle and Front office systems; OMS; EMS; Internal market for systematic internalization.

Major Achievements (@customers):

• Successful Greenfield implementation of the biggest FIS Front Arena (Equities) system of its time.
• Implemented a systematic internalization solution for equities (AIMS/AMAS)
• Re-designed the complete trade-order management system for one of the biggest Swiss Bank.
• Re-designed the Equities Trading Technology and RFP/vendor selection for Tier-2 Swiss Bank
• Merged 2 Equities Trading Platforms due to a bank merger.
• Designed and built a lake-water cooled Datacentre, optimized for VMware Virtualization.

Project Manager and researcher at the nuclear research plant of the European Commission at ESTI (European Solar Test Institute) and ISIS (Institute for Systems, Informatics and Safety).

Reported directly to the CEO and part of the Executive Management, Led the establishment of a new Corporate IT team from inception, eventually assuming responsibility for e-Trading Technology, unifying the entire IT operations of the Bank under a tight timeline.

Successfully led, initiated, and managed an extremely challenging list of concurrent and correlated programs to build the complete Information Technology of the bank from the ground up and under extreme time pressure.

Monthly FX volume of > 60 billion CHF

Responsibilities:

• Masterminded the company's digital solutions, trading technologies and guaranteed the delivery of state-of-the-art applications as well as to manage and coordinate deliveries with external providers.
• Responsible for all aspects of Trading Technology and Corporate IT.
• Identify and develop a global technology strategy for all solutions and projects needed as part of the overall corporate strategy. Define the platform Roadmap, plan, and software lifecycle.
• Led the support, operations, infrastructure, and development teams.
• Designed and established projects and implementation plans, progress reports and recommendations for improvement of processes, definition of PMLC & SDLC
• Assured that technology infrastructure, applications, security, and the related processes where fit for purpose, define the technology stack.
• Created and proposed outsourcing strategies, RFQs, selection and management of vendors / providers, contracts, agreements, SLA's, Vendor relationships.
• Management of Prime Broker and Liquidity providers, Liquidity Management, and exposure monitoring / automatic hedging.

Major Achievements:

• Scaled up, trained, and led the team from 2 to 70 people in 1 year to accommodate the banks expansion.
• Built and maintained a stable FX environment for >60'000 Clients (across the globe) and >240'000 FX tx / day.
• 30% Increase of profits by developing a real-time Exposure & Risk management system for FX and CFDs.
• Increased Liquidity providers from 4 to 16, Introduced a 2nd Prime Broker, introduced CFDs.
• Introduced an automated FX Liquidity management system.
• Introduced a mobile trading app as well as Currenex & Integral as additional trading platforms.
• Developed FIX Protocol & RESTfull connectivity APIs and introduced Customer FIX Post-trade reporting.
• Developed a SOA platform for the real time integration of all trading platforms (4), Liquidity providers (16), Core Banking system, Exposure Monitoring, CRM & ECM, Risk Management, Reporting…
• Successfully Implemented a Core Banking System (FIS Ambit) from scratch in record time (<1 year)!
• Introduced: Online Banking solution, CRM, OMS, SWIFT, KYC, ESB, MIS, MT4, RPA…
• Actively supported the process of obtaining a Swiss Banking license making MIG the First Forex broker to have obtained one by FINMA as well as a Securities Dealers License.