Major financial firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Transamerica will be sharing the story of their digital journey at the QA Financial forum New York in November 2018. This will be our third event at the Harvard Club of New York City.
Major financial firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Transamerica will be sharing the story of their digital journey at the QA Financial forum New York in November 2018. This will be our third event at the Harvard Club of New York City, and delegate places at this refined and convenient venue are strictly limited. This Chatham House Rule conference is designed to promote the sharing of information between heads of quality assurance and platform architecture at financial firms, as well as other key decision-makers and stakeholders in IT investment, such as operational risk managers and IT risk managers. As regulators around the world increase the detail of their scrutiny of the development of apps at banks, insurers and asset managers, our speakers will discuss the technical requirements of embedding compliance in the SDLC. Other key topics include machine learning for test automation and the testing and quality assurance of Blockchain platforms.
To find out more about sponsorship/delegate opportunities please contact Lawrence Bell — lawrence@qa-financial.com
Sundeep is a seasoned technologist and a strategic and delivery-focused development manager with immense experience in Financial Risk Management, Pricing, Analytics, Bond Valuations, Credit Products Risk Management (CDOs, credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs, etc.), Limits Management, Rules Based Risk Management, Credit Underwriting, Commercial Bank Operations (credit origination, credit analysis and approval, Early Warning, and Remedial), CCAR, Basel II and Basel III reporting, exotics, and OTC products. He is also experienced in designing, developing, and implementing trading systems for diverse financial products and services ranging from Equities, Equity Derivatives, Futures, Fixed Income, Algorithmic and Basket trading, and FX. Sundeep has in-depth business knowledge of market protocols, trading rules, credit processes, regulatory requirements, Monte Carlo simulation, Mathcad, pricing, and analytics of financial products. He has an M.B.A. in Finance and International business from NYU Stern School of Business and is a C.F.A. Charterholder. Sundeepalso holds a BTech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and a Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Polytechnic University of Brooklyn.
Ilya Lyubarsky is a Technology leader with over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has a demonstrated track record of delivering technology solutions including Electronic Trading Systems and Risk Management Systems for Equities, Fixed Income and Derivatives. With his passion for innovation Ilya brings a diverse set of expertise and experience ranging from business architecture, integration and application architecture, all aspects of the SDLC, and managing global teams to execute large-scale software development projects. Ilya holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from New York University.
Tatyana Kravtsiv is a technology professional and innovative leader who specializes in optimizing and transforming software development and quality assurance services. Tatyana has 20 years’ experience of project management, quality assurance and software change implementation across a range of technology platforms, products and businesses. She has managed large composite development processes for multi-stream programmes in complex, multi-stakeholder matrix-driven technology environments. In doing so, Tatyana has led the delivery of projects in outsourced environments, liaising with multiple business units, conflicting priorities and projects. She takes great pride in her personal commitment to ensuring delivery standards are continually sustained within internal teams and partner organizations. In all her roles, Tatyana has managed, motivated and delivered on technology commitments by implementing effective communication and engagement at all levels. She transformed several QA groups to become quality gate-keepers rather than testers, by building geographically diverse teams with a culture of inclusion, while identifying and developing future leaders. Tatyana is passionate about the software quality assurance, and accelerating technology quality and testing journey across organizations.
Justin Hunter, CEO and Founder of Hexawise, is recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the field of optimized test design. Prior to founding Hexawise, Justin earned an Accenture Global Innovation award for introducing methods of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of software testing. Justin has taught thousands of testers and business analysts on six continents how to implement more efficient and effective testing methods, and is dedicated to furthering the spread of better software test design practices to firms around the world.
François Ruchon is SVP – Head North America, Banking, Financial Services & Insurance at CAST, the leader in Software Intelligence. His focus is to assist CIOs of large BFSI organizations by providing insight on the tangible value and benefits of measuring software from a non-functional perspective, in an automated manner, and in broader terms, of measuring their application development and maintenance organization to reduce risk, cost and create greater velocity. He works at C-level with Banks, Financial Institutions and Insurance companies, whether in Digital Transformation, pre & post M&A, Lean IT or simply IT continuous improvement scenarios. Prior to his current role, he’s been Group CFO of CAST, General Manager of CAST France, Managing Director of CAST India. He holds a degree in Computer Science and an MBA from CASS University in London.
Mohan is a Technology executive with over 20 years of experience leading IT functions, and delivering change initiatives in the Insurance industry. Currently serving at AXA XL as Head of Application development - Corporate Systems, supporting Finance, Treasury, Tax, Actuarial, Human Resources, Marketing and Communication, Planning, Global sourcing, Workplace, Legal and Compliance functions. Mohan’s people focus includes developing future IT leaders and talent to ensure continued success aligning with AXA XL’s growth objectives. Assembling people with diverse talent and enabling them to become change agents is a model Mohan has practiced over the years. He credits his past success to a number of business and technology leaders he had the privilege to work with and learn from. He aspires to continue to learn new things from everyone who touches his life and contribute to make this world a better place - in any small way possible.
Kevin is AVP and Head of Software Quality Assurance at Privilege Underwriters for the past two year. He has more than twenty years' experience in the IT industry with the majority of that time in the QA field primarily in Pharma, Utility & Financial - Insurance. He is passionate about building quality software, continually evaluating new approaches and technologies and driving cost efficiency by leveraging automation, process improvement, continuous learning and QA optimization techniques.
Will Lukang joined UBS in April 2007. During his time with the firm, he's performed numerous roles in technology for the wealth management US business including development group manager and the head of QA and testing. Before joining UBS, Will was with Prudential Financial for 7 years, where he served as Vice President for Managed Account platform. Prior to joining Prudential, he spent 2 years with KPMG and has over 28 years of experience in information technology. Will earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting from University of Santo Tomas. He has a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in Information Decision and Technology Management from IONA College and a Master of Arts in Strategic Communication and Leadership from Seton Hall. He is also a certified speaker, coach and trainer from John Maxwell Team.
Ramkumar Ayyadurai is the Quality Assurance and Test Engineering Director for Equities at Citi. At Citi, his team is responsible for providing Quality Assurance and Engineering services for over 100+ applications globally. Ram is currently leading a multiyear Global QA transformation strategy around migrating away from archaic QA practices to a “Best in class” Test Engineering focused organization. His team is leading the charge around Enterprise Test Automation Framework, Virtualization, DevOps, Containerization, Cloud adoption within Quality Assurance/Test Engineering space. Ram has over 18 years of IT experience and majority of his career in Investment banking across banks including JP Morgan chase (UK), Merrill Lynch (US), Credit Suisse (US). Prior to Citi, Ram led the Quality Assurance function at Credit Suisse – Investment Banking division. During his tenure at Credit Suisse, he has established Industry award winning QA Engineering practices across Equities, Fixed Income, FX, Risk and Trading technologies IT.
Bala Mukund is a Director of Technology for Charles Schwab with over 15 years of experience in managing, designing, and building enterprise level applications ranging from finance, sales, marketing, and banking systems. In the current role, Bala is the Technology Director and Solutions Architect for the Intelligent Portfolios platform – which provides automated investment advice. Bala worked closely with the IP technology teams to establish best development and quality automation practices leading to improved quality and delivery. Prior to joining Charles Schwab in 2015, Bala was a Technology Director at Morningstar and VP at Nationwide, in Chicago.
Mike Schober is a Managing Director in Technology at Charles Schwab leading the software development and delivery of Schwab Intelligent Portfolios an innovative automated investing platform. Prior to Schwab he worked at large companies and startups with a personal driving force to deliver new and emerging technology solutions, including one of the first internet payment systems, an early one-click shopping experience, a first of its kind internet payment chip enabled credit card, and more. Mike has a passion for leading edge industry changing technology innovations and takes pride in delivering solutions that improve individual’s experiences and lives.
Yasar Sulaiman is the Head of Quality Assurance in Everest Reinsurance. He has more than 15 years of experience in the technology industry primarily in the Quality field. He has worked extensively in consulting serving variety of clients in Manufacturing, Oil&Gas, Automobile and Financial services. His experience spans across 3 continents and has built and managed global quality assurance teams. He is passionate about quality and loves new advances in technology.
Nearly 20 years experience in leading and managing software quality assurance teams. Oversaw and managed the quality assurance efforts for complex implantation such as, a U.S. equities exchange system, and complex global Buy and Sell side applications, including global trade order management system, crossing engines, US and European electronic trading system, interfaces to exchanges in Europe, Asia Pacific, and the US, and global back office clearing system. My team also certified the complex implementations of Sales Force and Micro Strategy’s BI systems, as well as Adobe content management implementation.
Jim Tomaney has 30 years of experience building, delivering, marketing and selling enterprise payments solutions and associated services for the transaction processing industry across the world. He has worked in a variety of senior roles delivering solutions for organisations including Barclays, ING, CIBC, Bank Of America, ABN AMRO & Vocalink. Following a career with ACI Worldwide, Wincor Nixdorf, Level Four Software and Barclays Bank, Jim ran his own consulting business, Q-ATM Ltd, for 7 years. Q-ATM clients included technology providers, banks, sourcing companies and transaction processors. In 2017, Q-ATM was acquired by RenovITe Technologies Inc.
Colin Wynd is the Senior Vice President Of Engineering at The Clearing House (TCH). Prior to this role, Colin was Head of Real-Time Payments Technology at TCH. TCH is designated a SIFU (a systemically important financial utility whose failure could pose a threat to the stability of the United States financial system). Real-Time Payments (RTP) is a 47x7 system and is the first new payments rail in the USA over the past 40 years and eliminated the “float” that occurs with existing payments systems. Colin is responsible for all aspects of the development and technology as RTP is rolled out to over 9,000 FI’s in the US. Previously Colin was VP & Head of Common Services at the Federal Reserve Bank of new York and was responsible for changing how the Federal Reserve System manages and builds solutions including enterprise data management and mission critical applications. Colin was the senior technology executive responsible for engineering secure products and services for clients across the Federal Reserve System, Board Of Governors, US Treasury and Financial Institutions including FedAI (a ML/NLP service); FedEAGLE (a Data Analytics product), System Tooling Service (a DevSecOps platform for building and deploying applications) and System ReUse Service (a set of reusable libraries and microservices that make up ~50% of all production code for FRBNY). Colin started his career with Hewlett-Packard in the UK before joining Cendant, a Fortune 100 company in the Travel, Hospitality and Real-Estate industries as VP Enterprise Applications. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, Colin co-founded, TRG, a boutique management consulting company that included Cigna and Covance as clients. Colin has a B.S. in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow.
Alexandra Shulman-Peleg, Ph.D, is a Senior Vice President leading Citi's Cloud platforms security engineering as well as the global information security Cloud program. In her role she is responsible for the Cloud and Container security solutions, processes and architectures. She previously led Cloud security at IBM Cyber Security Center of Excellence and IBM Haifa Research Labs. She holds Ph.D., M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University, having multiple patents and more than 30 scientific publications having thousands of citations.
Cindy is SVP, Cloud Risk, Security and Regulatory Governance at Bank of America in New York City. She is responsible for leading the development and implementation of strategies designed to ensure that supervisory controls are in place to be adherent to a laws, rules, regulations, policies and standards globally, for all 3rd and 4 th party cloud service provider scenarios, including SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. She is responsible for building models to measure the business risk of moving regulated data off premise. Cindy works closely with senior executives, Compliance, Operational Risk, Audit and external regulators. Previously, Cindy was the Security, Compliance and Risk Program Director for IBM's "Watson Platform for Health" PaaS cloud. She led a global organization of cybersecurity, compliance, risk and SW development professionals to build secure and HIPAA regulatory compliant software. She was responsible for defining the security and compliance requirements, performing vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, managing regulatory compliance (HIPAA) audit controls testing and identifying security and regulatory risks for senior executive review. Cindy performed a similar role for an IBM Analytics Cloud before joining IBM Watson Health.
Anjali is an experienced Practice Owner with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. She is responsible for business development and delivery oversight (competency level oversight and thought leadership) for Digital Assurance Services (DevSecOps / Quality Engineering) for the Americas Region. Anjali is a seasoned professional, skilled in Pre-Sales, Process Consulting, Consulting for DevOps and Agile Transformation initiatives, Automated Delivery Pipeline (CI/CD/CT) framework design and set-up for large enterprises, Quality Engineering Community of Practice (COP) set-up, DevSecOps Program Management and Governance, Agile QA and DevQAOps practices, with an in-depth understanding of mapping of various Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodologies with lifecycle QA processes, Integrated Lifecycle Automation experience along with AI, MI and Predictive Analytics techniques and RPA. She is experienced in consulting for automation framework/tool selection and ROI analysis.
Michael Cooper is the leads Quality Engineering, CI/CD Adoption, Test Automation and Tools, Performance Testing, Static Security Scanning, Capacity Planning for the Workplace Division of Transamerica. He is responsible for implementing, developing, and managing the quality engineering strategy and practices to support quality and timely delivery of Transamerica software applications. Michael is a strong advocate for continuous process improvement, working to establish an effective quality management culture across Transamerica. An accomplished leader in the fields of Quality Engineering and Testing, Michael has held key quality governance positions at companies across multiple business and technology areas. Prior to joining Transamerica, Michael served as Chief Quality Officer at W3 and QA and Testing Evangelist with HP Software. Before joining HP, Michael was Head of Enterprise Quality Management (EQM) at T-Mobile USA, reporting directly to the CIO, where he led a team of more than 400 QA professionals. Michael also held Senior QA and Testing leadership positions at FICO, Inovis, and Equifax. Michael has presented at conferences around the globe including SAP Saphire/TechED, HP Discover, Amdocs InTouch, QAI Quest, STAR East/West/ EuroSTAR, Quality Jam, The New York QA Financial Forum, and many more. He participates in the QA community as a regular contributor to a number of quality publications and blogs, and is recognized for his work to help shape the future of QE and Testing. Michael graduated with honors from the University of Florida, studied abroad at the University of Cambridge, and earned an MBA from Georgia State University. He is also a Certified Scrum Master. Michael has served as President of the Atlanta Quality Assurance Association. He has recently relocated to the Denver, CO area, and is looking forward to playing an active role in the local QA community.
Norman Niemer is the Chief Data Scientist within UBS Asset Management's Quant & Data Science (QED) team where he delivers data-driven investment insights. He is also responsible for both the business as well as technical aspects of multiple innovation projects that augment human decision makers with machine intelligence. Prior to UBS Asset Management, Norman led the data science efforts at UBS O'Connor, worked as an investment analyst at Caxton Associates and Morgan Stanley and even founded a tech company in high school. Outside of investment management, he has led teams that built data- and AI-based products that won several high profile hackathons including Techcrunch NY, Fintech NY and Mastercard Masters of Code NY. He holds a MS Financial Engineering from Columbia University and a BS in Banking and Finance from Cass Business School (London).
Throughout his career Byron has placed technology in the service of organizational change. His passion is helping technologists deliver greater value to their organizations and constituents. He’s led successful internal start-ups for The University of Wisconsin, Digital Equipment Corporation, Berbee Information Networks, and others. His leadership has enhanced the effectiveness of technology for Boeing, Toys R Us, General Motors, Nielsen and the American Kidney Foundation of Wisconsin. Byron is currently part of the I/S Quality Engineering team at American Family Insurance in Madison, Wisconsin.
Jason Jerina has been a technology leader for over 20 years. He's led Software Development, Release Management, Business Analyst, Application Support and Quality Assurance organizations in a few industries. Jason grew up in technology as a hands on tester. Early in his career he progressed from a QA tester, to Quality Assurance Lead, to then a Quality Assurance Manager. After his career progression into management, he soon became a senior leader of development teams, production support, release management and business analyst teams. His passion has always been for Quality Assurance, Technology Leadership, and Production Support. Most of his 20+ years have been spent in Financial Services firms, ranging from Banking, Capital Markets, and now Insurance. His passion for Technology Leadership and Quality Assurance have enabled him to drive innovation with his teams in areas such as test automation, performance engineering, white box testing, and newer efficient approaches to Acceptance Testing. His approach is to encourage innovative ideas from his teams, encourage them to try them, and support them in their efforts to deliver.
Thomas is presently serving as a Senior Application Architect for Huntington National Bank. He is responsible for the conversion from manual testing to Ruby/Cucumber automation for the entire enterprise. Originally accountable for the development and maintenance of automation frameworks for Digital Channels, he now leads the automation effort for 73 applications across Huntington that encompass testing, metrics & reporting, data, and environment. Thomas leads the training & technical support for both on-site employees as well as offshore contractors. He has developed test strategies and assisted in coordination between multiple lines to improve delivery effectiveness & resource flexibility.
Matt is a senior operations leader specializing in financial and compliance management for institutional investors focused on both public and private markets. He currently serves as COO and CCO of Edgehill Endowment Partners, an Outsourced Chief Investment Officer managing portfolios for endowment and foundation clients. Matt previously was the COO at Bryn Mawr Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund, and worked in various management roles for the Vanguard Group. He has many years of experience working with risk management, trading, performance reporting and CRM applications, and appreciates sharing insights on the technology implementation process with peers.
Chris currently serves as the Assistant Director of Anti-Money Laundering at Valley National Bank where, among other duties, he oversees the Quality Assurance program. Prior to his current role, Chris was brought on board at Valley to directly manage and expand QA of the BSA program. Functioning independently of the BSA Compliance team, reporting directly to Valley’s Deputy Chief Risk Officer, Chris was given a broad mandate to ensure the proper and efficient functioning of the BSA program, and expanded the QA program beyond investigative reviews to include all aspects of the BSA program. Before managing the QA program at Valley, Chris spent eight years at Gain Capital Group, LLC, where he served as AML Compliance Officer.
Murtaza is an accomplished FinTech Leader with more than 13 years of management experience, offering expertise in process redesign, financial technology solutions, and risk & regulatory reform to large investment banks and global financial institutions such as World Bank and Federal Reserve Board. Murtaza possesses strong leadership skills for highly complex organizations and has a successful track record for directing large change management initiatives, revamping business processes, and increasing efficiency for respected clients in the Financial Services industry. He holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees in Management Information Systems from the University of Maryland and an Executive MBA degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Michael joined Wells Fargo in July 2021 and is currently the Head of Testing Enablement for the Bank. Reporting to the Global Head of Chief Technology Office Enterprise Application Services, Michael’s organization partners across Technology to ensure its Testing Products and Services will support the engineering community to release quality software through agile delivery across Wells Fargo’s suite of applications, while reducing the Cost of Quality through Automation, Performance Engineering and Continuous Testing. Michael is a Seasoned IT leader in the Financial Services industry with over 35+ years’ experience successfully leading and transforming global Development and QA/QE teams. He is an exceptional people manager with a track record of motivating, mentoring and leading large, globally diverse teams through times of extensive change. Michael is a career-long champion of diversity with a passion for driving an inclusive workforce and an advocate for human capital. He currently holds the lead role for Inclusion as part of the LQBTQ+ Segment of Wells Fargo’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Initiative, helping to promote inclusive environments in which all employees are heard and differences are celebrated and respected. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Michael was employed by Refinitiv’s Division of London Stock Exchange Group, where he was the Head of Product Engineering Test Delivery. Reporting directly to the Head of Quality Engineering for Refinitiv, this role played an integral part in ensuring the Firm’s Quality Position and Production Stability.
A lack of effective automated testing limits many firms in the DevOps implementation. Poor test data quality and an inability to test components independently of each other compound the challenge of “shifting left”. Sundeep Kumar will explain how by employing service virtualization, production data sand boxing and machine learning techniques, we can enable the full potential of DevOps implementation and achieve true quality.
Charles Schwab transformed the quality assurance process for its Intelligent Portfolios robo-advisory platform product team by adopting a “shift left” continuous testing approach and validating quality through automation. In this presentation, Michael Schober and Bala Mukund will detail how they led this transformation of Schwab’s Wealth Management Technology team with the help of automated continuous testing via Sauce Labs. Delegates will learn how to streamline the software development process, practical processes for implementing continuous testing and how to reshape DevOps culture to better meet customer needs and expectations.
The number one challenge in software quality assurance for financial firms? Many would say it is embedding regulatory compliance while automating and accelerating delivery. Michael Cooper will demonstrate how Transamerica has managed that transition whilst explaining how financial firms, large and small, can develop a "regulation strategic" quality assurance practice that combines tools for agile testing and business-driven development (BDD) that meet the regulatory challenge.
Everest Re Group is undertaking a rapid transformation, not least in its technology group - Everest Technology Services - which provides support to its insurance and reinsurance businesses. In this session, Yasar Sulaiman will detail how Everest has transformed software quality assurance at the enterprise level and how his team met the challenges they faced across multiple business divisions, dealing with complex new tools and an urgency for innovation while optimizing cost and resources. The QA practice not only had to keep up but also lead the way in many areas.
Today’s market environment demands more changes and more testing than ever before. While core banking systems such as Temenos T24 and Oracle FLEXCUBE offer banks the opportunity to acquire a single off-the-shelf platform, comprehensive end-to-end testing in this context creates a major challenge, as every function must be linked to that platform. Renovite Technologies’ Jim Tomaney will introduce the session with an overview of how this challenge can be met, followed by a discussion that will compare the experience of two leading financial firms.
As blockchain technologies become more widely used by financial firms, questions remain over improving security and testing for distributed ledger platforms. How do firms test smart contracts? Our experts will discuss emerging industry standards for testing, and how readiness for test automation can be embedded in contract and platform construction.