The purpose of the ISITC EUROPE Advisory Board is to be the “oracle” for the industry. To identify and provide insights on issues, which ISITC EUROPE can address and incorporate into its programmes. It comprises of an invited group of senior industry professionals from across the industry covering buy/Sell side organisations, who bring a depth of knowledge and experience to provide the route map for the direction and focus of ISITC EUROPE’s activities. It also provides the opportunity for collaboration with colleagues to initiate innovation and change in all aspects of how the community services its stakeholders.
This is a voluntary role, which requires attendance of 4 scheduled advisory board meetings a year, occasional consultation by the administration board and support of ISITC EUROPE activities. The administrative board along with its support services will organise the programmes.
Advisory Board
Prior to assuming the role of Global Head of Portfolio Operations in 2016, Rob led the EMEA Portfolio Services team since 2013 consisting of teams in London and Frankfurt to provide portfolio operations, security pricing, corporate actions and security master data management services to the EMEA business.
Rob has been with Invesco since 1996 and has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry. During his time with Invesco, Rob has fulfilled a number of leadership roles within the Investment Services group, including Fund Accounting, Data Management, and Trade Support.
Rob has successfully delivered many key initiatives at Invesco including taking leading roles in the custody migration of the UCITS fund range, conversion of unit trusts to ICVC’s fund structures and leading the integration of a number of corporate acquisitions/mergers from an operational perspective, most recently the Oppenheimer integration in 2019. Rob also managed the outsourcing of derivatives processing to GlobeOp and has also implemented a robust unquoted security valuation and governance process and structure in the EMEA region.
Prior to joining Invesco, Rob worked at Prudential Fund Managers Limited and is a holder of the Investment Management Certificate (IMC).
Paul Symons is Group Chief of Staff for Euroclear SA/NV, providing advice and support to the Euroclear SA/NV Chief Executive and the Euroclear SA/NV Management Committee. He was appointed to this role on 1 September 2020.
From 2018-2020, Mr Symons was the Head of the Euroclear SA/NV Corporate Secretariat Division and Secretary to the Euroclear SA/NV Board of Directors.
From 2002 – 2018, Mr Symons was Group Head of Government Relations at Euroclear, responsible for managing Euroclear’s relationships with those stakeholders who influenced the regulatory and political context in which Euroclear operated.
He has been a board member of the European Central Securities Depositories Association (ECSDA) and chaired the Association’s Policy Group until March 2018. He has also been a member of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Post-Trade Consultative Group, and a variety of other European post-trade Committees.
Mr Symons joined Euroclear in 2002, following the merger with CRESTCo (now Euroclear UK & Ireland), the central securities depository for UK and Irish securities.
Previously, Mr Symons spent seven years at the Bank of England in a variety of roles.
Rob has over 25 years’ experience in the running and acquisition of front-office businesses lines and in the commercialisation of global core operations of Investment banks, broker dealers and investor service business lines, including Bank of America, Cantor Fitzgerald/BGC, Citi and Deutsche Bank. He was instrumental in the creation of the first major European outsourcing investment banking global back office whilst at Accenture (Accenture Post Trade Services).
He has written and spoken on many topics surrounding the post-trading landscape and its implications to cost containment, transformation and inclusion of FinTech. He also advises clients with respect to regulatory understanding and compliance. Rob currently sits on the Board of the AFME Post Trade division, is a Director of ISITC Europe and sits on the Deutsche Borse (Eurex) FICC Board Advisory Committee.
Charifa El Otmani is part of the Capital Markets Strategy team at SWIFT, responsible for defining and driving the company vision to enable the community benefit from Smarter Securities services onto the platform and also in charge of the FX segment. Prior this role, she was Head of Global Payments Innovation (gpi) EMEA, leading efforts to establish gpi as the new norm for cross-border payments. Charifa has been with SWIFT since 15 years, and held a variety of roles since starting off in Standards on Investment Funds, before being assigned to the TARGET2-Securities project, detached to the European Central Bank, then ISO 20022 industry initiatives (JASDEC, DTCC). She used to be Business and Market Manager for Treasury Markets and the Securities Market Infrastructures segment. Charifa is part of the Strategy group since 2019. Prior to joining SWIFT, she worked at The Bank of New York Mellon, as Project Manager for the Custody business, before moving to Accenture to drive the securities platform consolidation project of BNP Paribas entities. Charifa holds a Master degree in Financial Markets, specialised in the management of market operations (back and middle-office activities), from Université Lumière Lyon II, in France.
Richard joined Bloomberg in September 2015 in an industry and regulatory relations role in Global Data. This role includes advocacy for Bloomberg’s Open Symbology initiatives, covering instrument and entity identifiers. Richard also undertakes industry and regulatory outreach on the data aspects of Bloomberg’s services related to regulatory driven initiatives.
Prior to joining Bloomberg, Richard spent 20 years with the financial messaging and standards body – SWIFT, where he held a variety of roles in sales and marketing. He led initiatives with EU and other regulators to raise awareness of the operational impacts of regulation, including strengthening the regulatory recognition of financial messaging and reference data standards. This involved a particular focus on the promotion of the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard to EU regulatory bodies. Pre SWIFT Richard held product management roles with a leading global custodian for four years, and before that with the London Stock Exchange.
Matt Johnson currently works for the DTCC within the European Product Management Team with additional Industry Relations responsibilities. Matt has been with the DTCC for over six years and has been focused on client relationship management, trade association relationships and industry & infrastructure engagement.
Prior to DTCC, Matt’s background was in Investment Banking, where he had numerous operational roles covering cross product client services & relationship management across cash securities, FX and OTC Clearing
Frank Reardon is Head of Investment Administration at Wealth Management company JM Finn.
He is responsible for operations and sits on the following committees : Transaction reporting, CASS Oversight, Risk, Operations committee.
He is also a Director of the firms UCITS Funds managed out of Luxembourg.
Prior to joining JM Finn, Frank held senior roles at Citibank Private Bank and Goldman Sachs.He has also worked for the Government in the pension investment area..