Engagement Portfolio
Variable Annuity (VA) Portfolio Modelling & Hedging platform
A market leading Dutch insurance firm needed to quantify the risk of its multi-billion asset portfolio and significantly mitigate significant daily fluctuations in its valuation in order to focus on its core business.
From gathering requirements from multiple key stakeholder groups to building up the team, infrastructure (distributed cloud servers hosting CUDA based calculation engines, Azure SB) & processes and ultimately managing the project not just until the software platform itself was live but all the way to post-release adoption and support, this was an exciting opportunity that left something long lasting that is still in use today
Growing at an extremely rapid pace is challenging enough without taking into account the growing technological needs of an organization. Once a certain level of complexity is reached, hiring an IT Expert to take care of everything no longer suffices.
In this role, the key to success was to create not only an efficient IT function that is close to the business at all times, but to ensure that it has the means to continuously improve alongside the needs of the business, spanning everything from infrastructure, operations and even application support of offices across the globe
Establish IT Support & Operations function
As a scale up, this firm had accumulated various elements of physical and digital infrastructure that were hosted at an Equinix datacenter. This twelve month project was executed in two phases. First, an as-is migration moved all components that could be moved to Azure in a lift and shift fashion.
The second phase involved analyzing each component and re-designing it in an Azure native way that also took the future business needs into account. Changes that were implemented in that phase included a shift from a traditional fileshare to Sharepoint and subsequent company-wide training and a complete overhaul of Identity & Access Management to ensure least privilege access and mature operational processes
Datacenter to Cloud Migration
Algorithmic Trading Platform
In this start-up company, the main challenge was twofold. First, finding the most effective infrastructure to speed up the time to market and second, move the Python prototype algorithm into a production-grade service that could run 24/7 with minimal intervention.
As a start-up, cost and simplicity were of the essence, which required a complete rethink of not only how the algorithm was designed, but also active monitoring, a solid testing framework and a set of mature, effective yet low overhead processes that defined the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
An Amsterdam based firm that’s heavily reliant on sales over the telephone used landlines and desk phones as part of its rise to success. Once the Covid epidemic started, sales teams were affected the most and needed an urgent transition to VoIP.
In a matter of a few weeks, physical call managers were transitioned to cloud-based equivalents and all numbers migrated to MS Teams Calling and the whole staff trained remotely on the new way of working. Furthermore, regulatory requirements that added an element of complexity were addressed and the new solution significantly improved regulatory compliance.
Transition from Physical to VoIP calling
IT Strategy & Operating model
Acknowledging the rapid shift to technology-driven revenue generation in its sector, a well established High Frequency Trading house based in the Netherlands re-structured the organisation from solely trading focused to Trading, Technology and Research.
Heading the Technology & Operations branch, determining the as is situation as well as drafting and implementing the strategic roadmap for the years to come was the core deliverable. Moreover, building up the team and establishing processes, KPIs and personal objectives that contributed to the IT Strategy that subsequently succeeded in achieving the firms short and long-term goals through advancements in people, process and technology simultaneously.
And many more!