Metrics Man: BNY Mellon CIO Suresh Kumar
Measuring Success
Today, Kumar oversees a technology operation that employs 13,000 and spends $2 billion annually. He has been on the Sifma technology management committee and chaired the Finra technology advisory committee. He reads voraciously, follows a few thousand Twitter accounts on his Apple iPad Flipboard, and has a busy RSS feed on Google to boot. It is crowdsourcing knowledge, he says, and it’s all for free.
His management style is described as metrics-driven, bordering on metrics-obsessed. Want to make a business case to him? Come with numbers or don’t come at all. His favorite saying is, “How do you measure success?” It’s not enough to ask people if they use NetX360. He needs to measure adoption rates, and usage amounts, and what screens customers go from and to, and how much time they spend on each. He even has his assistant go through his old calendars and measure how much time he spent on each task so he can delegate accordingly. “If you can get through Suresh,” says Mayer, “the rest is easy.”
A love of metrics should serve him well in his ongoing project to tame the bank’s massive amounts of unstructured data. There is further insight to be mined about how and when customers use his technology that just hasn’t been discovered yet. He wants to chart bad user experiences, because when an institution is conducting tens of thousands of transactions a day, a 99.7 success rate that used to leave a bank smiling still produces thousands of flubbed transactions. Paradoxically, he’s also working on making structured data available to customers through an unstructured interface. People prefer the unstructured search box of Google, for instance, over a page with dozens of dropdown input menus.
Other current projects include collateral visibility and optimization, and a continuation of the tri-party reform platform that got him noticed in 2011.
“When I think about how old this institution is, and how many things it has seen and survived, it’s very important to me that I have something to do with continuing the tradition,” he says.
In his spare time, he rides with a group of hardcore cyclists, putting 50 to 100 miles on his bike in a weekend around the roads of New Jersey. It’s better than the gym, which he hates, because he can focus on what’s immediately in front of him, and on keeping up with the pack. Surrounding yourself with strong people, he says, helps you to be stronger.
Karen Peetz feels the same way.
Fundamental Data: Suresh Kumar
Name and Title: Suresh Kumar, senior executive vice president and CIO, BNY Mellon
Hometown: Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Current Residence: New Jersey
BNY Mellon Assets (as of December 2012): $1.4 trillion under management, $26.2 trillion under custody
Size of IT Department: 13,000
Education: BS in technology, Indian Institute of Technology at Madras; MBA, Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad; MS in computer science, New York Institute of Technology
Hobbies: Bicycling and reading
Favorite Book: The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention by William Rosen
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (point 2.4), printing is limited to a single copy.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. As outlined in our terms and conditions, https://www.infopro-digital.com/terms-and-conditions/subscriptions/ (clause 2.4), an Authorised User may only make one copy of the materials for their own personal use. You must also comply with the restrictions in clause 2.5.
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Emerging Technologies
Moral models: The ethics of data management
The IMD Wrap: You may be managing data efficiently, but are you managing it ethically? And is that something you should be concerned about? Yes, says Max, you should.
The Waters Cooler: No Singapore Slings
Market microstructure, a prediction exchange, ETF and T+1 woes—does it get any more exciting than this?
Waters Wavelength Ep. 289: WFIC at Y’all Street
Nyela joins to talk about her time at WFIC this year.
Managing cloud costs comes down to putting controls in place
With cloud usage now pervasive throughout the capital markets, firms are focusing on stemming unintended costs.
Pledging the ledger: At the tipping point of blockchain networks that work together
Interest in distributed ledger technology (DLT) is gaining momentum, sparking lively debates among proponents and detractors. The key question is: which version of DLT is suitable for advancing financial markets—public/permissionless or private/permissioned networks?
The Waters Cooler: What is going on?
Is it weird that Euronext bought Substantive? It’s weird, right? Plus WFIC, tick sizes, Microsoft and BlackRock want more datacenters for some reason, and, of course, AI. What does it all mean?
Waters Wavelength Ep. 288: Media’s changing landscape
Wei-Shen and Tony discuss ways to improve the podcast going forward.
Fidelity’s quantum exploration unites theory and proof
The asset manager and Amazon have teamed to put a quantum twist on machine learning.