AFTAs 2018: Best Technology Executive, Sell Side—Beatriz Martín, UBS Investment Bank

Beatriz Martín, who featured on the cover of the April 2018 issue of Waters, is this year’s best sell-side technology executive, joining past winners, Jodi Richard (US Bank), Oliver Bussmann (UBS), Tim Wood (FBR & Co.), Edwin Marcial (Intercontinental Exchange), Steve Ellis (Wells Fargo) and Bob Greifeld (Nasdaq).  

Born and raised in Madrid, Martín started her capital markets career as a graduate trainee at Deutsche Bank in 1996. From 1996 to 2004 she held a number of roles in structuring and trading at the German bank in its London and Frankfurt offices. From 2004 to 2009 she was managing director and head of Iberia fixed-income sales, having been promoted from the role of executive director in 2007. After her Deutsche tenure, she joined Morgan Stanley as head of European fixed-income bank solutions and was a member of its interest-rate and credit operating committees from 2009 to 2011, before moving to UBS in November 2012 as chief of staff under the wing of then-CEO, Andrea Orcel. Three years later, Martín was installed as the investment bank’s global chief operating officer, although it was Orcel’s move to Santander in September this year that led to her highest profile role to date: CEO for the UK. “Having held the position of UK COO for three years, the transition to the CEO role was probably smoother than if I had come from the outside,” Martín explains. “That being said, the UK at the moment is going through significant political and regulatory changes, which by definition, presents some very real challenges for our UK business. Fortunately, with this position comes the opportunity to continue working with large numbers of dynamic and driven people, which stands our business in good stead regardless of the environment.”   

Martín cites a number of technology milestones that the investment bank has achieved during the course of 2018, chief among which is its UBS Flow toolchain. “This provides a continuous delivery pipeline from source code management through to automated build, test and deployment, as well as having a huge impact on how deployment is run, speeding up our risk-managed adoption of new technologies,” she explains. 

Other key developments Martín mentions include the firm’s relationship with Microsoft Azure and the creation of UBS’ Cloud Business Office, which will change the way the bank delivers technology and its ability to collaborate internally. “We have also set up the IB Innovation Lab and delivered the first successful POC in 2018,” she says.As for 2019, Martín has three primary objectives: to develop the firm’s cloud-native digital solutions on Microsoft Azure; to capitalize on its collaboration with industry peers and fintech partners around smart contracts and communications; and increase the use of container-based technologies (Dockers and Kubernetes) to isolate applications from infrastructure dependency.”