Metrics Man: BNY Mellon CIO Suresh Kumar








Hometown Boy Made Good
In 1997, the year Kumar was named CIO of DLJdirect, a decision was made to leverage all of the technology he’d helped create into its own revenue stream. A company called iNautix was created to sell that software to third parties, enabling DLJdirect to get it for free. One branch was placed in the south eastern coastal city of Chennai, India, and Kumar was made CEO. Today, it has 3,000 employees, some of whom have gone on to fill top roles at Pershing. Peetz has been on visits there with him, and says the adulation shown to him is that of “a hometown boy made good.”
DLJ was bought by Credit Suisse First Boston in 2000, but Pershing was spun off and acquired by BNY in 2003, which merged with Mellon Financial in 2007. During that time, Kumar was promoted to CIO of Pershing.
He oversaw the construction of NetXPro, the open architecture platform for managing brokerage and advisory business. Its latest iteration, NetX360, was built over 18 months from 2007 to 2009 after he and Mayer hobnobbed across the country asking registered investment advisors about their pain points. Pershing’s hallmark product is another example of how planning ahead allowed Kumar to layer, rather than replace, the firm’s technology.
“The idea of TAP in its infancy was you needed to build messaging between services,” Mayer says. “But instead of building a one-off, he stepped away and said, ‘I need to create a library of messages that can be used in any context.’ That’s how we’ve been able to deploy multiple devices over the years. That’s why we’re a leader in mobile today—because we have all the same infrastructure that just needs to morph itself to the devices that are available. The services I offer in NetX360, I also make available through an open architecture messaging layer. I can also make those services available through the mobile, in many cases in native mode, so I can really exploit the device. And that’s because we all have the same message connecting to the same services underneath. All I’m changing is the presentation layer. That was all the strategy that Suresh put in place many, many years ago that we’re still leveraging.”
BNY Mellon recently unveiled the third generation of its Lego-block architecture. The Xtreme development platform will centralize and streamline the innovation and deployment of internal applications, allowing the firm to take advantage of ideas in Big Data and virtualization. Long-term vision is a luxury reserved for those who have been at one institution as long as Kumar has.
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: https://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
Nasdaq looks to ramp up tokenized securities efforts
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman wants to see tokenized securities come to the US markets “in a staged process.”
Franklin Templeton’s great DeFi migration
TradFi’s money and DeFi’s tech will inevitably combine, says the asset manager’s futurist-in-residence.
S&P’s $1.8 billion buy, an FIA restructure, a tokenization craze, and more
The Waters Cooler: CAIS creates CAISey, BNY deploys EquiLend, and more in this week’s news roundup.
When it comes to cybersec, the walls of separation are too high
Waters Wrap: Anthony examines some recent statements made by prominent cybersecurity experts and why those words might ring hollow.
Larry Fink: ‘We need to be tokenizing all assets’
The asset manager is currently exploring tokenizing long-term investment products like iShares, with an eye on non-financial assets down the road.
Examining how adaptive intelligence can create resilient trading ecosystems
Researchers from IBM and Wipro explore how multi-agent LLMs and multi-modal trading agents can be used to build trading ecosystems that perform better under stress.
Waters Wavelength Ep. 335: Some tech talk...kinda
This week, Wei-Shen and Tony talk about some recent events making headlines.
Moody’s exploring blockchain’s impact on digital bond ratings
Blockchain and crypto were meant to eliminate conventional finance’s risks, but Risk Live North America panelists said such risks have not been reduced, and new ones have been introduced.