CBR Transaction Banking Dining Club

We invite you to a sumptuous evening at a quintessentially British venue. Oozing historical intrigue and timeless elegance and beauty, Vintners' Hall is one of London's longest standings architectural delights steeped in the history of the City, and the import and sale of wine.

Major changes are afoot in the core systems that run the transaction services at the heart of banks and the securities industry. It's the IT equivalent of open heart surgery. For many financial institutions, such programmes represent the biggest overhaul of core systems in twenty or even thirty years.

Driven by a desire to cut costs and mitigate risks, standardise platforms and move to a more flexible and efficient infrastructure, these investments in change could not get much more costly or complex. Research by IBM suggests that programmes initially envisaged to take four to five years, can end up taking ten or more.

That's a huge burden for organisations that are facing a barrage of new regulations and stiffer competition. At the same time, programmes carry high risks of their own: cost and time over-runs, failure to sustain the right level of business buy-in, and the risk that what's finally delivered is as complex and unwieldy as what was replaced.

Attend this CBR Dining Club to hear from IBM about the implications of adopting particular approaches to architecting and deploying new global platforms; from a financial services analyst about whether any industry orthodoxy is emerging; and from a major banking client on what the critical success factors might be for such major investments. Also learn how some of the more common mistakes can be avoided, and how what is ultimately delivered really can achieve the goals of 'cheaper, faster, more standardised and more flexible'.

Join us for an unmissble, unforgetable evening of decadence and Old English charm.


Speaker Bio

Simon Gregson is Executive IT Architect in the Banking practice of IBM Global Business Services, UK and Ireland. He has held the role of Chief Architect for two UK Financial Institutions and oversaw the technical transformation for Europe's largest banking migration. He teaches Programme Architecture at University of London's Advanced Analysis and Design Masters degree course. Within IBM he specialises in the technical leadership and management of IBM's largest Financial Services engagements. Simon leads the payments architecture and Financial Markets solutioning teams with Application Innovation Services, whose mandate is to deliver and support IBM's clients through major IT change.

Robert "Bob" McDowall
Owner, UbiCap Group, Private Equity & Investment Funds
Bob has over 35 years experience in Banking, Securities and Investment businesses. He has worked for a number of institutions including Merrill Lynch, Pru-Bache, Syntegra, Singer and Friedlander and more recently as research Director at Tower group. He is also a senior consultant analyst to Aite Group focusing on the European financial services industry. Bob has frequently appeared on the television networks including the BBC, CNBC’s European and Arabic networks as well as CNN and Bloomberg to provide industry comment and analysis. He is a frequent contributor to industry thought and comment in the international, national and the financial industry press. In 2010 Bob joined Ian Du Feu who Founded UbiCap Group Ltd, a Guernsey based company.