For Sascha Szyfman, the notion that the banking world is far removed from companies in the non-bank FX industry has been dispelled as he has been appointed Area Vice President at Bank of America following three years at New York-based FXDD.
Mr. Szyfman was responsible for managing the German customer support desk at FXDD, and ensuring that material was presented to clients in German-speaking markets in an effective manner. He also managed the FX Options desk, overseeing the department during the period of time which the Dodd-Frank Act was invoked, where Mr. Szyfman was responsible for producing reports in compliance with the Dodd-Frank Act and its European equivalent, EMIR.
During his tenure within the FX Options desk, Mr. Szyfman’s responsibilities included the management of risk, trade execution, and liquidity for a-book order flow, including 30+ FX pairs and Gold & Silver, along with resolving settlement, trade allocation issues with all counterparties and prime brokerages.
A year at FXDD’s dealing desk completed Mr. Szyfman’s tenure at the prominent North American brokerage at a time when the firm made its exit from the US market and transferred its North American client base to FXCM, standing him stood him in good stead for his executive position at Bank of America.
In his new position, Mr. Szyfman will assume responsibility for product control, in the Global Technology and Operations division of the bank, a business unit within which Bank of America invested significant resources two years ago in order to place an emphasis on risk management as a result of the emergence of new banking technologies.
At the time, encumbent Global Technology and Operations Executive Cathy Bessant had focused on the bank’s need to ensure that its operations become more lean and efficient moving forward, and in doing so the technology and operations team must to play a vital role in Bank of America’s objective to simplify and modernize the company.
In the summer of 2012, Bank of America was engaged in the process of reducing the number of data centers on which it relied, and had a goal to reduce the number of applications it uses by 50 percent by 2014. “It’s not just about reduction,” Ms. Bessant stated at the time. “It’s about changing work process so things can be done more reliably and efficiently.”
Ms. Bessant and her team were also charged with the task of reducing risk and enabling the business strategies of the company while pursuing efficiency where possible. That mentality has spurred an overarching philosophy of “bringing tech and ops together,” stated Ms. Bessant. “I describe it as: If the clients are the heart of the company, we’re the spine. What we do is highly complicated and large-scale, but it’s really important to keep the whole system moving and keep it functioning.”