Lord, Abbett & Co. Conducts Infrastructure and Web Site Enhancements to Improve Security
Lord, Abbett & Co.
90 Hudson St.
Jersey City, NJ 07302
SIZE OF FIRM:
106 billion in assets under management as of March 2006.
PREVIOUS POSITIONS:
Citigroup Asset Management, managing director and global head of investment technology, 1998-2003; Bankers Trust, managing director and head of technology of the 401(k) business, 1985-1998.
EDUCATION:
B.S. in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell University; M.S. in industrial engineering from Stanford University.
WHO WAS YOUR MENTOR?
Carmine Vona, the CTO at Bankers Trust from 1988 to 1995. He was a person of the highest integrity, and he was fearless in terms of confronting opportunity and challenges. He was a teacher at heart. He taught me about intellectual honesty - the need to see issues for what they are and not sugarcoat them or underestimate what it would take to solve them.
WHAT WORK EXPERIENCE HAS HAD THE MOST LASTING IMPRESSION ON YOUR CAREER?
Leading the development of a 401(k) record-keeping system in the mid-90s at Bankers Trust. It was about a $75 million development program and took several years. It was a great lesson in teamwork - the takeaway was that, ultimately, a team will succeed or fail together. It also taught me that having good business vision is critical, and that's when I got religion when it comes to excellence in project management.
Top 3 Current Projects
Custom Development
Objective:
Build proprietary systems for fixed-income modeling and trading. While the industry leans toward packaged software, given the unique nature of each investment manager's process, we're well-served by investing in custom development to allow portfolio managers to manage money precisely the way they want to. This is an ongoing effort. Our development platform is based on Java, WebLogic and Oracle.
Web Site Enhancements
Objective:
Continue to add capabilities to the Lord Abbett Web site, including prospecting tools for financial advisers.
Information Security Improvements
Objective:
Improve information security through efforts such as multifactor authentication and single sign-on. We're looking to increase the level of security while increasing ease of use through a single sign-on, with which users can access everything they need without additional user names and passwords.
2007 Initiatives
Content Management System
The implementation of a content management system, which would automate efforts around maintaining the Web site and put more control into the hands of end users.
Develop Fixed-Income and Middle-Office Systems
Additional custom development around the fixed-income and middle-office systems.
Web Site Enhancements
Continued enhancements to the Web site, including the addition of more value-added prospecting tools for financial advisers.
Vitals
IT Budget:
The IT budget continues to see double-digit growth both last year and into 2007. That's driven by the fact that the firm believes IT is a strategic advantage and is investing to enhance the client experience.
Key Technology Management:
- Dan Holewienko, Director
- Rich O'Keefe, Director of Investment Systems
- Arun Ramchandra, Director of Sales and Marketing Systems
- Gib Veconi, Director of SMA Technology
- Dale Sang, Director of Fixed Income Technology
- Richard Schmidt, Director of Business Management Technology
- Ginny Morsell, Director of Technology Strategic Planning
Size of Technology Team:
154 employees.
Percent of IT Projects Outsourced:
None.
Key Technology Partners:
EMC, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.
Success Metrics:
Based on end-user satisfaction and if the project is delivered within the deadline and under budget.
The use of rules technology is taking root. We have two projects going on currently that are leveraging rules technology for IT problems in which there is a complex combination of reoccurring steps. Rules technology lets us deal with that without making programming changes.
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