Contributors
Aaron Kissel
Aaron Kissel is the Executive Director of CEB TowerGroup, the leading research and advisory firm focused exclusively on providing the global financial services industry with the highest standards of research and trusted advice. Aaron also manages The Corporate Executive Board's Financial Services Practice, which serves nearly 13,000 executives from over 400 financial services organizations across 50 countries around the globe. Prior to his role with CEB TowerGroup, Aaron served as Executive Director of The Corporate Executive Board's Middle Market Practice, a research business focused on small- and medium-sized enterprises and their executives within finance, human resources, IT, sales, marketing, operations, and legal.
Andy Schmidt
Andy Schmidt, research director at CEB TowerGroup offers a multi-dimensional perspective on the financial services industry. With more than 20 years of experience, Andy is a seasoned industry veteran who lives by the words of one of his college professors: Focus on where you want to be, rather than on how you get there.
Peter Aykens
Peter Aykens, managing director at CEB, has more than two decades of experience. Peter leads a team that researches retail banking, wealth management, commercial banking and retirement.
Brian Riley
Brian Riley, research director with CEB’s TowerGroup, has more than 25 years of financial institution experience and is an expert in the areas of bank card technology, emerging trends, new products and revenue management. As a banking expert, Riley works on a wide variety of business and technology issues facing banks and consumers, from new threats against consumers who use debit cards to information bank executives need to know about the business impact of new technologies (e.g., mobile payments) and banking regulations.
CEB Financial Services
CEB Financial Services equips senior leadership and their teams with insight and actionable solutions to transform operations. Using CEB’s research, analysis, data and advisory support, financial services executives become more effective leaders and business partners.
Craig Focardi
Craig is a Senior Research Director in CEB TowerGroup's Retail Banking & Cards practice specializing in research and advice on mortgage and consumer lending. He covers a wide range of business, process, strategic, and technical topics relating to loan origination, loan servicing, securitization, and risk management. Craig has 25 years of experience in a variety of finance, product development, and business development roles for mortgage technology vendors, lenders, and risk management firms.
Darrin Courtney
Darrin Courtney, research director at CEB TowerGroup applies a broad perspective to wealth management, reminding clients the standard for their offerings is set by cutting-edge technology and products in unrelated industries. He has more than 20 years of financial services experience in operations, client service, product management and business development, and understands the critical role technology plays in today’s wealth management firms.
Dushyant Shahrawat
Dushyant Shahrawat is a Senior Research Director at CEB TowerGroup in the Capital Markets practice. With over 15 years of experience in financial services, he is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and a member of the Boston Security Analysts Society. He researches strategic issues facing asset managers, hedge funds, and brokerage firms globally and advises clients about strategy, marketing, regulation, technology, and product development.
Elisa Vannini
Elisa Vannini is a Senior Director of Research for CEB TowerGroup Insurance and the CEB FS Operations Leadership Council. She has twelve years of work experience in Financial Services, most recently in investment banking working on the Financial Services M&A team for Goldman Sachs in London. Elisa obtained a Bachelors Degree and a Masters Degree from Stanford University, and an MBA from ESADE Business School in Barcelona.
Gert Raeves
Gert Raeves is a Research Director at CEB TowerGroup in the Capital Markets practice. With over 15 years of experience in financial services, he covers strategic issues facing buy-side and sell-side firms globally and advises clients on strategy, regulation, technology, and product development in the area of post-trade business and technology trends for institutional capital markets.
Jason Malo
Jason Malo is a Research Director in CEB TowerGroup's Retail Banking and Cards practice. With over 16 years of experience in the development, management, and marketing of online service solutions, Jason is focused on market evaluation and product strategy for mobile banking, as well as the impacts of emerging threats, regulation, and customer attitudes regarding security and fraud across banking and card channels.
Joanne Pollitt
Joanne Pollitt is Research Operations Director for two CEB TowerGroup practices: Retail Banking & Cards and Commercial Banking & Payments. Her areas of expertise, developed over 20 years in the financial services industry, include business strategy development, customer relationship management, system development life-cycle, and program management.
Jaime Roca
Jaime is a Practice Manager at the Corporate Executive Board where he has served since 2005. He manages the research programs focusing on serving executives overseeing the Operations and Wealth Management functions in the financial services industry. Before joining the Corporate Executive Board, he served a variety of institutional investment clients as a technology equity analyst and also as a European analyst providing macroeconomic and political risk advice to investment bank and hedge fund managers. Jaime earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Colorado College, Master of Arts with Honors in International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a MBA from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business.
Kristin Cressman
Kristin Cressman is a Research Associate in CEB TowerGroup's Insurance practice. Her primary role is to provide research support, including data gathering, data management, and written research relating to insurance industry business and technology trends in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Karen Pauli
Karen Pauli is a Research Director in the Insurance practice at CEB TowerGroup with more than 25 years of insurance industry experience. She covers a wide range of topics in property and casualty insurance, specializing in distribution, underwriting, claims, predictive analytics, core systems, and business optimization.
Nicole Sturgill
Nicole Sturgill, research director at CEB TowerGroup has a global perspective on the financial services industry. From armored currency carriers in Eastern Europe to local bank branches in South Africa, and everything in between, she has seen it all.
Peter Delano
Peter Delano is a Senior Research Director in the Wealth Management practice at CEB TowerGroup with over 15 years of industry experience. Some examples of his areas of research coverage are client servicing, compliance technologies, messaging protocols, post-trade automation, and instant messaging.
Robert Hunt
Robert Hunt is a Senior Research Director specializing in core banking and transaction processing systems for CEB TowerGroup. His research is published in CEB TowerGroup's Retail Banking & Cards practice.
Rodney Nelsestuen
Rodney Nelsestuen, senior research director at CEB TowerGroup has broad cross-industry expertise and offers global financial services insight to his clients. He understands that while clients ask a lot of the same questions, they need different answers tailored to their needs.
Bob Williams
Bob Williams is a Research Director in CEB TowerGroup's Capital Markets practice. With over 21 years of experience in financial services, he covers strategic issues facing buy-side and sell-side firms globally and advises clients on strategy, regulation, technology, and product development in the area of front-office trading and technology trends for institutional capital markets.
Steven Murphy
Steve Murphy is a Research Director in CEB TowerGroup's Commercial Banking & Payments practice covering commercial credit cards, electronic invoicing, client servicing, enterprise integration, and payables and receivables. His broad knowledge gained from over 25 years experience in the financial services industry is reflected in his analysis of electronic payments, bank cards, business cards, and commercial card products in the midsize to large market segments.
