OpenFin Hires Ex-Deutsche Data Exec Wood to Boost Enterprise Business

OpenFin, which provides a container-based operating system for deploying and integrating technology and data services via virtual desktops, has appointed former Deutsche Bank exec Stephen Wood as global head of enterprise deployment, to accelerate takeup among financial firms and participation by vendors.

Wood was most recently global head of market data services at Deutsche Bank, where he spent six years, including as head of market data, risk and compliance, and was responsible for strategy around data controls, including cost initiatives and strategies around desktop and enterprise application deployments. While at Deutsche Bank, he encountered the deployment challenges that led him to work—first through industry projects, and now directly—with OpenFin.

“My previous experience has been heavily focused on how you bring fintech vendors into organizations and integrate them with an existing environment when they are often pretty niche companies providing cutting-edge services that are up against broader workflows,” which may have IT security policies that make it hard to integrate new technologies and services, Wood says. “In the past, I’ve had vendors come to me with versions of their products that use web deployment, but they need a specific browser—such as Google Chrome—to operate, whereas investment banks tend to have a default web browser, which could be Internet Explorer, for example. OpenFin takes away cross-browser compatibility issues.”

Before joining Deutsche Bank, Wood was a market data consultant at market data and management consultancy Jordan & Jordan, and spent four years as an application specialist at data and trading software vendor CQG, prior to which he held data analyst roles at Dresdner Kleinwort, Instinet and Telekurs Financial (now SIX).

At OpenFin, Wood will be responsible for working with banks and asset managers to help them understand and work with the OpenFin environment, and working with vendors that want to provide their services through OpenFin.

“This deployment piece is something we want to focus on and expand aggressively. We know that getting products onto peoples’ desktops can be very difficult. The world is moving to more specialist applications, but still faces the hurdle of how to get them into organizations and deploy them in a seamless way… so we felt it was the right time to escalate that,” says Adam Toms, CEO of OpenFin Europe. “If you talk to large banks, they say a top priority is to connect different applications together. And we empower… interoperability.”

Wood says his previous experience at banks and vendors will make it easier for him to communicate with the vendor’s target audiences of end-user firms and service providers.