FundTech Awards 2020: Leadership awards

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP – ASSET MANAGEMENT
Winner – Kerry McCormack, global head of IT, First Sentier Investors

Kerry McCormack has not let a global pandemic distract her in a year of hugely impressive achievements.

She took on the role in early 2019 and started with the redesign of the global operating model. In the past year, she has installed new corporate core systems across the whole organisation and successfully implemented all the changes required to go with a company-wide rebrand as the firm moved from its former name as Colonial First State to First Sentier Investors (FSI).

She has also moved all of her Australian colleagues on to the new global FSI network and upgraded its main portfolio management system Charles River.

“It has been an exciting year for us as we have formed our own identity as FSI,” said McCormack in her acceptance speech. “I would like to thank my team for all their hard work and dedication during this time. They have all gone the extra mile to deliver these projects and keep the business running.”

TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP – TECHNOLOGY PROVIDER
Winner – Sylvain FortÉ, founder and CEO, SESAMm

The jury received a number of high-quality applications for this award. The decision to recognise Sylvain Forté was based on the performance of his company SESAMm’s artificial intelligence (AI) engine and its use of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) for investment analysis and insight.

French fintech SESAMm was founded in 2014 and specialises in the provision of big data and AI for asset management. 

“We are very proud to have been recognised as a technologically advanced company and a leader in the fields of big data and AI,” said Forté upon receiving the award.

The firm processes billions of articles and messages from the web and transforms them into actionable insights for investors, whether that’s for ESG, macro insights, asset allocation or due diligence.

To date, it has a data lake of more than 10 billion articles and messages from more than 2 million sources, covering ten years of history and more than 50 million entities.

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