Aligning an interest in the investment industry with an inbuilt technological skill set led Benjamin Irving to SuisseTechPartners, whose PMplus product, he says, is poised to deliver major cost and functional benefits to asset managers and their service providers.

How did you come to join SuisseTechPartners?

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I joined SuisseTechPartners in 2016 straight from finishing my university studies. Previously I was convinced that I wanted to enter into the investment management sector and I might well have done so but for an internship that I took in Hong Kong during my final year of study. When presented with the opportunity to combine my passion for technology with my ambition to work in the financial industry, I quickly became enamoured with the idea of working for a fintech company. Technology is an inescapable aspect of life for millennials like me, so I liked the idea of working on the cutting edge and harnessing a skill set that I had been unconsciously developing since high school. I feel fortunate to be able to apply my skill set to the task of solving the very real problems that asset managers face today, and hopefully I can make a real impact.

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“I feel fortunate to be able to apply my skill set to the task of solving the very real problems that asset managers face today”

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What is your working day like?

 

Every day is different. Being a young company, we all have to wear many different hats – which is great, because I love to learn new things and take on new challenges. At present my time is fairly evenly split between pre-sales activities, product development, Implementation work, training and client support. When working with a product as large as PMplus, it’s vital to have a well-rounded knowledge base. One day I could be working on a project related to compliance, while the next I could be incorporating a new set of risk analytics into the product. I believe one of the most important requirements for anyone in a client-facing role at a technology company is the ability to communicate effectively with clients from the financial industry and then be able to relay the information clearly to developers, this is a skill I need to utilize every day and an area in which I am always looking to improve.

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Where do you see the company – and yourself – in three to five years?

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PMplus was built from the ground up using the latest technology available, which means things move very quickly. When I started working at SuisseTechPartners I could see the foundations of something great, and over the past few years I have been fortunate to play a part in the delivery of many new features based on the needs and requirements of asset managers today. I believe that over the next three to five years clients will be demanding much higher levels of straight-through processing than they do now, which will be simply impossible for them to attain without migrating away from legacy software. At the same time, asset managers will need to rethink their business models in the face of shrinking margins. With PMplus, we are entering the European market with a strong value proposition for both managers and service providers, helping them cut costs whilst providing cutting-edge features to help them expand their business. The future for the firm looks bright.

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