Donna Hanau

During a Wall Street career that began as one of a small number of women on the Fixed Income trading floor, Donna Hanau has seen first-hand the dramatic impact technology has made on the banking and finance industry.

One of her first technology projects was to transform the Fixed Income order management system, introducing straight through processing from execution to settlement.  Donna has since spent more than two decades working on large-scale system design, testing and implementation projects and her background in front office roles means she looks at them from a user perspective.

Today, Donna works with Temple Grange Partners’ technology partners on leading-edge systems that harness big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to solve clients’ problems in compliance, across issues from anti-money laundering to record retention.

“When technology was first brought in, it was to automate manual tasks, to do processing faster than people could.  Now, it is not simply automating something a human can do, but instead carrying out tasks that people cannot do.”

Technology can analyse vast data sets at high speeds and uncover connections across structured and unstructured data to see patterns and hidden relationships that an individual would be unable to detect.  This has resulted in a shift towards investment in technology rather than simply hiring extra manpower as organizations did in the years after the financial crisis.

“Computers are far better at performing routine surveillance. Compliance officers used to monitor on a sample basis, but now technology can do it wholesale across disparate platforms, different jurisdictions, structured data, as well as emails and voice.”

Temple Grange Partners’ strategic alliances with leading edge technology companies enables Donna to work with clients to find the right technology and provider that is most appropriate to their needs, wherever they are in the world

“When technology was first brought in, it was to automate manual tasks, to do processing faster than people could.  Now, it is not simply automating something a human can do, but instead carrying out tasks that people cannot do.”

Despite the impressive march of the machines, Donna says there is still a need for the human touch.

“Computers can generate an alert when they find a pattern that may need investigation, but at that point it still needs expert opinion, an individual in compliance or risk to make the ultimate determination.”

SUMMARY

Donna Hanau, Chief Operating Officer, Compliance Management

Career

Director, Compliance IT Core Platform Management at Credit Suisse

Director, Customer Relationship Management at Merrill Lynch

Global Business Manager for Equity Sales and Fixed Income Trader at Merrill Lynch

Education

The Wharton School, MBA

University of Pennsylvania