This week’s guest is Brian Bejile, cofounder & CEO, Octaura

0:00-7:20: Anthony Malakian and Rebecca Natale, Europe Editor for WatersTechnology, complain for seven minutes about poor customer service and artificial intelligence.

7:20-35:23: Brian Bejile and Nyela Graham, senior reporter at WatersTechnology, have an actual informative discussion—as opposed to Tony and Reb’s diatribes—about the origins of Octaura, modernization of the credit markets, the platform provider’s move into the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) space, and the need for more data and analytics on the buy side. 

Episode 325: Octaura’s Brian Bejile

This week’s guest is Nick Kolba, CEO and co-founder of Connectifi, who joins the podcast to discuss the Model Context Protocol, LLMs and agentic AI.  

0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about Astronomer’s ad campaign
5:30 – Nick Kolba joins the podcast 
8:00 – Step changes or big jumps in tech
18:00 – Excitement for the Model Context Protocol
21:00 – Parallels between FDC3 and MCP
24:30 – Concerns around security
30:00 – Work that still needs to be done
41:00 – Code generation for “senior engineers”


Episode 326: Connectifi’s Nick Kolba

This week’s guest is Mo Rahim, group chief data officer at Standard Chartered, who joins the podcast to discuss data and AI governance and guardrails for AI.

0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about recent shows they’ve watched 
9:00 – Mo Rahim joins the podcast
13:30 – Understand your core identity
17:00 – People and literacy
19:00 – Get your data right
25:00 – Standard Chartered’s research, partnerships, and innovation pillar   
29:00 – Building AI in a safe and responsible way
32:30 – AI is your plus one  


Episode 327: Standard Chartered’s Mo Rahim

This week’s guest is Lior Yogev, CEO and co-founder at FundGuard. He joins the podcast to discuss legacy tech stacks at asset management firms.

0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about personalities
10:00 – Lior Yogev joins the podcast
12:30 – When does a tech stack become legacy? 
19:00 – How asset managers modernize their platforms without excess downtime
22:30 – Migration times
26:30 – Total rebuild vs. slight tweaks

Episode 328: FundGuard’s Lior Yogev

This week, Reb and Tony talk about the internet and the problems compounded by AI.
https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952665/the-great-disappearing-internet%E2%80%94and-what-it-could-mean-for-your-llm

0:00 – Welcome to the team, Mya! You can reach her at Mya.Jheeta@infopro-digital.com 
7:00 – Reb and Tony discuss her recent column and the interconnected mess of a web of humans, internet, and AI


Episode 329: LLMs and the dead internet theory

This week, Shen and Reb discuss a recent MIT study on GenAI pilots, and Reb’s recent story about ModuleQ dissolving. 

https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf
https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952681/fintech-powering-lseg%E2%80%99s-ai-alerts-dissolves

Episode 330: AI hot takes

This week’s guest is Bill Murphy, managing partner at Cresting Wave 
0:00 – Tony and Shen discuss System of a Down and Gorillaz 
6:00 – Bill Murphy, Blackstone’s former CTO, joins to discuss that much-discussed MIT study on AI projects failing and factors executives should consider as the technology continues to evolves

Episode 331: Cresting Wave’s Bill Murphy

This week’s guest is Val Wotton, global head of equity solutions at DTCC. He joins to discuss the necessary steps leading up to the T+1 transitions in the UK and EU.

0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about Reb’s time in upstate New York
6:00 – Val Wotton joins the podcast and discusses the metrics from US T+1
13:00 – Analyze the entire lifecycle and do your impact assessment!
18:30 – Considerations from Asia
22:00 – Additional costs to assess
28:30 – Balancing mandatory deliverables and T+1 work
34:00 – Tweaking CSDR rules
42:00 – Resiliency can’t be understated


Episode 332: DTCC’s Val Wotton

No guest this week, folks. Tony and Shen discuss recent books they’ve read about data and analytics, and…humanity.


Episode 333: Baseball, analytics and therapy

This week, Bank of America’s Ashok Krishnan and Duncan McInnes join Tony to discuss the build, buy, borrow strategy and instilling the right culture within the bank.

0:00 – Shen and Tony talk about the Risk Live Asia 2025 conference in Singapore
7:30 – Ashok and Duncan join the podcast
11:30 – The build, buy, borrow strategy
14:00 – Building a rocket ship
19:00 – Instilling a culture that remains
22:30 – Doubling down on the ‘Why’
28:00 – Managing tech priorities
34:00 – Dealing with data, interoperability, and tech debt

Episode 334: BofA’s Krishnan and McInnes

Jesse Lund, head of blockchain solutions for IBM’s Financial Services unit, joins the podcast to discuss the evolution of blockchain.

2:30 Jesse gives a quick look at the IBM Blockchain Platform.

5:00 Real use cases for blockchain in the capital markets.

8:30 How do cryptocurrencies come into play with blockchain’s development?

12:00 Which sectors are the most ripe for blockchain adoption?

15:30 Can distributed ledgers help with the development of industry utilities?

18:00 What are some of the lessons learned during proofs-of-concept?

21:00 What are some of the next steps in blockchain’s development?

24:00 What needs to happen to improve blockchain’s processing times?

26:30 What skills will be necessary for the jobs of the future?

Episode 113: IBM's Jesse Lund on Blockchain Development

Wei-Shen Wong and Anthony Malakian discuss the hottest financial technology topics in the capital markets every week.

Episode 113: IBM's Jesse Lund on Blockchain Development

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