Shameek Kundu, former chief data officer at Standard Chartered, and now head of financial services and chief strategy officer at Truera, a startup dedicated to building trust in AI, joined the Waters Wavelength Podcast to talk about AI explainability and how regulators approach the use of AI. 

5:00 Shameek joins the podcast and talks about the speed and focus that moving to a startup has given him. 
10:00 While today there is broad adoption of AI within the capital markets firms, the depth may not be there. 
11:30 The question cannot always be, ‘Why not use AI?’ It could also be, ‘Why do I use AI?’
14:30 Shameek says infrastructure for building and deploying ML models is still an art more than science.
15:30 The barriers that exist for AI in capital markets is the lack of trustworthiness and reliability of those models over time. 
21:30 Not many firms have a mature data and infrastructure blueprint to allow for AI innovation.
23:00 Shameek adds that in some ways, the data translator role is a stop-gap measure. 
26:00 How are regulators looking at the use of AI?
36:00 Shameek is excited about the use of data in addressing the current and next generation’s problems.

Episode 237: Shameek Kundu on AI explainability

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

This week’s episode is one of those where Wei-Shen and Tony blather on about an array of things, including generative AI, cybersecurity, and Taylor Swift’s new album. Listen at your own risk.

Episode 335: Some tech talk...kinda

Over the last few weeks, the CEOs of several major financial institutions, as well as regulators around the globe, have been talking about tokenization, stablecoins, and blockchain. Wei-Shen and Tony do their best to unpack why this is significant. 

Ep. 336: Tokenization mania

Bob Myers runs Interop.io’s io.Intelligence unit. He joins the podcast (7:30) to explain what agentic AI really means (16:00); how the promise of agents could be good for interoperability between applications and systems (21:00); the hype versus reality of AI at financial institutions (25:00); an explainer of the Model Context Protocol and the need to avoid sins of the past (31:00); and what the industry should keep in mind when it comes to AI’s rapid evolution and the need to keep interoperability in mind (37:00).

[Editor’s note: Tony confused ChartIQ with Glue42 when describing the former’s origins being in Charlottesville, Virginia. He’s not the brightest crayon in the box…give him a break.]

Ep. 337: Interop.io’s Bob Myers

For the first 9 minutes, Tony rambles on about US elections…naturally. The good stuff starts at 9:30, when Mike McGovern, global head of technology engagement at Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), joins the show. Over the course of 30 minutes, Mike and Tony talk about the importance of building an open architecture so as to better position the organization for “innovation enablement” (11:00); lessons learned and mistakes made when experimenting with AI and the importance of structured data (15:00); they delve into some of the reasons for why data management is still such a challenge (20:00); Mike opines as to whether newer, more sophisticated forms of AI will help fix those old data management problems or compound those issues (25:00); does he have any worries about the younger generation relying too much on AI (28:00); how delves into how his ideas around strategic partnerships have changed over the years (33:00); and some words of wisdom for vendors approaching BBH (37:00).

Episode 338: BBH’s Mike McGovern

This week’s guest is Jan Rohof, Asia-Pacific director of quantitative strategies and solutions at Northern Trust Asset Management

https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952654/northern-trust-asset-management-enlists-network-theory-to-construct-alpha-signals?ref=header-search

0:00 – Tony and Shen delve into two documentaries he recently watched

11:00 – Jan joins and talks about how he built a multi-factor model in high school

17:30 – The four Vs of data

20:30 – Efforts and resources required for good data infrastructure

26:30 – Focus on the economic fundamentals and reasoning

30:00 – NTAM’s research to implementation process

40:30 – Alternative data should be a misnomer

Episode 339: Northern Trust Asset Management’s Jan Rohof

The week of Thanksgiving in the US is one of the slowest news weeks of the year. So Anthony and Nyela Graham (who is subbing in for Wei-Shen) talk about the news media, instead.

Ep. 340: The sad state of journalism

This week’s guests are Michele Pitts, managing director and global product head of transaction management, and Marcello Topa, director for global market advocacy, policy, and strategy at Citi Investor Services

0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about the death of rom-com movies
9:30 – Michele and Marcello join the podcast
11:30 – Updates from UK and EU’s taskforces
15:30 – Applicability of lessons from US T+1
19:00 – How tech can help
25:00 – Prevention vs. cure
30:00 – Metrics firms should have
32:30 – T+0 is inevitable


Episode 341: Citi’s Pitts and Topa

This week’s guest is Sophie Lagouanelle, vice president of product for financial crime compliance at LexisNexis Risk Solutions

(0:00) – Tony and Shen talk about their Spotify 2025 Wrapped

(5:00) – Sophie joins and reflects on the state of financial crime

(14:00) – Volume and speed

(17:30) – AI and ML’s role

(25:30) – Changes within compliance teams

(30:00) – Focus areas for regulators

(40:30) – Shared memory


Episode 342: LexisNexis Risk Solutions’ Sophie Lagouanelle

This week’s guest is Jason Birmingham, CTO and head of global engineering at Broadridge

(0:00) – Tony and Shen reminisce on an amazing snowman they built 
(7:00) – Jason joins the podcast and explains the “modern CTO mandate”
(14:30) – The fundamentals matter
(16:00) – A platform strategy
(20:30) – Solving the ontology
(26:00) – The blueprint
(31:00) – Necessary skillsets 


Episode 343: Broadridge’s Jason Birmingham

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

Episode 237: Shameek Kundu on AI explainability

Waters Wavelength Podcast

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