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’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

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

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