David Donovan, a former senior trader focused on technology trades with Fidelity Investments, has spent the past 15 years with Publicis Sapient. He currently serves as executive vice president in the internationally known consultancy’s Boston offices. In addition, David Donovan has frequently lent his expertise to discussions of financial issues across a range of media outlets, including the Financial Times (FT).
A May 27 FT article focused on how the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic affected financial-service tech teams as they navigated the rapid shift to remote, distributed workforces. Mr. Donovan observed that banks and the financial industry as a whole had not yet directed significant energy and planning to the buildout of their digital capacities, and the pandemic forced them to do so, permanently transforming the entire financial services ecosystem.
Drawing on his decades of executive experience in regulatory compliance, Mr. Donovan also pointed out the industry’s recent natural concentration of resources into strengthening security and encryption, as well as enhancing artificial intelligence (AI) tools. These include sophisticated cognitive chatbots that can answer customer questions on a number of basic aspects of trading, freeing human traders’ attention for more complex interactions in a constantly changing market.
