The 2015 Tech 50: Steven O’Hanlon

Quantitative models are the basic stock-in-trade of Numerix. Attuning them to consequential, often regulatory-mandated turns in business strategy has been critical to the 19-year-old company’s success in serving more than 700 clients around the world, along with some 90 partner organizations likeBloombergand Thomson Reuters. But agility isn’t automatic. CEOSteven O’Hanlon, who brought his enterprise software industry background to New York–based Numerix 13 years ago, has prided himself on being able to anticipate technological changes and marketplace demands. In 2004, after being promoted to president and COO from head of sales, marketing and support, he ordered a complete overhaul of the analytics and pricing platform. The new platform built in the flexibility to carry Numerix and its clients through the eventual postcrisis derivatives reforms more smoothly than could have the legacy systems. It also enabled O’Hanlon, starting in 2009, to steer Numerix in a new, risk-management-oriented direction. “In 2014 everything jelled,” says the 57-year-old, who became CEO in 2013. “We see an opportunity to disrupt the entire marketplace of risk providers whose platforms date from before the collapse and are no longer adequate.” With demand mounting for enterprisewide views of risk exposure in close to real time, O’Hanlon adds: “You can’t manage risk without pricing data in one place across all instruments. We are unique in our ability to do that for any kind of financial institution, and we are a first-mover. It is no longer acceptable to pull all this together only after damage has occurred.” Numerix is demonstrating global clout in other ways: It has a letter of intent with longtime Singapore customer DBS Bank and Swiss-based technology partners Avaloq and Leonteq to develop a multidealer distribution platform for structured products, initially eyeing Asian markets and potentially expandable to other regions, O’Hanlon says.

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”