Angela Centeno, CPA
Director, Research
Angela Centeno has more than 25 years of experience in financial services. Prior to joining Cutter in 2015, Angela worked for The Northern Trust Company in multiple roles including sourcing and procuring enterprise market data, investment operations outsourcing, and vendor and custodian relationships. She previously held senior positions in operations management, project management, data management, and solutions implementation. Angela earned a bachelor of science in accounting and a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of Kansas, as well as an MBA in finance from DePaul University. She is a registered CPA.
Recent research assignments and publications include the following:
- AI Use Cases in Investment Management: Infinite Possibilities
- Alternative Investments
- Client Reporting Systems
- Cutter Benchmarking: Alternative Investments
- Cutter Benchmarking: Derivatives and Collateral Management
- Cutter Benchmarking: Firmwide ESG Capabilities
- Derivatives and Collateral Management Solutions
- ESG Data Management
- ESG: It’s a Jungle Out There ─ A Look at the Data Provider Landscape
- ESG Investing: One Vision, Many Lenses
- Market Data Administration
- Private Debt
Jon Chandler
Director, Research
Jon Chandler has 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Cutter Associates in 2014, Jon was a senior business analyst for State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), where he was involved in a number of projects for the front and middle office, including UAT design and execution for an order management system (Fidessa IMS), the implementation of a web-based due diligence platform (FundInsight), and an enterprise solution to support blended benchmarks. Prior to his project roles, Jon was a principal in fixed income trade operations at SSGA. He has extensive experience with post-trade operations and applications, such as OASYS/CTM, PORTIA, MBSExpert, and FailStation. Jon earned a bachelor of arts in history from the University of Florida and an MBA from Northeastern University.
Recent research assignments and publications include the following:
- Alternative Investment Systems
- Cutter Benchmarking: Alternative Investments
- Cutter Benchmarking: Derivatives and Collateral Management
- Cutter Benchmarking: Investment Risk
- Cutter Benchmarking: Performance Measurement and Attribution
- Derivatives and Collateral Management Solutions
- Execution Management Systems
- Managed Data Services
- Order Management Systems
- Outsourcing Solutions
- Performance Measurement and Attribution Systems
- Portfolio Analytics Solutions
- Private Debt
- Risk Management Systems
- The Evolving Front Office Support Model
Danny Kramer
Director, Consulting
Danny Kramer is an accomplished consultant with deep expertise in middle and back office investment operations. In his most recent consulting role, Danny worked with a global financial services firm to evaluate the firm’s derivatives management systems landscape by examining current capabilities and derivative system compared with competing vendor offerings. He was responsible for documenting business and technical requirements, researching market vendors, producing Request for Information (RFI) and Request for Proposal (RFP) documentation, creating a structured scorecard for evaluation, and analyzing and presenting results.
Prior to working with Cutter, Danny was vice president of Global Middle Office at Fidelity Investments, where he held several senior roles within investment operations and business strategy. This included as business lead on a multi-year, multimillion-dollar middle office technology implementation of Calypso software to support processing of repo securities, securities lending activities, and derivatives. Prior to Fidelity, Danny spent eight years at Wellington Management Company as vice president and senior manager, Investment Data & Derivative Services.
Derivatives are complex financial instruments used for various purposes such as to generate alpha or hedge risks in portfolios. Increased regulation and a recognition of the risks that are often inherent in derivatives instruments has driven change in the processes used to manage them and support increased collateral management obligations. Asset managers and asset owners have addressed their derivatives processing and collateral management requirements in a number of ways: implementing newly acquired systems; reworking existing systems; developing new controls and business processes; and generally increasing their understanding of these instruments throughout the organization. In this study, we look at how effectively participating firms stand in gaining efficiency in their derivatives and collateral management processes.