Management
The Razor Risk Technologies Executive Management Team has extensive global experience in strategic and senior managerial roles across the financial services sector. Our management team's acute understanding of our clients' requirements coupled with a dynamic and adaptable focus enables us to develop, manage and deliver solutions to our clients' business challenges.
Andrew Wood, Group Chief Executive Officer
Andrew Wood was appointed as Group Chief Executive Officer on 11 September 2008 and as a Director on 1 February 2009. Andrew has a strong finance and operations background, with over 15 years of experience working globally across multiple business environments. His last role prior to joining Razor Risk Technologies was with Corymbia Investments Ltd in the UK, a business consultancy focusing on operational and financial management.
Based for some years in America, Andrew was a Senior Vice President with Management Consulting Group plc, whose consultancies specialise in risk management, Sarbanes Oxley and general operational and sales performance consulting. In Australia, Andrew was Chief Financial and Commercial Officer with Object Consulting, an Australian software development and training organization.
Andrew holds a Bachelor of Arts - Economics (Honours) from Manchester University, and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Richard Bennett, Global Head of Sales
Richard Bennett joined Razor Risk Technologies in March 2007. Richard has extensive experience in delivering risk measurement and management services to the global financial information industry, worldwide.
Prior to joining Razor Risk Technologies, Richard served as Chief Operating Officer for CicadaRisk, an independent pricing and risk measurement service company providing a daily service to the asset management and re-insurance markets. Richard was also directly involved in developing and executing the company's global business strategy and creating product-planning programs.
Richard also served at Algorithmics, in a series of roles of increasing responsibility. As Global Director, Operational Risk, Richard's role involved worldwide business management, including strategy definition and implementation, development planning, and client support. Richard was also involved in the design of the Algorithmics Operational Risk products for the identification and quantification of enterprise-wide operational risk. Prior to this position, Richard also served as Algorithmics' Business Development Manager for Europe where he was directly responsible for a number of enterprise risk projects which were ultimately given "internal model approval" by various regulatory bodies.
Richard has also held management roles at Infinity Financial Technologies and BIS Banking Systems where he worked in sales, marketing and operations.
Gerry Lawlor, Group Chief Operating Officer
Prior to joining Razor Risk Technologies as Group Chief Operating Officer, Gerry Lawlor was the Chief Technology Officer at International Derivatives Clearing Group since its founding in early 2008. IDCG is a NASDAQ OMX owned exchange and clearinghouse for Interest Rate and FX derivatives.
As the first full time employee of IDCG, Gerry led the technical design and development of the first 'all to all' over the counter (OTC) derivative exchange & clearinghouse. The cutting edge design created the first ever listed product economically equivalent to OTC derivative contracts.
Before joining IDCG Gerry was Vice President of Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities Sales at Goldman Sachs & Co from 2007 to 2008, where he worked on the institutional sales desk for CDS, Banks Loans, CMBX/ABX, Equities, FX, and Structured Products.
Prior to this position, Gerry was Vice President at ICAP BrokerTec, U.S.A. where he managed BrokerTec's U.S. Treasury and Credit Default Swap products from 2002 to 2007. There he contributed to the design of the IRS, Repo, Mortgage, & Agency platform and was responsible for core front-end and back-end functionality. Gerry also led the competitive intelligence effort and co-managed the integration of the U.S. Treasury hybrid model with Garban voice brokers.
From 1999 to 2002, Gerry worked for Bank of America Securities in U.S. Agency Trading and Fixed Income eCommerce. He managed the development of the bank's Fixed Income E-Underwriting platform and co-managed the bank's integration to various ECN's. He pioneered and managed the development of the bank's Fixed Income internal web-portal for research, news, commentary, and trader pricing.
Gerry holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Belmont Abbey College.
Thies Arens, Senior Vice President Product Management
Thies has 17 years’ experience in software engineering and consulting, with a specific focus on risk management systems for financial institutions globally. Thies is regarded as a key Razor Subject Matter Expert and has a strong track record in successfully managing project teams through the application development lifecycle, from requirements definition through to support, to meet the business needs of clients in Australia, Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East. Thies is also an experienced senior risk management consultant, providing consulting services to financial institutions, both locally and internationally, to develop an integrated, holistic approach to risk management and control, helping them to benefit from their investments in internal controls.
Thies was appointed to Razor Risk Technologies’ Senior Vice President Product Manager in July 2009 and is responsible for development, support and QA. Previously, he was Head of Product Consulting where he supported the pre-sales and client relationship process with a focus on business analysis and consulting, and the quantitative analysis of requirements for credit, market, clearing and liquidity risk. He has also previously held the role of Application Development Manager for Razor.
Thies joined Razor Risk Technologies from Misys plc located in London, within the risk management solutions group, where he was responsible for the application software development of several risk management applications, including the credit and market risk engines, portfolio management, pricing/deal entry and market/credit data management. Prior to this, he worked for Financialware in Sydney specialising in market risk and portfolio management software.
Thies holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance and Investment.