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.
Richard Simon, Chief Executive Officer
Richard was appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer on February 17, 2012 following TMX Australia Pty. Ltd's takeover of Razor Risk Technologies Limited being declared unconditional. Richard has over 12 years of experience working in the financial industry on both the sell side, buy side and for corporate institutions and has a strong strategic and execution focused background. Richard is also the Vice President of TMX Technology Solutions, the business division within TMX Group Inc under which Razor will operate.
Richard has been with TMX Group since 2006 in a series of roles of increasing responsibility. In his role of Vice President of TMX Technology Solutions he is responsible for formalising the commercialisation of TMX's exchange technology while diversifying its existing product and customer base. During this tenure at TMX, he's completed six corporate acquisitions while assisting in the development and execution of TMX's overall corporate strategy.
Before joining TMX Group Richard was at CPP Investment Board, Canada's second largest pension fund with over $150 billion of assets under management. While there Richard worked on developing and executing the firm's global investment strategy for alternative investments including private equity, real estate and infrastructure committing over $2 billion of equity capital to these areas. Prior to this Richard worked at TD Securities, one of Canada's top investment banks, advising clients on mergers and acquisitions as well as corporate financing activities.
He has a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph; he is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a Certified Management Accountant. Richard also has his Financial Risk Manager designation from the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Daju Gu, President
Daju was appointed President of Razor Risk Technologies in June 2012.
Daju has over 20 years international consulting experience in serving financial industries including Banking, Capital Markets, Insurance and Software Development. Daju has served TD Bank Financial Group, RBC Financial Group, BMO Financial Group, CIBC Financial Group, Fairfax Financials, Canada Life Financials and Sun Life Financials.
Daju's strength is to lead, architect and implement business solutions that leverage a wide range of technology platforms. Daju has strong knowledge in the area of risk management and regulatory frameworks and has successfully led implementations of Basel II, Market Risk Adjustment (MRA), Incremental Risk Charge (IRC) and Basel III for Tier 1 Banks. He has also been invited to deliver lectures and training programs in Basel II and III to senior banking executives and policy makers from China since 2006.
In addition, Daju has led many large and multi-phased business initiatives in the financial industry including Commercial Credit Adjudication Platform, AML, Online Underwriting Insurance Platform and Finance Transformation.
Most Recently, Daju served as the TMX Program Manager who led the team to the successful delivery of the Fixed Income CCP (Phase I) in February 2012. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Ontario and Project Management Professional with PMI.
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.