Building the Future of Operations: Key Takeaways from SIFMA Ops 2026

In this episode of The SIFMA Podcast, host Steve Byron is joined by Shawn Quant, Chief Information & Operations Officer at Piper Sandler and Chair of SIFMA's Operations & Technology Board Subcommittee, and Deb Guarino, Managing Director at BNY Pershing and Chair of the SIFMA Operations & Technology Committee.

You can listen to this conversation by following "The SIFMA Podcast" on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up to receive new episodes, delivered right to your inbox.

In This Episode

Recorded following the 2026 SIFMA Operations Conference & Exhibition, the conversation explores the technological, regulatory, and operational forces reshaping capital markets. Topics include:

• The evolution of AI from experimentation to enterprise integration
• The growing role of tokenization and digital assets
• Operational readiness for Treasury clearing and extended trading hours
• Cyber resilience, fraud prevention, and talent development
• The changing role of operations professionals in modern financial markets

Drawing on insights from SIFMA Ops 2026, the discussion highlights how firms are preparing for a future defined by accelerated change, increased automation, evolving market infrastructure, and the need for industry-wide collaboration.

Featured Guests

Shawn Quant
Chief Information & Operations Officer at Piper Sandler and Chair of SIFMA's Operations & Technology Board Subcommittee

Mr. Quant is responsible for the strategic direction and management of the firm's business information systems, trading and technology infrastructure, global securities clearance and settlement, middle office, and corporate real estate.

Deb Guarino
Managing Director at BNY Pershing and Chair of the SIFMA Operations & Technology Committee.

Mrs. Guarino oversees the Trade Processing, Regulatory Oversight, Information Delivery and Managed Accounts Operations teams responsible for regulatory order and trade reporting, trade surveillance, trade processing, trade confirmations, managed accounts trading and operations and information delivery including customer statements.

Transcript

(Edited for Clarity)

Stephen Byron: So, welcome to the SIFMA podcast. I'm Steve Byron, Managing Director, Head of Operations Technology, Business Continuity at SIFMA. We recently wrapped our 2026 SIFMA Operations Conference and Exhibition in Marco Island. We had over a thousand attendees attend this year's event with over a hundred speakers, 40 plus sponsors and exhibitors, and it was our 53rd annual SIFMA ops conference. It was also our highest attended event since the 2000. That level of engagement underscores how central operations, technology, resilience, and market infrastructure are to the future of our industry. Today, I'm joined here in SIFMA's New York office by two leaders deeply involved in SIFMA's year-round operations and technology work. Shawn Quant, Chief Information and Operations Officer at Piper Sandler, and chair of SIFMA's Operations and Technology Board Subcommittee. Deb Garino, Managing Director at BNY, Chair of the SIFMA Ops and Tech Committee. We'll discuss the key themes from the conference and how those conversations reflect the issues that firms are working through today and how SIFMA will continue to work with our members to advance this work throughout the year. So SIFMAOps is designed to bring the full capital market operations ecosystem together. In our recent debrief, our research team described this event as addressing one of the most significant periods of technological and operational change in modern financial markets. Now, Shawn, maybe we could start with you. What stood out most to you about this year's conference?

Shawn Quant: I think the two items I would say that jumped out the most would be one you touched on, which was just the attendance. It was great to see the rooms full again and see all the energy. And I would say the second is really around the breadth of roles that are now attending. I mean, you had everything there from people leading traditional operations roles, whether it was in settlements or asset servicing, et cetera. But then you also had people that were there overseeing digital assets and other new areas or technology focused areas. So the breadth, I would say, would be the other item.

Byron: Yeah, I'd agree. And Deb, did it feel different this year in terms of the breadth and the intensity of the issues that are being discussed?

Deb Guarino: Yeah, definitely. I thought this year's conference, the past years we focused on the pace of regulatory change, and this year was really the pace of technological change and operational change. And so there was a little bit of a shift there. I think there was a lot more energy in the room by the participants. I think Shawn touched on who was there. But I think they were excited because they're leading the strategy of firms. Rather than I think in the past we came to learn about what was happening to operations that we needed to respond to. There was definitely a sense of we're driving this, and the excitement was palpable.

Byron: Yeah, and I think you know the the feedback from the event was was really great. And and one of the themes that was uh obviously top of mind for everybody was was really AI and how it's moving from experimentation into sort of enterprise workflows. That creates a lot of opportunity for firms, but it also raises important questions around government controls, cost structure, uh, and accountability. So, Shawn, what does it mean uh for AI to move from pilots into integrated integrated enterprise systems and workflows?

Quant: I think really when you look at now that transition, a couple of factors come into play. One that is now becoming more of a focus for firm is really around are we solving the right problems and is it creating value because we're getting past the hype cycle of we just need to do something. Now it's getting to the are we doing the right things. I would say also in addition to that comes the element of it's starting to now bubble up uh all of those other foundational items that are required. You you touched on the data element, you touched on governance, you look at security around it. These are all aspects that early on in experimentation you could run a little bit more loose on. But now as you look at putting mission critical processes tied to some of these, and you look at broader rollouts and adoption, uh, those become foundational and really critical capabilities.

Byron: So, Deb, where are firms seeing practical use cases today? Uh, and where are they being called where are they being cautious?

Guarino: Yeah, I think we heard about a lot of use cases. Um, there was a lot of activity in this area, and firms have really dove in. I think you touched on some of the fears there, but we heard things like document readers. Why do we have people looking at them? Can they be used to source data, input to our systems, or validate against our systems? People are using it for exception monitoring to help bubble up to the top the most important things that our settlements and trade matching teams are looking at. We also heard about chatbots, right? And that was a very safe space to get started. Can it return to either your internal teams or clients next best actions to take with all of that? Data was the theme that resonated in through so many of our sessions. If you're putting on that, all of that on top of bad data, the output is going to be terrible. And so I think where a firm's cautious, number one, is completely replacing a person. Right? We can maybe shift from a four-eyed check to a two-eyed check because AI is doing the first step in the work. And I think another place that we're waiting for some guidance on is really how do you supervise in this arena? Um, more to come from the regulators on that. SIFMA's been great in trying to help finalize that guidance. But I think going slow, but really we're going.

Byron: So that's I think that's exactly right. And I think that, you know, in previous years the discussion was very much around firms at very different stages of their evolution. Some firms were were further advanced, other firms hadn't really started. Now it feels like everybody is further along and on that journey and really trying to work up how work out how to keep that sort of human in the loop as they're building out their processes and ensuring that they are, you know, finding now the efficiencies through that automation through AI, but ensuring that they're not losing or giving up any of the control aspects on that. And that was certainly a theme that we heard uh throughout the throughout the conference.

Guarino: I think it's also embedded in our workflows now. Um and I think that when we think about AI, um if you're not using it now, you're behind. Where I think last year or the year before, there were the people who were willing to try it and be first. Now if you're not using it and have real use cases, you're falling behind and it's moving so fast that you really need to dive in.

Quant: And I would say the piece that I think it's uh kind of glommed together is the notion when we talk of AI, everybody naturally goes automatically to the latest frontier models and what the large language models are doing. And a lot of the areas when you talk with colleagues across the industry that they're leveraging it isn't in those use cases. It's not that to Deb's point, they're leveraging chat box, the OCR capability, and others, but a lot of these are just further extension of the evolution of AI that continues to come through. When you look at some of the exception and reconciliation pieces, these are more kind of existing machine learning capabilities that now firms have finally, within ops, gotten funding in this AI focus to go do. Uh, and it's not all generative or large language model, but operations teams are finally getting some of those dollars as a part of it.

Byron: I don't know. We we had a brief conversation before before we started around um the fact that uh uh you know there was a period of time where every problem that people were looking at, the immediate response was let's solve this problem with AI. Yep. Right. Uh and I think firms are now being much more selective around where they are choosing to deploy uh AI into the right solutions.

Quant: They are, and I do think that as a little bit of the we've gotten further along in that technology adoption cycle around AI and some of the hype cycle components have worn down. The reality is that traditional programming methods coupled with kind of data management and analytics approaches, coupled with things like existing robotics process automation capabilities, coupled with AI, brings out the true value. Trying to do any one of those on their own adds value, but especially in AI, if you're not using the other capabilities together, you're kind of limiting what you're able to start to the possible.

Byron: So moving on from AI, tokenization was another main theme of the of the conference. Uh, and we had a number of panels focused on digital assets and tokenization. Um, it's been taught tokenization and and sort of DLT technology has been around for a number of years. It's not necessarily new to to our industry, but it's certainly the conversation has picked up a lot of pace over um over the last sort of 18 months, two years with the change in administration. Um so speakers described it as an emerging infrastructure layer with the potential to reduce friction, improve capital efficiency, increase collateral mobility, which are certainly use cases that have been talked about for a number of years. And and Deb, maybe you can go into some of the biggest hurdles that firms are seeing around tokenization.

Guarino: Yeah, I found it interesting that those sessions were the ones where I saw people feverishly scribbling in their notebooks or asking questions where it was lunch and learns. There's so much interest in this space, and what does it mean? Where we're being cautious, or I think where firms were most concerned about, is this real-time world that we're living in. Look, the benefits are there's transparency. Everybody knows what's happening when at the same time. There's no ambiguity there, but it introduces new risks that we didn't have before. So fears are a lot around. When you have handoffs, you have pauses in a process to stop and check and introduce controls. Everything's happening simultaneously, what does that mean? How do we get in front of that? Your pre-order, pre-anything, needs to be really tight to make sure that you have the controls up front. I think there's an accountability concern. If everything's happening simultaneously, who's responsible if something goes wrong, and how can you walk back something that's already happened? But I really think the biggest thing firms are concerned about now is we have this push towards tokenization, digital assets, blockchain technology. Um, that's great, but we're still operating in a world where we have traditional rails and traditional payments, and how do those two things come together? Um, especially when we have different regulatory guidance around those things. I think that operating in that hybrid environment is probably one of the biggest challenges.

Byron: And Shawn, maybe we can dive in a little bit more onto that concept of the hybrid infrastructure and where traditional systems coexist with tokenized assets and digitally native workflows.

Quant: I think the easiest element that I use when kind of talking about some of those is really looking at it from the perspective of as we move to tokenized equities as an example. If I today am going to go out and I've got a tokenized share of IBM and I'm gonna go trade that, is the market set up that I'm getting the same price on that if I'm going out to any traditional venues? And at the same time, then, and some of the areas that are still unclear are from the perspective of I'm a firm holding that now. How am I taking what's the haircut on that? I know the regulators have kind of come out and said security is a security, but can I take it then that I can apply my standard equity haircut from a net capital perspective onto that position? Um, some of the other use cases that were brought up at the conference that I thought were spot on was the notion of how do we look at margin in this scenario. Yes, smart contracts allow you to kind of lock that pledged asset up, but how then do we go about it handling the release on some of those? How do you go about if it is a security that's been lent out? So there are a lot of these elements yet that still need to be worked out, but also the elements of with some of the work going on within DTCC around their efforts, and now New York, NASDAQ looking at similar efforts, etc., there is gonna have to be interoperability and settlement rails begin to be put in place between all of these. Otherwise, we're just gonna increase risk holistically because we're gonna have these fragmented pools of both liquidity but also where securities are sitting. And in an instantaneous settlement world, if I've all of a sudden got a client's assets sitting over on a disconnected infrastructure, I it's almost worse than checks and apps. I mean, it's we're taking a step backwards in some of those. So as Deb mentioned, there is a lot of benefits once we get to that interconnected end state. But there's a lot of work to do before we get there.

Byron: And I think that's you know, that's certainly come out in some of the work that SIFM has been doing over the past 12 months or 18 months in this space, in terms of um there is there is a a lot that needs to be worked through still in terms of how the actual post-trade functioning of these uh assets were, whether that's you know obviously the the the different settlement components, um you have your asset servicing, your proxy, there's a number of elements that still need to be to be flushed out as the industry kind of moves more towards this tokenized model as we as we move forward. Um Shawn, maybe back to you in terms of your views around how regulation can support integrating digital assets into existing market structure without fragmenting that liquidity.

Quant: I think when you look at, I think the construct that's being followed, which is at the end of the day a tokenized asset, if we take again using the example of an equity, if it is truly direct ownership in that entity, et cetera, it's just another form of ownership, no different than assert, book entry, et cetera. So from what would seem like the most straightforward approach would be the same regulatory environment applies to that security and how it's handled and moved. Now, I know there may be various participants that would say, well, but you're limiting the capabilities of what it could do in that process, et cetera. And there may be truth in that, but at the same time, I do think that some of the regulatory guidance that's been put in place around things like the proposed innovation exemption and some of those will give a framework to have some trial and error and see how we can evolve the infrastructure. I think, and Deb had hit on it earlier from the perspective of there have been, since really, you know, the crash, you know, nearly a hundred years ago, put in that wow, it really begins the data. Um, there have been a lot of controls and resiliency that generation by generation, all of those that were in these seats before us began to put in place. How do we make sure that we don't necessarily clean, wipe everything out, but do focus on modernizing with that goal in mind of how do we streamline processing, reduce risk?

Guarino: Yeah, so the foundation is there. Yeah. We should use the foundation that we have, build upon it, and that might not be the end state. We're all sure it's not going to be the end state, but this state of flux that we're in right now. I think also, Steve, you touched on it. The work with SIFMA firm should be paying attention because we need advocacy in this area and we need to bring in all different parts of our organizations to talk about the impacts and what the actual asks are of the regulators. It's very easy to say that there's not guidance, but we need to ask for what we what we need.

Quant: And I think it's one other item back to the earlier conversation of what stood out at the conference. If we think of even last year or a couple of years ago, the whole notion of distributed ledger technology, let alone people weren't talking tokenization at that time, was all about what we could do with blockchain, was a little bit of the notion still of a problem or a solution looking for a problem. This year, it was very much a notion of the markets are moving in this direction. And how then are we as an industry going to get on board to manage this just like who did with reductions from T3 to T2 to T1? But it's happening. And that the notion that it wasn't going to be uh an if that it was becoming a win was apparent.

Byron: Yeah. And you're already seeing like live use cases in the market today, where it's you know, tokenized repo, uh tokenized collateral, where it is it's it's happening and firms are using it, and it's multi-billion dollars. Yeah. So one of the uh messages that came through loud and clear at the conference was really around the need for firms to be engaging uh with regulators early and often. Uh, Commissioner Peirce made that point clearly, emphasizing that operational readiness will determine what web uh web reforms around AI, crypto, uh treasury clearing, and market structure uh succeed in practice. She also encouraged firms to continue that dialogue and give the SEC practical implementation feedback through organizations like CIFO or even directly going to the SEC. So, from a firm perspective, why is the spirit of collaboration so important to sound policy and market resiliency?

Guarino: I think we've seen the regulators themselves are we looking at their rule book and the way they're organized. It's the perfect time for us to dive in and get the outputs that we need. Everything being real time, we're moving towards 24 by 5, 24 by 7. We need to rethink everything. How are we going to support things around the globe running instantaneously? And I think we're going to need some regulatory feedback on that. But it was a really good session where she was clear that we need to ask for what we want. They want to partner with us. We all are learning how to support these new things, and you know, they're willing to interact. So I think we just need to be vocal. Otherwise, things back to what Shawn was saying, it was happening to us. We're going to be accepting of that if we're not vocal about what it is that we need.

Quant: And I would say there definitely seems to be an openness from the SEC, from FINRA, from all of the regulators now that maybe was there in talk a couple of years ago, but maybe you didn't see it in practice. They genuinely seem to be interested now and understanding that if we are going to continue to evolve as a market, a regulatory environment with it needs to evolve. And they're acknowledging they don't have the answers. They need the experts from an industry perspective to be in the room with them, giving them feedback. And I definitely applaud them for that approach.

Guarino: They're learning this as we're learning it. And we're probably better positioned to explain the use cases, the areas where this might be, where we're looking for guidance. And so I think there's education going in both directions, and I agree with you. The openness has been great.

Byron: Yeah, and maybe Shawn, if we could build on that in terms of if you could summarize some of the sort of the key regulatory uh and implementation issues that SIFMA and the industry are going to continue to focus on uh for the rest of this year.

Quant: When you look at it today from a SIFMA priority perspective, a couple that come to mind are, of course, areas like the Confirm modernization. I mean, that's an area we've been talking about for a long time uh within CIFMED as an industry, and hopefully we're able to get some further movement in that area. I think another would definitely be, and we've definitely touched on it here, just around the topics of tokenization and digital assets broadly, and hopefully during this session, the Clarity Act will get over the final hill and we'll be able to see that one take place. Um, but then I would also say when you look broadly at some of the areas in terms of some of the prudential regulation as well, then um another key aspect, and this is an area that I do think that FINRA has shown an openness to more recently than maybe they have in the past, which is being willing to step back and relook at the FINRA arbitration process and how we can improve that as it's really meant to be. And so I think those are a couple areas that initially come to mind.

Byron: Yeah, I think that's uh that's great. And and Deb, from from your perspective, obviously uh from the ops and tech committee, um where are members most focused uh on uh the sort of regulatory and implementation issues when we think about the next sort of 12 months and what that looks like?

Guarino: Yeah, we we talk a lot about how many things are happening simultaneously, and really how do we organize ourselves so we're not looking at each and every initiative independently, right? There is a need to layer this on top of each other so that when we're asking for what we need to ask for, when we're Looking for clarity when we're suggesting enhancements in the rule set that we're not only looking at digital assets and we're not only looking at move to T1 and EMEA, we're combining these things because I think when we have to take that back and operationalize it, these are the same teams who are involved in everything and to look at them one at a time. So I think that's been a big part of our committee conversations. And then I think we are all talking quite a bit about 24-7. What does that mean? How do we put people in all parts of the globe to do things that we've historically done out of the US? Is that okay? It has to be okay. That's where we're moving towards. And so how do we make that okay without introducing risk and making sure that investor protection and our clients are protected with all of that work that we have to do?

Byron: Yeah, and I I think just to build on that, I think what's been interesting for the last couple of years is historically we've had to deal with maybe one or two things over a three or four or five year period. Um, and we've had plenty of runway to kind of deal with them as an industry. If you think around forward, sort of forward looking for the next uh 18 months, we're gonna have 24-hour trading going live in the US, we're gonna have US Treasury clearing going live for cash and repo. Um, we also then have the European move to T plus one later next year. Uh, all of that is within the same, effectively operations teams and technology teams within it within our members. Uh, and that doesn't include the digital asset work and the tokenization work that the similar teams are gonna be working on. Um, so back to that point around just the pace of change and the number of uh independent or different um priorities or regulatory-driven deliverables, I guess, that we're gonna have to deal with. It's fairly unprecedented. Um in addition to just the broad modernization that's taking place across firms and and infrastructure.

Guarino: Sure, we're all doing what DTCC is doing, modernizing our tech stacks. You have to, because we're not equipped to take on all of this at the same time. So it's not just about how do you operationalize it from a technology perspective. Are you spending your tech dollars in the right place? Do you have the right people if you're in there making updates? Are you making all the updates that you need to make in code? Where are you sourcing it? There's a lot of considerations on both sides, and that's where the ops and tech committee kind of merging together. It used to be we talked about tech, we talked about ops. It is blurred. It is one thing now, and it's great.

Byron: So maybe we can just build off the last uh the last section a little bit there. So obviously we we've got the move coming up uh to 24-hour day markets in the US. We've recently gone through the move to T plus one, and both of those are actually going to compress response and recovery times that firms have available in a resiliency type event. In addition to that, we're seeing increased number of fraud attempts, we're seeing increasing cyber uh threats, which only continue to grow in frequency and sophistication. Deb, maybe you could touch on how firms need to think differently about staffing, escalation, monitoring, and recovery, as well as third-party uh coordination in this increasing threat environment.

Guarino: Yeah, I I think we have to take people a little bit out of the equation and use the technology to help us identify these things more quickly. Today, I think a lot of events are identified by an associate who sees something that's wrong. They escalate it, we talk about it, we wait till the end of the day when the market closes, so we have a pause to look at it. That's all out the window. Things are happening in real time now, we're moving to 24-7, we're not going to have this. So I think we're looking at really do you have the right people and do they have the right tools to see things that are going wrong? And that goes back to we'll tie AI into it, right? Do we have things sitting on top of our processes that alert you more, you know, directly that something is going wrong? I think third parties is a really interesting one, Steve, because I know we we focus on that a lot and we talk about that. Partnerships are more important than ever, and understanding the hygiene of those partners that you pick and leveraging people that perhaps are more broadly used throughout the industry. Do you have bespoke relationships there? Understanding what their resiliency plans are and test test test from a business continuity perspective. No test is a waste of time. You need to keep challenging yourself. What would you do? The tabletops are fantastic, the outages, and you know, just I think building that DNA as part of your day-to-day is really important.

Byron: Yeah, I I can I can bring more. Shawn, maybe you could touch a little bit around the the sort of cyber side. Um, you know, obviously cyber risk and fraud were recurring freedom at the conference. Um, what what does the industry need to do to collectively strengthen defenses?

Quant: Yep. Before I touch on that, I just wanted to add one thing kind of with uh in line with where Deb was mentioning, which is really that notion of, and and she touched on it earlier, which is the aspect of now as we move to these 24 by 5, 24 by 7, that natural buffer that we've historically had to resolve things is gone. We we get an hour. Uh and so it's gonna become even more critical now in terms of the resiliency throughout the industry and the work specifically. When you look at the tabletops, you look at Quantum Dawn, you even just look at how the Quantum Dawn exercises have matured over the years. It used to just focus on more specific tabletop exercises of a standard sandy type event. Now we're digging deep into third-party risk and even fourth party risk and how those come into play. And so all of those now in this even more interconnected and real-time environment is going to be critical. And so when you look at that from that cyber and fraud lens now, I think part of it, and this was touched on a number of times at the ops conference, which is our employees are the first line of defense when you look at cyber and you look at a lot of the fraud. You can spend as much as you want. At the end of the day, even when I think it for our own firm, there have been items that have gotten a lot longer through the process than we would have liked. But it was an associate that at the end of the day kind of caught the tail, you know, the cat by the tail and stopped it. And so, first and foremost, is really continuing to educate all of our employees on that role they play. And then it's also the understanding that, once again, kind of tied back into AI, with the ability that a number of these models are now able to do, whether that's impersonating individuals or other, just, you know, whether it's their ability to identify and then uh launch an attack against a vulnerability, et cetera, the only thing that firms can do is just continue to be kind of leaned forward in their posture for how they're managing against these items. Um, the amount of whether it's ACAT or account, you know, takeover items that are happening, and you hear some of the approaches that the bad actors are taking, is just unbelievable that they think of and identify these weaknesses and then go look. So it's really that notion of firms, unfortunately, yes, there is an amount of spend, yes, there is an amount of employee uh education, but part of it is just maintaining that heightened diligence at understanding that these are real issues and concerns.

Byron: And I think you need to make sure you talked about it before solving the right problem, right? Because it's very easy when there are fraud events and cyber events, it becomes a bit of a whack-a-mole because these bad actors are very good and they they pivot very quickly. So, what foundationally should we be looking at? And then the flavor maybe doesn't matter as much. I think back to the regulators and how they're partnering, the Finrefusion Center has been a great uptick for the industry to use, a place for to share information because this community that we all sit in is the best resource that we all have. If it's happening at one firm, it's happening probably at another firm. And that shared knowledge and using SIFMA to maybe bridge that so one firm is not necessarily disclosing publicly, right, is a great forum. Um we should lean on each other in this space.

Quant: I do think there is also an element that from a DNA perspective, I think the operations organizations across the street, it made me think of this when Deb mentioned kind of the whack-a-mole. Because we deal in that every day, we're experienced on the notion you've got to pop your head up above the fray to see the big picture. And I do think that that's probably an area that within organizations, we maybe don't give the operations teams enough credit at their ability every day to be kind of dealing with the amount of issues thrown at them, but yet be able to kind of step back and say, okay, instead of just continuing to try and catch every boulder that comes down the hill, how do I actually shore up the hillside first? And I think that's probably an area that as an industry is going to be an advantage, but probably an area we don't give ourselves enough credit.

Byron: Yeah. And I think one of the things that um that I took from the conference was there's definitely a uh um you know prevailing school of thought now that it's it's not a matter of uh if it's a matter of when something happens. And and that's where I think coming back to these sort of tabletop exercises and beginning to plan uh around that yes, something will happen. It's just bound to at some point. How best do I react and how how much muscle memory do I have? And how is the industry going, how am I going to interact with the industry if something does happen? Uh, I think is sort of critical components for firms to start to think through now, in it in addition to kind of working on their own playbooks.

Quant: And that muscle memory is key. And I know we don't, as a part of kind of some of the events and tabletops, not all firms participate. And I really think it's probably an area that everyone should be stepping in because while, yep, some of the scenarios that are run maybe don't apply to every firm, but just that messel, that muscle memory of continuing to be internally testing your processes, thinking about it, what would we do in that scenario is key.

Guarino: Yeah, it's not a checkbox exercise. It's not a once a year we launched a training, once a year we we performed a test. It has to be continuous, and I agree the scenario may not apply. But the lessons you learn and the best practices that come out of it certainly can be applied in other areas. Yeah.

Byron: So one of the other major themes that emerged from the conference was really the changing role of operations itself. Um, operations is increasingly becoming uh sort of strategic intelligence layer. Um, you know, it's a place where we're connecting data, workflows, turner parties, regulators, clients, uh, supporting businesses. Um, and that shift has a major uh implications for talent that we uh attract and ultimately uh want to maintain within organizations. Shawn, you've talked about building the next generation of operations teams. Can you talk a little bit about how you see that skill set changing?

Quant: For us, for a number of years now, that has really been shifting to not only continuing to build the expertise around the specific operations processes, but in our hiring, looking for individuals that come with some amount of analytics or technology exposure, um, because they're really becoming kind of the change agents looking at the notion of, hey, why do we do it this way? We could be doing X, et cetera. Um, but also I would say as we are continuing to bring more technology-based tools into operations. I mean, let's be honest, to go. When we, if you go back to 30 years ago when I started, the notion of running a macro against a green screen, if you were the person in operations that could write that, you got more free drinks that night at the bar than anybody. Um, but we've evolved from that aspect all the way to where we are today, we're talking about AI and robotics process automation and data analytics. Um, so the type of individual that we're hiring is changing. But I would say also we're having to be much more diligent about how we maintain that institutional knowledge. Whether that is all of a sudden having people do things like calculating margin by hand, assuming that the system may be wrong or not working that day, but because there are a lot of these items that those in senior roles grew up doing, or but those today, it's a black box. And so it's hiring for technology skills, but at the same time making sure that the education program is there to make sure they understand the why they're doing it and not just the how.

Byron: So, Deb, maybe building upon that, what are the committee members saying about talent, AI expertise, data skills, and uh and competing for the next generation of operations professionals?

Guarino: Yeah, I think Shawn touched on a bunch of it, but the talent pool that we're sourcing from is different, that's for sure. But I think it's a blend, and it's really about uplifting your talent overall. And that uplift can come from within your firm, people who have been there for a long time, who have to now think differently, and that's not always an easy thing to do, combined with new people coming in with new skill sets. I think the people who know how it works can get hung up on how it's always worked, but they understand the process. People coming in with a fresh view, whether it is a data background or an infosec background, they'll challenge the process, but they don't necessarily understand the fundamentals or the rules. So I think the talent conversation has been around we know we need to uplift our talent. That doesn't mean replace, it doesn't mean eliminate, it doesn't mean everybody is somebody coming in with a tech background now into ops. It's finding that right balance to make sure that you're uplifting your whole team.

Byron: Yeah, it's in it's interesting because I think a number of um I've got a number of conversations over the past 12 months around how does kind of AI shift the organizational structure, or does it shift the organizational structure within firms? And and you know, people have talked around you. Does it invert the the kind of organizational pyramid now? So you have uh a smaller analyst class and you can have a you know a broader middle and then you have a larger sort of top piece, or does it take the shape of more of a diamond where you have you know small analyst class, big middle, small top again? Um, do you have any thoughts around how that uh how that's going to evolve over time, or or do you think it's too early to tell?

Quant: I think it's too early to tell. I mean, even when I think about it from a Piper Sandler perspective, wow everyone would look at it and say, how can we maybe shrink that base? At the end of the day, across a number of our areas across the firm, it is still very much an apprentice type model. Uh, it takes a number of years to get somebody from an entry level to an MD position. And so understanding that as much as we all like to say that there's no turnover and we're able to keep all of our associates and employees, that's not the case. And so I think, at least from our own perspective, we're still trying to figure out what that looks like, right? Does to your point, does it all of a sudden become a diamond? I think at the end of the day, it's still going to be some type of a pyramid. Um, but I do think we are seeing that the size of classes over time. I mean, we look at it this year, we had our largest intern and our largest kind of analyst class coming in. Do I think we'll be saying that again in another two, three years? Probably not, unless the investments we made really haven't paid off, and then I might be asking one of you for another job. But um, but I think then is the element that we're we're all still trying to figure it out.

Guarino: Yeah, and and I hear it from our interns. I also have a son that just graduated college and his friends, and the questions are always around well, is AI going to take away all the entry-level jobs? You can't get to a higher level in an organization if you don't start someplace. And so I think the answer is it's reshaping those roles. I agree with Shawn, we're doing something wrong if we continue to have to build that population, but pick wisely, uplift the talent pool. You still need that. Um and you have to start someplace, and we're always going to have a need for people to have that opportunity to start with in our industry.

Quant: Yeah, I think I've heard in another a number of different forums over the last, we'll call it 18 months to two years, that as an example, the the role of the software developers gone. Reality is no, even as good as the tools have become, but now is that skill set changing? Are we gonna need somebody that is much higher in their EQ and their human kind of skills and ability to communicate the soft skills versus the technical than we did before? Definitely. Because I do think that what, and you could even apply the same thing when looking at operations professionals, what technology, not just AI, but technology over the last number of years has done is it is really that interaction and kind of symbiotic relationship between technologies and their partners across the firm are getting more and more intertwined than they ever have been in the past. And that's not going to change. And let's be honest, that does require a little bit of a different individual than the classic I sit in a black room with the lights off, kind of uh, and I can get away with saying it, but the old stereotype of a techie sitting in the in the room that it doesn't exist anymore.

Byron: So obviously the SIFMA ops conference is is one moment in the year, um, but the work continues every day through our committees, our advocacy, our research, and our industry coordination. As we've heard throughout this uh the conference, um the future of operations is being built now across firms, across platforms, across systems uh and teams. And SIFMA is certainly proud uh to help bring the ecosystem together um to advance that work. And maybe just as we wrap, maybe um if you could both just share one or two sort of key messages or key themes uh that you would like to leave us with today.

Guarino: I'd say two things. I'd start with don't be a spectator. Right? We're not sitting back and letting this happen to us and watching from the bleachers. We need to be active participants in everything that's going on here. And then I think the second most important thing, because it bears repeating, is the talent is important. And we need to focus on our people and focus on our talent. They're our first line, they're seeing things that are occurring. They're the ones who are going to tell us how this best will all shape together. So I think focusing on our next generation of talent so that when Shawn and I aren't sitting here doing this, the people in the seat can carry this forward.

Quant: Yeah. I think the first point that Deborah touched on there uh is key. If you're not engaged, get engaged. SIFMA provides that platform from an industry perspective. If you don't have employees that are engaged in the different committees or other items going on, now's the time to do it. Um, there is so much as was talked about for years, we've talked about that kind of sequential process of we went from one to the next to the next. That approach right now, with as was talked about, so many different things running in parallel, you can't approach that in the same way and just think about, well, I get somebody to work on that when we get to it. They're all going on. You got to get engaged now. Um, and the other item I would say is, and we've touched on it briefly, um, but is that notion of an underlying component of everything we're talking about that's going to be key is focusing around data and your usage of data, um, and making sure that there's clean data throughout the process. And so when you look across whether it's the move to a shortened settlement, whether it's the move to kind of digital assets or tokens or leveraging AI, they all have a key component in place, which is we're not going to get there as an industry if we're not focusing on data hygiene and leveraging our data assets within our firms.

Byron: Yeah. I think that's a great way, great way to close. So thank you, Shawn and Deb, for joining me today and for your leadership for the SIFMA uh ops and tech community community over the past year. I've certainly enjoyed it. It's been uh it's been a great conversation, so thank you. Um, for more highlights from our SIFMA ops uh and to stay in touch with our team, please read the SIFMA Insights debrief. Um you can watch our main stage sessions live on demand uh and follow SIFMA ops and tech on LinkedIn.