I spent twenty years writing about financial technology — first reporting it at Bank Systems & Technology, then telling customer stories for global technology and consulting companies. Now I build software with AI.
I documented AI, RegTech, and cloud coming to banking twenty-plus years before they arrived; and then worked with the global organization delivering them at scale — TCS Financial Solutions, whose TCS BaNCS platform powers institutions like State Bank of India, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and Standard Chartered, processes corporate actions for 8 of the world’s 10 largest custodians, and reaches billions of people. That’s the vantage point I bring to a financial-services stage — a grounded read on AI from someone who watched this cycle form and is building in it now.
I covered the technology of banking, capital markets, and payments for a print-and-web audience of financial-industry readers — interviewing executives, regulators, and a U.S. senator, and eventually writing the magazine’s editorial column, The Closing Line. A representative sample, quoted from the original articles:
“Our banks are gatekeepers. They’ve got to be much more careful about opening that gate and allowing access to our systems.”
— Sen. Carl Levin, in an interview for the story
What it was: investigative reporting on money-laundering technology as “an industry in its infancy” — before 9/11 made AML a national priority. The RegTech it described is now a $100B+ industry.
Personal financial bots “will emerge as ‘virtual financial intermediaries,’ reshaping the marketplace for financial services… entering into transactions on behalf of consumers.”
What it was: I surfaced Andersen Consulting’s forecast of autonomous financial agents — the robo-advisor / AI-assistant idea — a decade before Betterment and Wealthfront, a quarter-century before AI banking assistants.
Core systems are “written in antiquated programming languages like COBOL, and the skills needed to maintain them are harder and harder to come by.”
— Mark Greene, then GM of IBM’s global banking industry
What it was: I flagged the COBOL / core-banking modernization crunch — now a $50B+ market — fifteen years before COVID-era system failures made it front-page news.
“Attaching storage directly to computers or servers will soon seem as quaint as squirreling money under the mattress.”
What it was: the shared-infrastructure argument (Storage Area Networks) that became the foundation for cloud — the platform banks still run AI on today.
Original issues are archived through library databases (ProQuest); the full set of articles is preserved. Quotations above are checked against the source pieces.
On the strength of that industry knowledge, TCS Financial Solutions brought me in in 2007 to launch and run the TCS BaNCS customer newsletter — the flagship of its customer-engagement program. Across fifteen years it ran to roughly 1,300 pages over 40-plus editions: case studies from client engagements on six continents — from India and Australia to South Africa, Switzerland, the Gulf, and the Americas — C-level interviews, and coverage spanning banking, capital markets, and insurance, including early reporting on blockchain (TCS’s Quartz) and AI in bank operations. I interviewed the customers, drew out the story, and produced the magazine end to end, under deadline and across many stakeholders.
“Based on his industry knowledge from his previous role with Bank Systems & Technology, I turned to Ivan in 2007 to launch the quarterly customer newsletter for TCS Financial Solutions… Ivan is a compelling writer and an insightful editor on a diverse range of topics in banking, capital markets and insurance, and he pushes hard to provide business value on every page… he and his team consistently deliver a high-value, magazine-quality publication that reads well, looks great, and highlights the achievements of TCS Financial Solutions.”
“Ivan manages the TCS BaNCS Customer Newsletter for us and has been closely involved at every stage of the evolution of this rich communication asset… crossing 28 editions last year. He is meticulous and focused and is able to bring out a story in multi-faceted ways, articulating what our customers tell us about their experiences with our solutions… His understanding of the domain and knowledge of market trends makes his writing rich and insightful.”
Two decades of financial-services technology, across the industry’s lines of business — reported as it emerged, then told as it shipped.
Under Model Citizen Developer I build working software with AI and publish the method — the same tools I demo live on stage. The financial-services keynote is the one I’m developing next: what twenty years of documenting banking technology teaches about which AI predictions to believe now. If that’s your audience, I’d like to build it for your room — let’s talk.