Ex-J.P. Morgan CTO: Banks are long way from catching up with Google or Facebook

Author: Dan Butcher / Source: eFinancialCareers

Adi Prakash has spent most of his career working within senior technology roles at large financial institutions. Most recently, he was the chief technology officer of legal and eDiscovery at J.P. Morgan, and for all the talk of banks morphing into technology companies, he says they have a long way to go before they’re real competitors.

“Big banks are bureaucratic and risk-averse, and their sheer size, inertia and machinery prevent them from driving innovation,” he says. “At banks, there is a desire to be innovative, but I think what gets in the way is twofold.

“Over the years there has not been enough investment in technology and the skillsets of the folks working in tech.”

Banks say, “Let’s do what Facebook and Google are doing,” but that takes time and culture change.

Prakash, who also worked at UBS and Och-Ziff Capital Management, is now the chief innovation officer and head of client services at Yerra Solutions. It’s a regulatory technology company that provides consulting, managed services and technology services to global healthcare, pharmaceutical, automotive and financial services clients for legal, eDiscovery and compliance.

“There were disagreements about where I felt we should go and J.P. Morgan felt we needed to be,” Prakash says. “Over the last six months, by virtue of being in my role, I’ve been interacting with various firms, including Yerra, and I feel there is a void to be filled in terms of true innovation.”

A computer scientist who got his start as a software engineering, Prakash moved to New York for grad school, and his first internship was at a hedge fund. After graduation, he worked at General Motors, but felt the pull back to the financial services…

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