Navigating the Next Era of Capital Markets Operations

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery at the 2026 Operations Conference & Exhibition

Good morning. It is my great pleasure to welcome all of you to SIFMA’s Operations Conference and Exhibition.

Before we begin today, I would like to thank our sponsors and exhibitors for their support of SIFMA. Please take some time to visit the exhibit hall over the next few days during the breaks and receptions to meet and learn about these firms, who provide critical services to our industry.

I also want to extend my thanks to all of our speakers, without whom we could not provide such relevant and useful programming.

I would also like to recognize and thank the members of SIFMA’s Operations and Technology Committee for their engagement and support in developing the content for this event, not to mention their work throughout the year on behalf of the industry. In particular, I would call out the leadership of the Committee: chair Debra Guarino from BNY Pershing and vice-chair Mike Fiscella from Jefferies, along with SIFMA Board director Shawn Quant from Piper Sandler, who is chair of the Operations and Technology Board Subcommittee

I would like to share with this group that, since we last met, we launched the SIFMA’s Emerging Innovators Award to recognize a next gen leader who is driving meaningful change and transformation at their firm. The 2025 recipient was Bruno Gold, Vice President of Global Equities Operations Transformation at J.P. Morgan Chase, we encourage all members to participate in the 2026 Award which will be launching shortly after Ops.

I also want to take a moment and commend my SIFMA colleagues for their hard work and dedication in once again putting on a tremendous conference. Specifically, my colleagues Steve Byron and his Operations and Technology team, Salvatore Chiarelli and his Conferences and Events team, and Cheryl Crispen and her Communications and Marketing team. These are a dedicated and outstanding group of people who make this event such a success and contribute to SIFMA’s overall mission of advocating for effective and resilient capital markets.

For 53 years, we have gathered at the Ops Conference to talk about the challenges and opportunities shaping our industry. Much of what we will discuss over the next three days could not have been imagined ten years ago, never mind 50. That is not a small thing. It is a measure of how much the world has changed, and at an ever more rapid pace, and why conversations like the ones we will have here matter more than ever.

Few people have had a front-row seat to the transformation of capital markets the way operations professionals have. You have lived through the mechanics of every major shift. I am thinking of the move to electronic trading, the acceleration of settlement cycles, the rise of ETFs and derivatives, the rewiring of post-trade infrastructure, and many others.

You are not observers, but rather the people who have to make it work, day in and day out. If anyone in the industry understands how far we have come, and how much has changed beneath the surface, it is the professionals gathered in this room.

That experience is exactly what this conference is built on. You are here with colleagues from the full capital markets ecosystem—broker-dealers, banks, wealth and asset managers, vendors, market utilities, and regulators—to go deeper on the issues shaping tomorrow’s markets: artificial intelligence moving from experimentation to real-world implementation, digital assets and extended trading hours reshaping post-trade workflows, increasing need for resiliency and cybersecurity, because every new opportunity brings with it new threats. We are also in the midst of regulatory change touching nearly every corner of market infrastructure. And with Treasury clearing deadlines set for December 2026 for cash Treasuries and June 2027 for repo markets, we are in the midst of one of the most significant changes to market infrastructure in recent years. As you know, SIFMA has taken the lead role on guiding the implementation of Treasury clearing, including the development of a playbook developed by Steve and his team, and have also taken the lead on standardized documentation, led by, among others, Rob Toomey who is here with us today, including “done with” trades which we have already published. SIFMA is working on standardized documentation for “done away” trades and we encourage you to stay tuned for its release later this month.

These are SIFMA’s priorities because they are the industry’s priorities. And there is no better group to work through them than the people in this room.

And, with that, it is my great pleasure to kick off today’s programming with our first speaker, Liz Ann Sonders. Liz Ann is the Chief Investment Strategist in the Schwab Center for Financial Research, where she has a has a range of investment strategy responsibilities, from market and economic analysis to investor education, all focused on the individual investor. Please join me in welcoming Liz Ann Sonders to the stage.