Don Canning Emerges in Insurance

Don Canning has become a director for the insurance industry within the worldwide financial services group at Microsoft. He reports to Dennis Maroney, managing director of insurance for the worldwide financial services group, who had this to say about Canning joining the group, “We are pleased to have someone with Don’s deep industry and technical knowledge join our group and his knowledge of emerging solutions in such spaces as BI and grid computing is already making an impact.”

In his new role, Canning is focusing on the expansion of Microsoft’s Insurance Value Chain (IVC) of partners dedicated to combining Microsoft technology and industry standards such as ACORD to deliver innovative solutions.

In his career with Microsoft, Canning has focused on Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team (EBT), providing venture capitalist future product map strategies, and identifying opportunities across financial services (insurance, banking, and capital markets). Among the areas where the EBT has identified opportunities are epayments, enterprise content management, business intelligence, enterprise risk management and compliance.

Canning has also been active in the development of high-performance computing and grid virtualization alliances helping enterprises gain agility with alternatives to traditional IT practices. He held roles for joint investment strategies and initiatives between global partners representing Microsoft’s interest in the development of enterprise systems business software and insurance assets.

Previously, he spent seven years at Prudential Financial, where he rose to CTO of group insurance reporting to the COO in charge of information assets. Overall, he has more than 25 years of IT experience, the last 15 in senior management across banking and insurance, engaged in the development and support of connected systems. His experience includes technology support of life science information systems, bank credit card systems, retail & (CTO) institutional insurance, corporate IT, as well as architecture of multi-terabyte BI data warehouses.

Koen Van den Brande Becomes Microsoft’s CTO for EMEA Financial Services

Koen Van den Brande, a Microsoft veteran, has rejoined the company as CTO of financial services for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Van den Brande will be responsible for working with Microsoft customers, partners and international financial standards bodies as well as Microsoft product groups on defining and executing Microsoft’s technology strategy across EMEA.

Van den Brande rejoins Microsoft from Polaris, India, where he was product group president and CTO, responsible for managing a team of 800 people, consisting of product managers, architects, software engineers and implementation services teams. While at Polaris he led the launch of Intellect Suite, a set of products covering retail, private as well as treasury and corporate banking requirements, and rolled out Smart Build, a service-oriented architecture-based initiative across the entire Polaris organization of 6,000 associates focused exclusively on financial services.

In 2004 Van den Brande was Microsoft’s strategist for retail banking in EMEA and helped define the company’s vision for the bank branch of the future. Previously, he spent 16 years at Misys plc, in roles that included director of marketing and product strategy for retail banking, where he was responsible for building up the Misys retail banking business.

Anders Abrahamsson, managing director for Microsoft EMEA financial services said, “We are delighted that Koen is back on the team, bringing extensive executive experience, and financial services industry business and technology competence.”

Hurdis Heads Metavante’s Expanded Image Solutions

Metavante has tapped Brian C. Hurdis, a 25-year banking and financial technology industry professional, to be president of Metavante Image Solutions. The Oklahoma City-based division has approximately 1,000 employees, and facilities in Dallas, Herndon, VA, Longmont, CO, Memphis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Norman, OK.

Hurdis has been with Metavante since 1999, when he joined the company as vice president of technology operations and architecture for e-finance solutions. Most recently he has served as general manager of Metavante’s item processing and SendPoint product lines. With the move to his new role, the company is expanding the Metavante Image Solutions division to include the item processing and SendPoint distributed capture product lines that Hurdis had previously overseen. SendPoint is Metavante’s outsourced distributed check-image capture service that allows financial institutions and their commercial customers to capture, receive, and aggregate check image deposits from anywhere payment capture occurs. Distributed capture has been one of the company’s fastest-growing product lines.

Hurdis succeeds Gary L. Nelson who had overseen the creation of the Metavante Image Solutions division from four acquired companies, one of which he had co-founded. Nelson has retired and will pursue volunteer positions.

Cosentino and Chalmers Join Symbility Solutions

Mobile claims systems provider Symbility Solutions, a Microsoft Insurance Value Chain (IVC) partner, has added Rocky Cosentino as regional sales vice president and David Chalmers as vice president of business development and marketing.

Cosentino joins Symbility from enterprise resource planning vendor Epicor Software Corporation, which also claims Symbility president Boris Znebel as an alum. Znebel left Epicor for Symbility Solutions last year.

Cosentino will head Symbility’s Chicago office. At Epicor, Cosentino was director of strategic accounts, where he had global responsibility for securing new business.

“Having worked with him for the past 10 years, I know he will be a driving force behind expanding Symbility’s market penetration,” Znebel says.

In his business development and marketing role, Chalmers will lead all market development activities and core strategies, while continuing to drive Symbility’s brand exposure, and industry adoption of its wireless technology.

Prior to joining Symbility, Chalmers was vice president at Research in Motion (RIM), a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Chalmers was responsible for operational management of nine International Carriers and Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) from Canada to Venezuela. Chalmers was part of the executive team that saw RIM grow revenues from $300 million plus to $658 million.

“David rounds out our senior management team with wireless expertise and excellence in market strategy,” says Znebel.

Misys Makes Changes, Adds Three New Execs

In the past several months Misys has added a new chief financial officer, a new head of strategy and a new head of core banking. Jim Malone joins the board as CFO on June 18. On March 5, Paul Musselman was appointed as executive vice president of strategy and corporate development and Guy Warren began with the company as executive vice president and general manager of core banking.

Malone joins from Trizetto, an information technology company for the health insurance payer community, where he had been CFO since 2004 and had reduced cost and delivered improved financial performance. Malone replaces Howard Evans and joins the company just as it announced it will sell its Sesame support services business for independent financial advisors to Friends Provident. The proceeds of the transaction will be used to reduce Misys’ gross borrowing.

In the announcement of his hiring, Malone stated, “I am extremely excited to be joining Misys at this early stage of its turnaround program.”

Musselman joins from IBM where he worked for six years and was most recently vice president in the global services organization with global responsibility for complex commercial transactions and partnerships. Mussleman joined IBM’s corporate development at the world headquarters and went on to lead IBM’s corporate development team for EMEA based in Paris. Days after his hire the company announced a new strategic plan that included partnerships, collaborations and capturing emerging market opportunities.

Warren was most recently chief executive of LogicaCMG UK, having previously led their financial services business. Prior to that, he ran the banking practice of Unisys in Europe. Misys plc chief executive Mike Lawrie said, “Guy will bring fresh energy and new ideas to the company as part of the seasoned executive team we are building. He will help develop and execute our game plan and deliver with the passion and commitment we need to ensure the business performs at a higher level in all areas.”