About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Symphony Adds Levy as President as Usage Surges due to Covid-19

Subscribe to our newsletter

Symphony has bolstered its leadership team with the addition of Brad Levy, who joins the collaboration platform as president and chief commercial officer. Levy, who was most recently a partner at IHS Markit, will focus on expanding the company’s commercial offering in the capital markets segment.

The announcement comes as Symphony reports significant growth in usage by its clients – among them JP Morgan, Barclays and Goldman Sachs – as firms grapple with working from home in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Symphony reported record growth numbers in Q1 2020, with more than half a million licensed users, a 42% increase in daily active users and a 280% increase in messages sent.

According to CEO David Gurlé, “When Covid-19 hit we quickly realised clients would rely on remote operations. We saw a major jump in volume in March. From a capacity standpoint, many firms hadn’t anticipated what was coming in their BCP plans, so they relied on us. We found our choice of AWS and Google infrastructure to be a good one, particularly since many CIOs had indicated they’d use public cloud only in an ‘over my dead body’ situation.”

With the ‘emergency’ aspect of Covid-19 behind it, Symphony is now looking to add value in terms of work flow automation, which helps firms streamline their operations. Levy will be charged with tapping this momentum in customer demand for secure and compliant collaboration integrated with automated workflows.

During his tenure at IHS Markit, Levy also served as CEO of MarkitSERV and global head of its loan settlement and software services division. Earlier in his career, he spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, culminating in his role as managing director and global head of Goldman’s Principal Strategic Investments Group.

Levy currently serves as Chairman Emeritus of FINOS, the Fintech Open Source Foundation, as well as a member of the Technology Advisory Committee of the US Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and chairman of its Distributed Ledger Subcommittee.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Enhancing trader efficiency with interoperability – Innovative solutions for automated and streamlined trader desktop and workflows

Traders today are expected to navigate increasingly complex markets using workflows that often lag behind the pace of change. Disconnected systems, manual processes, and fragmented user experiences create hidden inefficiencies that directly impact performance and risk management. Firms that can streamline and modernise the trader desktop are gaining a tangible edge – both in speed...

BLOG

What to Expect at A-Team Group’s AI in Capital Markets Summit – New York, June 26, 2025

On June 26th, the A-Team Group brings its AI in Capital Markets Summit to New York City for the first time. The event will be held at @Ease on Third Avenue for a packed day of strategy, insight, and implementation. As artificial intelligence matures from early-stage experimentation to enterprise-wide deployment, capital markets firms face a...

EVENT

Data Management Summit New York City

Now in its 15th year the Data Management Summit NYC brings together the North American data management community to explore how data strategy is evolving to drive business outcomes and speed to market in changing times.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...