After five years as director in charge of data quality at Citi, Geert Berlanger is heading for pastures new. Berlanger, who has been heavily engaged in the firm’s counterparty data management project over the last few years (it was kicked off by chief data officer John Bottega back in 2007), will be leaving the firm on 8 July.
At Citi, the initial focus of the counterparty data management project was on achieving a unique identifier for entity data across the firm as a whole. As a result of the work, the firm is also able to take downstream feedback regarding data items and build new controls into the data management process in order to ensure a consistent level of data quality. The latter part of the project has involved working with Avox and Markit to normalise and validate Citi’s customer data and documentation.
Berlanger worked alongside ex-Citi global head of customer data Julia Sutton, before she moved on to Royal Bank of Canada in 2009, and was heavily involved in the communication process with the internal end users. The team also spent a long time developing a certified gold copy customer database, in order to provide an intuitive, easy to use search system for end users. They worked with Microsoft FAST Search technology and Search Business Consulting (SBC) to integrate two customer information sources and achieve a golden copy record of this data.
Prior to joining Citi, Berlanger was principal consultant at consultancy firm Capco for a period of eight years. Before this, he was a senior consultant at systems integrator and professional services firm Cimad in Belgium, which was later acquired by and became a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM, for three years.
