At the Forefront: Fintech Conversations

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Melissa Watras, Director of Product at Trillium Surveyor, and Ann Cendejas, Chief Compliance Officer at Tickrs Clearing, to discuss how firms are preparing for the next stage of market oversight as surveillance and best execution analytics come under increasing regulatory and operational scrutiny. The conversation explores what is driving this shift, how expectations have evolved, and why many firms are rethinking long-standing assumptions about their oversight workflows.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Sebastian Good, CEO and Co-Founder of Expero, to discuss how the firm is helping financial institutions transform complex workflows into intuitive, decision-driven experiences. The conversation covers Expero’s recent pivot to focus exclusively on finance, its collaborative, multidisciplinary approach to product design and the growing role of predictive UX and generative AI in shaping the next generation of financial interfaces.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Andrew Kaufman, Founder and CEO of Time to Give Network, to explore how his not-for-profit platform is reshaping professional access by connecting financial services leaders and innovators in ways that generate real social good.

In this episode, Forefront Managing Partner Eric Soderberg sits down with Bin Ren, Founder and CEO of SigTech, to discuss how artificial intelligence and human expertise are coming together to transform capital markets. SigTech’s mission is to help financial institutions harness AI responsibly – using specialized, goal-driven agents to accelerate complex workflows while keeping people at the center of the process.

STA President & CEO Jim Toes previews the 92nd Annual Market Structure Conference, covering tokenization, regulation, Women in Finance, and more.

In this episode, Forefront VP and Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by David Choate, Chief Operating Officer at CAPIS, and Tim Conway, Director of Plan Sponsor Services at CAPIS, for a conversation about CAPIS’ recent acquisition of TD Securities’ plan sponsor services business. The discussion explores why the move made strategic sense, how the integration has unfolded and what it means for CAPIS’ clients and long-term growth.

In this episode, Forefront VP and Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Martina Rejsjö, Head of Product Strategy at Eventus, and Vinod Jain, Strategic Advisor at Datos Insights, for a deep dive into the current and future state of trade surveillance. The conversation centers on insights from their newly released research report, The Trade Surveillance Revolution, based on in-depth interviews with 20 global sell-side institutions. The group discusses the factors driving firms to modernize their surveillance programs and how AI is changing the game, with explainability and governance as key pillars.

In this episode, Forefront VP and Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Mike Conover, Founder and CEO of Brightwave — the AI-powered research platform helping institutional investors uncover insights faster and with more confidence. The conversation covers the evolving role of AI in finance, why usability has become a turning point for adoption , and how Brightwave is enabling teams to go deeper with less manual effort.

Forefront's Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Rob Cope, Head of Business Development at Trillium Surveyor and John Willock, Head of Strategy at Blue Ocean Technologies to discuss their new partnership and what it means for trading.

In this special CMO Edition of the podcast, Forefront co-Managing Partner Eric Soderberg sits down with Mireille Adebiyi, Chief Marketing Officer at Regnology, to discuss how to effectively manage brand building during acquisitions and leverage data for optimized decision-making in a digital-first world.