Interview: Stephen Wooden, chief working officer, Rathbones Asset Administration
“I am not your common COO [chief operating officer],” says Stephen Wooden, COO at Rathbones Asset Administration (RAM), a part of the Rathbones funding group.
With 28 years of expertise in monetary companies, he has detailed data of enterprise operations. Nonetheless, it’s his consciousness of digital and knowledge that marks him out as a brand new breed in his position.
“I’ve labored in all places from inventory exchanges to knowledge distributors to funding banks to purchase aspect to brokers,” says Wooden. “I’ve labored in entrance workplace, again workplace, center workplace, product, know-how and operations, so I’ve bought fairly a broad background. However most of my profession has been in knowledge roles.”
At RAM, Wooden helps the remainder of the enterprise exploit its info. In addition to constructing sturdy knowledge foundations, his workforce is starting to discover a spread of rising applied sciences.
Wooden recognises that the trendy definition of digital transformation is contested and knowledge leaders should examine a large gamut of applied sciences.
“We’re beginning to get into synthetic intelligence (AI), quantum, tokenisation, all these different issues,” he says.
“We’re occupied with all of that collectively, and AI, and the platforms, and the brokers, and the whole lot are only a part of that broader know-how technique.”
Melding operations and knowledge
Wooden began his profession as an information analyst working in-house and finishing consultancy work for a spread of organisations, together with a stint with software program growth agency CQG, which helped foster his curiosity in know-how.
“I turned the European purposes specialist and taught individuals code algorithmic buying and selling techniques,” he says.
“I self-taught myself loads of know-how and have all the time had a tech edge. I’m in a particular place of having the ability to converse tech, however convert it into enterprise, and work each methods.”
In 2012, Wooden joined Deutsche Financial institution as international head of market knowledge, which he describes as an fascinating position as a result of it allowed him to handle a self-contained space of the enterprise. It was right here that Wooden began to meld operational consciousness with knowledge savviness.
“You have bought a finance workforce, you’ve bought a enterprise analyst workforce, you’ve bought the manufacturing atmosphere of the info infrastructure, you’ve bought the engineering workforce, you’ve bought all these totally different elements, reminiscent of administration, after which it’s a must to affect the enterprise to regulate their budgets, so it’s very a lot a sales-type position whereas working a enterprise inside a enterprise,” he says.
“I used to be introduced in to construct out the portfolio administration system, after which, due to my background in knowledge, I noticed we wanted to develop an information technique. I constructed out an information perform, took on extra accountability, after which turned the COO”
Stephen Wooden, Rathbones Asset Administration
After a interval with net tech agency OpenFin, Wooden joined Rathbones in 2021. He fulfilled the tasks of his present position by means of 2025 earlier than being appointed to the COO place at RAM formally in April 2026.
“I used to be introduced in to construct out the portfolio administration system, after which, due to my background in knowledge, I noticed we wanted to develop an information technique,” he says. “I constructed out an information perform, took on extra accountability, after which turned the COO.”
Wooden says he relishes the alternatives that the position brings. Being COO of RAM means working in a smaller agency inside the security, construction and oversight of the larger Rathbones enterprise.
“You’ve bought all of the instruments that you would be able to lean on if it’s essential – you’ve bought the insurance policies which might be set centrally; you’ve bought the monetary construction of an even bigger organisation, however we have now our personal board,” he says.
“We will run ourselves as a enterprise,” provides Wooden. “And we may be progressive and dynamic. We’re usually a frontrunner for lots of the tech that occurs within the broader organisation, as a result of we are able to roll it out, present the worth of it, after which that worth may be pushed out throughout the broader and greater enterprise.”
Overseeing strategic change
Wooden says his day-to-day position covers the oversight and management of exterior enterprise relationships. He describes RAM as a closely outsourced enterprise for back-office, middle-office, buying and selling and funding operations. His workforce additionally takes care of the agency’s Charles River portfolio administration system.
Different tasks embody managing knowledge and reporting, pursuing change and transformation, and serving to to develop a long-term know-how technique in partnership with group chief know-how officer Brad Novak. Wooden experiences to RAM CEO Tom Carroll, who experiences to Rathbones CEO Jonathan Sorrell.
Constructing an inside knowledge infrastructure has been a long-term strategic purpose for RAM, says Wooden. Throughout the previous 12 months, this course of has reached a stage the place the remainder of the organisation can leverage the techniques to create advantages.
“While you’re sitting inside a enterprise, you’re doing this work within the background, and folks don’t totally perceive it, as a result of that’s not their space of experience,” he says.
“They see the spend and folks coming in. However the previous 12 months has proven why we have been doing all these items, and we’ve generated vital efficiencies inside the enterprise.”
The info foundations that Wooden and his workforce have constructed are an enormous break from the previous. When he joined RAM, he found a easy strategy to info administration, the place knowledge was usually held in Excel spreadsheets and PDF paperwork. The transformation strategy they’ve taken includes utilizing best-of-breed applied sciences.
“We use Snowflake as the info cloud,” he says. “We’re beginning to leverage the AI instruments on high of that platform. We use Alteryx as an ETL [extract, transform, load] and automation platform. We’ve bought Experian Aperture Knowledge Studio, which does loads of our knowledge high quality, knowledge catalogue and knowledge lineage. We additionally use MuleSoft on the group stage for integration.
“We’ve additionally hung out constructing out MSCI BarraOne as our quant threat platform for efficiency attribution. We’ve now bought all that knowledge sharing to Snowflake. We constructed dashboards off the again of that effort. These dashboards permit us to do much more granular analytics to present the fund managers extra perception into their fashions and the way in which that issues are working.”
Constructing on the foundations
Wooden says the shift to Snowflake started two years in the past, when the broader Rathbones group started deploying the AI Knowledge Cloud platform. He steered to senior executives at group stage that RAM may use the know-how to handle its knowledge headache.
“What we don’t have is Snowflake engineers who can bodily go and do a number of the issues that we have to,” he says.
“Subsequently, we depend on going again into the group to try this work,” provides Wooden. “However we do have direct entry to our surroundings; we are able to construct pipelines by means of Alteryx, for instance. So, we are able to handle our surroundings. And that strategy has allowed us to proceed shifting ahead.”
Wooden’s organisation has arrange 9 datasets within the Snowflake knowledge platform. These datasets cowl a spread of areas, together with efficiency, threat, sustainability and unstructured info, reminiscent of the selections behind the agency’s funding actions. Now the purpose is to make use of these foundations to assist the organisation embrace rising applied sciences, reminiscent of agentic AI.
“Due to the maturity of the info infrastructure and what we’ve constructed out, we’re capable of begin leveraging AI in an actual means slightly than simply the concept the place persons are simply it,” he says.
“What we’re actually fascinated about is how we supercharge the entrance workplace, the product specialists, the gross sales and distribution groups, whereas having a pointy give attention to our backside line by way of our value base.”
Wooden says RAM is raring to scale its enterprise and enhance its complete property below administration. Nonetheless, because the enterprise scales, the agency is raring to maintain prices in examine – and that’s the place the exhausting work from his knowledge workforce ought to pay dividends. Wooden expects this refined strategy to proceed because the enterprise concentrates on long-term progress.
“As more cash is invested into our funds, which clearly makes us extra worthwhile, the price of enterprise goes up considerably,” he says.
“Most individuals throw human sources at that problem. Our purpose has all the time been during the last 4 or 5 years to give attention to how we are able to minimise that expenditure enhance and nonetheless get the advantages of progress.”
Persevering with the journey
Wooden says his agency’s agentic explorations are already underway. The organisation has a check atmosphere for Snowflake’s CoWork, the software program agency’s private agent for data employees, and CoCo, its coding agent for builders and knowledge engineers. This check atmosphere is working with thousands and thousands of rows of information.
RAM’s agentic explorations are a part of a wider sectoral step in direction of rising applied sciences. Analyst Forrester recognises monetary companies has been characterised as sluggish to undertake brokers. Nonetheless, progressive finance corporations are constructing agentic capabilities tailor-made to the sector’s calls for for precision, compliance, auditability and reliability.
As a senior knowledge chief within the business, Wooden recognises that exams with companies like CoCo and CoWork present how his agency may bolster its resource-constrained engineering sources with agentic functionality. Nonetheless, it’s additionally essential to put AI explorations inside a broader context.
“One of many issues that we’ve been occupied with is how agentic AI essentially modifications your whole working mannequin as a enterprise,” he says.
“When you roll ahead and actually reap the benefits of the know-how, then your material specialists develop into specialists in managing brokers and making certain they’re repeatedly skilled with the most recent info to have the ability to produce the most effective outputs. So, it’s a large shift.”
The watchword, due to this fact, is warning. Whereas Wooden and his workforce at RAM usually pioneer knowledge deployments inside the Rathbones group, it’s essential to keep in mind that embracing rising know-how requires a give attention to the weather that matter most to the executives who run the organisation.
“We predict huge, however we’re nonetheless a small enterprise,” he says. “We need to transfer rapidly, however on the identical time, we’re smart concerning the issues that we do.
“We nonetheless have to give attention to management environments and compliance. I’ve spoken to many individuals within the monetary companies business. We’re beginning to perceive what we have to do, however we’re not there but. We’re originally of the journey.”
