About Schmidt

Deutsche Bank recently saw the departure of Glenn Schmidt, a senior technical officer and director of Global Securities Services. Schmidt left the firm to join Innovest Systems, a New York City-based trust-accounting and reporting-systems vendor.

In addition to maintaining the vendor's current client relationships, Schmidt will oversee a technology team to bring new clients up to speed by converting legacy systems onto Innovest's platform.

Schmidt explains why he was ready to make the switch from the firm side to the vendor side. "Part of my frustration on the firm side was that technology was still antiquated," he says. "The appeal of coming here was being able to push out new technology into the trust industry."

The trust industry tends to lag behind the brokerage or online-banking industries, Schmidt adds. For this reason, he says, the trust market is poised to make an investment in technological systems and real-time processing.

Schmidt says he will tap into his Deutsche Bank experience, as well as his prior years spent at industry vendors, in order to help bridge the gap between operations and technology.

However, the future holds its share of challenges for the newest Innovest employee, who expects hesitation from an industry filled with basic legacy systems.

Implementation is only half the battle, compared to the client realization of the power of new trust technology, Schmidt says. "The first hurdle is getting it installed, and the second is getting people to use all of the components."