889: Whetting Wall Street’s Tech Appetite | Ben Chrnelich, CFO, Symphony

When Ben Chrnelich tells us that the banking sector’s recent unrest is the third period of disruption that he’s “cycled through” during his finance career, we can’t help but wonder about the other two. Of course, they are hardly a secret. As did that of many of his CFO peers, Chrnelich’s early career appears to have weathered no shortage of economic hijinks, thanks to the dotcom bubble (2002) and Wall Street’s subprime mortgage crisis (2008). “The opportunity to be sort of at the epicenter of these events really allowed me to form my risk assessment as a CFO and be able to better assess where we are on any given business cycle,” comments Chrnelich, who was working for Lehman Brothers when the investment house collapsed in 2008. Unlike many of his Lehman colleagues, Chrnelich was able to find a silver lining in Wall Street’s economic turmoil—in his case, this took the form of employment as CFO of a technology business created by NYSE to serve Wall Street clients. Known as NYSE Technologies, the business was established to target revenue opportunities for a number of software technologies that NYSE had developed in-house, as well as a number that had been acquired by NYSE. “For me, it was an opportunity to transition into a CFO role with a company that had lots of capital already invested and the support of NYSE,” recalls Chrnelich, who served as CFO of the company for roughly 6 years. In February of 2020, Chrnelich was named CFO of Symphony, which offers secure messaging and other collaboration tools for bankers and those who work with them. Three years and a number of acquisitions later, Symphony has powered up its AI strategy as it pursues its goal of providing more actionable insights to portfolio managers. Reports Chrnelich: “We know specifically what they need, and we’re getting more face time and consideration by buyers than ever before.” –Jack Sweeney