Tanya, who leads the Information Services unit, talks about her day-to-day job, and explains why she enjoys getting her hands dirty with data.
Born in Germany, I grew up in Greece and studied in the UK – After my Bachelor’s in Business Administration – Finance & Accounting (The University of Sheffield) and a Master’s in Finance (The University of Manchester), I moved to Luxembourg in 2003 to start a 5 month-training at Eurostat, which eventually ended-up to be a six-year permanent contract.
I then worked for a Luxembourg-based British multinational asset management company. My main missions there consisted in performance calculation and reporting on asset allocation. This included a lot of data mining and crunching, and a permanent interaction with the custodians, clients, and portfolio managers.
After 7 years, I felt I knew everything about the job. I had to see and learn something else!
Fundsquare gave me the opportunity to grow – I joined the company in 2017 as a Senior Data Management Officer, a position that was totally new for me. Working in a new environment sounded very promising: It was, for me, a great chance to diversify and grow my personal and professional skills.
There is a unique chemistry at Fundsquare – Certainly due to its small size, you can get the opportunity to use your potential in the best possible way.
At Fundsquare, you can grow, you can be seen. If you are good at something, you will receive recognition and be positively encouraged to further develop your competencies and skills. This is something that I would not dream of if I were working in a larger company.
I am where I am today because my management was and still is inclusive, encouraging, and empowering. I feel very appreciated. This type of leadership is what makes Fundsquare a special place to work.
I am currently leading the Information Services unit (IS) – I supervise 3 teams and 14 people. Our data feeds team is responsible for our clients who directly obtain their data from our platform, among other big data vendors such as Bloomberg, Six Financial Information, Thomson Reuters, ICE, etc.
Our dissemination and publication team is dealing with clients who have mandated Fundsquare to transmit their data to their end users on their behalf. In other words, we are pushing the data they requested onto their platforms that serve their own customers.
Tanya Petridou
Head, Information Services
Business Unit
We put all of our integrity and personal responsibility in everything we do
Our disclosure management team oversees managing the set-ups for disclosure management solution and ensuring that the disseminations comply with clients and their distribution network expectations. Concretely we onboard clients’ NAVs, static and documentary data. We control the information and then make that available to data vendors and platforms via our disseminations.
For any information and documents, we support, we check and make sure that the information is intelligible before integrating it in our internal database. We then convert it according to the platforms’ specific templates upon our customers’ requests. The data is then sent out via our dissemination engine.
My day-to-day knows no routine – An ordinary day includes many internal meetings regarding the onboarding of new customers.
I also meet our external clients, who might need training and guidance with our systems. I also keep track of the ongoing status throughout the onboarding process.
I regularly meet different units within Fundsquare, to ensure that our bespoke products and services fulfill our clients’ needs and expectations.
I enjoy getting my hands dirty with data – I like being hands on and don’t hesitate to jump in and support my teams when need be.
More particularly, I like to jump in and deal with the data, i.e., to perform the quality checks and ensure that they are accurate, before their integration into our own database and their dissemination to our data vendors and clients.
The data quality check means controlling, for instance, that information is correct, and taking specific actions like responding to clients’ requests, as well as providing them more explanations concerning the variations of the fund values.
IS plays a very crucial role in Fundsquare’s value chain – We are client-facing, and we directly represent Fundsquare. We are the ones to whom our customers revert when submitting a request or reporting an issue or, when they need training. We also are the ones who take responsibility for onboarding new IS clients, working with them throughout this transition phase from their former data professionals to us.
Tanya Petridou
Head, Information Services
Business Unit
In my team, we are 4 women, but we count for 10.
Through our jobs, we get to know the client very well and understand their needs and expectations.
It is our daily duty to support our vision– Fundsquare’s mission is to become a centralized platform, while providing the best quality services to our stakeholders and clients. We try to provide them the best possible mutualization and combine it with the best tailor-made processes that respond to their individual needs. In everything we do, we include our integrity and personal responsibility. We are very effective and highly productive; For that, we have the right people at the right place.
We are 4 from Greece – But more than being Greek or a woman, it is all about the personality you bring to your organization, your teams, and colleagues. I am very lucky that this fits the Fundsquare company culture, which is based on diversity of people, nationalities, and cultures.
My staff is, of course, very happy when I bake tiropitakia, a Greek pastry made with layers of buttered phyllo and filled with a cheese-egg mixture. I think that people in Fundsquare enjoy Greek food and flavors.
Being a woman in my job makes no difference – Managing a team, standing in front of a CEO or talking to a client… It is all about whether you have the knowledge, the experience, and the guts. It is about whether you can do the job properly while being honest with your team, clients, and colleagues. This is what matters the most to me.
But nevertheless: In my team, we are only 4 women, but we count for 10!
And when I do not work, I paint and enjoy being with my family – During the lockdown, I started to paint with my 5-year-old son, who did not want to draw alone. I use acrylic and I like to paint landscapes.
It is a way to occupy myself creatively, to have my ‘Me-time’ and make my brain stop thinking constantly and meditate. Let’s see whether this will become a hobby one day”.
