Tom will oversee CLS’s technology and information security strategy and operations. He will be responsible for ensuring the continued delivery of stable, resilient and effective IT services,applications and infrastructure, commensurate with CLS’s role as a systemically important financial market infrastructure. He will also play a central role in supporting CLS’s efforts to continue delivering market-wide solutions that provide transparency, mitigate risk and enable business growth for the FX market.

Tom joins CLS from IT and business consulting services firm CGI, where he was Chief Technology Officer of the Finance and Insurance Group, responsible for leading the global software engineering team and overseeing numerous finance and insurance products. In his nearly 30 years of working in financial services, he has held two Chief Information Officer roles at TD Bank Group, including Chief Information Officer for the US bank. Previously he was a Senior Technology Executive for Bank of America.

Commenting on the appointment, Marc Bayle de Jessé, Chief Executive Officer, CLS, said: “Tom’s appointment is of critical importance to CLS. A robust technology platform has always been at the core of CLS, both for our settlement services and now CLSNet, the first global FX market enterprise application running on blockchain in production. Tom will oversee the continued implementation of CLS’s multi-year program to deliver a single platform supporting CLSSettlement, CLSNow and CLSClearedFX as well as the further development of CLSNet.”

Thomas Barkhuff, Chief Information Officer, CLS, added: “As the FX market continues to undergo structural and regulatory change, technology plays a crucial role in the evolution of market infrastructures. CLS has successfully adopted existing and new technologies to bring innovative solutions to the FX industry in settlement, processing and data. In partnership with the Technology division, I look forward to further developing our infrastructure to support our clients and the market.”