Jerry O’Sullivan, an Associate Partner in our Financial Services Consulting practice, shares his career story – read it here, or watch his short video at the end of this post.
After joining EY as a graduate, I studied to be a chartered management accountant. Once I qualified, I took some of the opportunities that are available to work in other EY offices globally. I spent time in South Africa, Switzerland and London before returning to Dublin to take over the leadership of the technology risk team.
The work that we do is a combination of consulting work and assurance work, and we provide services in technology risk, technology security and technology audit for our clients. We work with firms from across all sectors in financial services, including banking and capital markets, insurance, asset managers and clients who provide payment services.
We’re a diverse group in terms of gender diversity and ethnic diversity. We bring a lot of different perspectives and different experiences to our client engagements, which is always helpful. We’re a very collaborative team, too – we spend time brainstorming and workshopping different ideas. It’s important that there’s knowledge sharing about different projects and challenges, that people are consulting with each other and leveraging that broader experience within the team to bring the best solution to the client. We’re often out on client sites, but technology is a great help – skype, IM, email and conference calls all enable our people to stay connected to what’s going on across the other teams and back in the office.
One of the key hot topics in our area is the digitalisation of the financial services sector – a lot of our clients are moving towards the provision of more products and services online and through smartphone apps, and that requires an upgrade of their processes and systems. We help them to do that in a way that manages the risk associated with moving from their old legacy environment to new digital platforms.
For a successful career in technology risk, I think that problem-solving and analytical skills are very important. We’re looking for people who have the required technical knowledge, but who also understand business issues, so that they can relate to the clients’ challenge and engineer a solution.
It’s very rewarding to help clients unpick the challenges that they face and navigate to a satisfactory outcome. As a member of the leadership team, it’s highly satisfying to see people grow and develop, expanding their knowledge-base and their networks, as they progress through their EY journey.
If you are interested in a career with EY Financial Services Ireland, we are recruiting now for IT Risk Assurance Managers, IT Risk Assurance Consultants and IT Risk Consulting Managers.
See all current vacancies here.
