JPMorgan hire points to growing role of user experience in trading
JPMorgan has appointed Debra Herschmann as its head of corporate and investment bank user experience. As the market pivots increasingly toward electronic trading and customer demands change, Herschmann, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is tasked with ensuring JPMorgan's clients enjoy a "consistent, user-friendly experience on the bank’s trading platforms." JPMorgan CEO Daniel Pinto said earlier this year the bank needed to "create all the avenues for you not to have a reason not to execute with us and going somewhere else."

JPMorgan

JPMorgan just announced a new line-up at the top of its markets execution team, and the team includes an interesting new hire from Goldman Sachs.

The bank has hired Debra Herschmann from Goldman Sachs as head of corporate and investment bank user experience. She will also join CIB chief information officer Lori Beer's management team. At Goldman, she was global head of user experience in client platforms.

Her new role was announced to staff on Tuesday in a memo from David Hudson, who was appointed to the role of head of markets execution earlier in the year. The note set out the make-up of his new team, and a mission statement for the unit.

"In simple terms, Markets Execution will focus on providing clients with electronic distribution of markets products – in whatever way they choose – today and into the future," the note said.

"We will deliver this vision by leveraging leading-edge technology and design standards that will improve the user experience while lowering the cost of execution for our clients and for ourselves," the note added.

Herschmann is a little different to your average Wall Streeter. She has taught university classes in computer animation and interaction design, and her interactive installations have been on display at the Boston Computer Museum and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. She also helped design probation management applications for the New York City Department of Corrections.

In her new role, she'll be responsible for making sure JPMorgan clients get a consistent, user-friendly experience on the bank's trading platforms. And her appointment hints at the changing nature of trading.

JPMorgan Chase trader Frederick Reimer works in the company's stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Thomson Reuters

JPMorgan corporate and investment bank CEO Daniel Pinto has spoken at length in the past about JPMorgan's efforts to prepare itself for changes to how the market operates. Trading is increasingly conducted over electronic platforms, and the fixed-income marketplace in particular is changing at a pace. Speaking at the bank's investor day in February, Pinto said:

"You cannot dictate how the clients, some of you, will decide to execute your transactions. What we can do is create all the avenues for you not to have a reason not to execute with us and going somewhere else. And this is what it's about."

As more and more trading is conducted electronically, things like "user experience" and "design standards" will become a bigger and bigger part of the business of Wall Street.

Here are the other appointments announced in the memo: