Peter N. Edwards
Rua da Nascente, 550-São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras/Serro/(MG)/CEP 39153-000
Telephone: 55 (38) 3541-6068/E-mail:
RELEVANT SKILLS
Twenty three years of retail banking technology experience with proven leadership, relationship management, innovation, team building, and communication skills. Seasoned senior manager able to develop, motivate, and retain highly competent staff. Capable of sustained effort necessary to take large projects from concept to completion. Adapts easily to new concepts and responsibilities. Key strengths include: Creativity, Organizational skills, People/communication skills, Collaboration, Negotiation/influencing skills, Leadership, Detail-orientation, but big picture savvy, Business-specific and supporting technology knowledge, Energy, Enthusiasm, Drive for excellence. Diverse yet detailed knowledge of branch and online banking, consumer credit systems, large scale banking system conversions driven by mergers and acquisitions of regional and national scope. Good command of Brazilian Portugues, Italian, French.
WORK HISTORY
Pousada do Capão, São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras, Serro (MG), Brazil ( - current
Proprietor/Chef
Co-own and operate a small, simple yet sophisticated, country inn in the mountains of Minas Gerais with a focus on customer delight. An incredible natural setting, a welcoming atmosphere, personal attention, and a creative menu all contribute to a unique customer experience. Working in conjunction with The Estrada Real Institute, The Diamond Circuit, and the Secretary of Tourism in Serro to build products which highlight the best that the region has to offer.
If you can’t the heat... Personal Chef Services, Barrington, RI
Chef/Owner2005 - 2006
Provide custom menu planning, shopping, cooking on site, cleanup, packaging and storage of meals for private clients in Barrington, East Bay area. Other services include: event catering, ethnic cuisine menus, interactive cooking classes.
BANK OF AMERICA, Johnston, RI/Charlotte, NC2004 - 2005
SVP, Business Delivery Services, Consumer Real Estate Technology
Responsible for development and maintenance of systems supporting Consumer Real Estate business lines and large cross-divisional projects in partnership with other divisional system groups and corporate Project Management Office. Focus on absorption of FleetBoston Financial onto existing BankofAmerica Model Office Platform, while coordinating a very demanding development schedule on behalf of the business line, essential for maintaining competitiveness in the marketplace and profitability for the division. Staff of 300 programmers, analysts, and managers located in multiple locations nationwide. Large outsourcing effort in progress concurrently.
FLEETBOSTON FINANCIAL,Boston, MA1999 - 2004
Systems Group Manager, Consumer Lending Systems
As Fleet/BankBoston merger was announced, responsible for retaining and managing BankBoston team critical to successful conversion to Fleet platform. Awarded target position in new Fleet organization and drove the conversion of Consumer Lending Systems – originations, loan processing, collections, and recovery and all of the associated interfaces to core systems and external vendors. Concurrently responsible for relationship management with the business executive and delivery of annual slate of work according to agreed upon time frames and budget, as well as maintaining service levels for all supported applications. Staff of approximately 60 programmer analysts in 2 major sites needed to be reduced to a post-conversion endstate of 30. Subsequent major project efforts with heavy contractor support included: Summit Bank Acquisition, support for the sale of the Fleet Mortgage company to Washington Mutual and the relocation of the entire sales and originations infrastructure from South Carolina to New Jersey and the ultimate outsourcing to Cendant, development of automated credit environment for Small Business division, and the End-to-end redesign of the credit processing platform to ultimately accommodate a universal credit concept – one application for all credit needs – which was taken through business specifications and deep into technical design before being canceled in light of the BankofAmerica announcement.
BANKBOSTON, Boston, MA 1989 - 2000
Systems Application Manager, Branch Automation, Consumer Lending
Managed Branch automation at the regional level as Bank of Boston began to buy banks in each of the New England states. Responsibilities included production support of all environments as well as development and conversion initiatives. Worked with Casco Northern on a rewrite of their teller and platform systems, while simultaneously working with technology and business executives to design a regional system to accommodate branch banking in all member states. This was highly challenging until the disparate business units in each state were consolidated into a regional structure with a single voice. As regionalization continued, responsible for developing a new teller and platform suite to interface with the Common Software core banking systems. As part of the conversion of Connecticut National to BKB, managed a project to build the pilot CSR system using ARGO and 4700 technologies. Implemented successfully in the Connecticut environment on the chosen components of the Common Software platform, but rendered obsolete as the retail banking division changed their target system for DDA, TDS processing. Worked on initial phases of subsequent effort to build the next version workstation – Retail Workstation - and then relocated to RI to run Consumer Originations Systems. Eventually was offered responsibility for all of Consumer Lending systems and relationship management with business executives. Responsible for major Consumer Lending conversion effort with BayBank merger. Integrally involved in major redesign effort to evaluate banking processes and generate cost reduction and inexpensive growth just prior to announcement of Fleet takeover.
HOSPITAL TRUST, PROVIDENCE, RI 1982 - 1989
Systems Development technical positions in Management Track, Branch Automation
Initial assignment as entry level programmer/analyst supporting leasing morphed into project responsibility for a Branch Automation initiative in partnership with IBM to bring the entirely manual 55 branch network into a fully automated, state of the art, teller and platform environment based on 4700 technology. Responsible for all aspects of the project in close partnership with business executives. Deadlines were met early and on budget and the project to implement teller was deemed to be the most successful technology project yet undertaken by the bank. Subsequent project efforts included full automation of the customer service representative desktop. Post-implementation responsibilities were focused on maintenance and support of the new systems to maintain service levels as well as an annual development project roster executed to accommodate business partner priorities and budgets. Managed staff of 20.
EDUCATION
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 1970 - 1974
Bachelor of Arts degree in Romance Languages and Literatures, May 1974
Cerrtificate from Madeleine Kamman’s The Modern Gourmet Professional Chef Training School 1978
TESOL Foundation Certification 2006
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
As the executive appointed by the acquiring financial services company to manage the Consumer Lending Group’s retail application systems portfolio conversion and development teams, I built a group comprised of talent from both acquiring and acquired organizations, leveraging key talent across cultures and geographies. While I was required to operate within the organizational model of the acquirer, I was able to convince senior management on both business and technical fronts that my non-traditional approach not only set them up for significant savings but also for future productivity gains. The combined team was critical in driving the super regional bank’s success in the Home Equity market as #1 in New England.
In a subsequent series of unrelated buy and sell transactions, I was accountable for both eliminating redundancy between comparable acquiring and acquired technology teams and simultaneously moving, and then managing, the technical infrastructure and application support functions of a multi-billion dollar mortgage origination business from the Southeast to the Northeast. A good percentage of the skill sets required to keep the business running were embodied in the acquired staff who had already been labeled as casualties of the required merger cost saves. Through creative negotiation, schedule manipulation, aggressive financial, marketing, and training plans, all supporting my proven record of being able to manage across cultures and geographies, I was able to convince senior management that retention and retooling of the NJ team would enable me to complete both initiatives seamlessly. The team delivered the business requirements according to original expectations, on time and within budget.
As technology relationship manager and liaison to the Consumer Lending division executive, I recognized the opportunity to streamline and drive productivity by forcing prioritization of technology dollars at her level instead of at the traditional and siloed line of business level. Rather than allocate funding to each individual business for prioritization within their respective silos, we drove a prioritization process that looked at division-wide technology requests through filters of cost benefit analysis, return on investment be it via revenue or cost reduction, available budget, and my current capacity to deliver.
As technical manager and lead developer, I directed a tightly integrated technology and business team in a project to convert retail branch functions (both teller and platform/customer service) of a 60-branch RI bank from a totally manual, paper-based environment to a fully automated one. The branch automation project implemented leading edge technology and enabled advanced business functionality focused on customer recognition, relationship building, and excellent service with all of the operational tools required to support the business. At the time, the project, delivered early and under budget, was considered to have delivered the most positive impact to the bottom line in the retail bank’s history.
REFERENCES
Furnished upon request