David Donovan
Executive Vice President of Financial Services, Publicis Sapient
David Donovan, Executive Vice President, oversees Publicis Sapient’s entire financial services portfolio for the Americas. He is responsible for setting operational and marketing strategies for the firm and managing relationships with top global investment banks. Since joining Publicis Sapient in 2005, his deep understanding of business, regulatory, operations and technology challenges facing C-suite executives, has enabled Donovan to help develop top strategic initiatives to evolve our business and improve the company’s ability to deliver transformative work. Donovan brings 25 years of expertise working on Wall Street as an institutional equity trader, including 14 years as the sector leader of technology trading for Fidelity Management and Research, when working with investment banks and asset managers. As a trusted adviser to C-suite executives, David is involved in many key strategic initiatives helping with digital transformation of banks, building better operating platform and leveraging globalization to reduce cost and grow revenues. David’s area of expertise includes building and executing strategies to lead digital transformation for banks, helping enterprises best understand data through proprietary data science solutions, providing globalization expertise to create efficient operating platform for banks, leveraging service level design concepts along with dev-ops & cloud integration, creating and implementing strategies to manage middle office operations and technology among other custom technology needs for clients. As head of Publicis Sapient’s largest business division, Donovan personally leads the Financial Services’ largest clients in their digital business transformations. His focus on relationships has also reinforced his investment in our culture and our people. Donovan says he has also worked hard to foster credibility and trust with his leadership team and he’s proud of the role he’s been able to play in their personal growth. “Together we’ve found ways to positively stretch and in doing so we’ve improved how we lead our people and ensured clients continue to see us as partners rather than simple service providers. I truly believe these individuals will be the dynamic future leaders of this company and I am proud to get to work alongside of them.” Awards & Accomplishments: 2017 Consultant of the Year, Excellence in Financial Services by Consulting Magazine 2010 and 2007 Chairman’s Award
- Posted on: 10/04/2022Embedded Briefing: What’s driving the embedded finance boom?
Consumers expect all their favorite brands to be connected regardless of domain, creating an embedded financial ecosystem that supports a customer “life journey”.
- Posted on: 05/17/2022The double edged sword of good UX: How Robinhood’s gamification of investing backfired during the market downturn
Frictionless immersive experiences can enhance an experience and help educate an emerging demographic. That said, it must be paired with a well thought out strategy that takes into account the greater well being of what is trying to be accomplished. Acorns is a great example of doing both, creating a great experience while building long term wealth for its customers in a simple, fun way.
- Posted on: 08/09/2021Starbucks has the second most used mobile payment app for POS transactions
Starbucks has shown that they are as much a financial services company as a coffee company. Through a strong API network and leveraging interaction data they have increased their market share through personalization.
- Posted on: 08/03/2021Starbucks has the second most used mobile payment app for POS transactions
Starbucks, through its intelligent API network has proven that it is not just about coffee. They are a financial services enterprise that is building its own eco-system of users.
- Posted on: 07/24/2021‘Wire in your funds and we’ll handle the rest’: Compound Treasury gets fintech firms into DeFi
Treasury Compound’s service is revolutionary as it starts to solve “the last mile” challenge of crypto, by bridging online events with the offline world.
- Posted on: 06/20/2021In big tech, Google is most active investor in fintech
Big tech will continue to target the payment and e-commerce space as they see this as an opportunity to disrupt and create a frictionless experience for consumers.
- Posted on: 07/26/2020For Visa, digital currency means new opportunity to add value to the ecosystem
For me, the term “network of networks” really resonates with the change we are currently seeing throughout the world. We are seeing limitations not only around payments but how we communicate and transact, all of which will all be governed by secure API’s and data. Since data aggregation is a critical component to the open banking eco-system, Visa has strategically placed itself as one of the major players in the market, with their acquisition of Plaid, which really shook up the fintech world and put Visa in a domination position.
- Posted on: 06/22/2020WhatsApp launches payments in Brazil
WhatsApp’s launch of payments in Brazil is a prime example of innovative initiatives by Facebook and one of the reasons I love the company so much. With over 3 billion users, across their applications, Facebook’s platforms provides an unparalleled user base and technology that allows them the ability to create eco-systems with massive scale. I believe when Facebook announced Libra last year, it shook governments around the world. Post that announcement those governments realized, for the first time, that Facebook has the capability to actually take over the monetary system with its proposed digital currency idea. The Libra concept is what propelled the Federal Reserve into high gear around working on its own digital currency backed by the fiat currency. In my opinion, the WeChat model is the best business out there - you can hail a cab, book a doctor’s appointment, make a dinner reservation and buy a car, all on your phone. I think Facebook is looking at a comparable opportunity with this announcement around WhatApp payments in Brazil, and I believe this is only the beginning.