EDS Boosts Financial Services

The IT services giant EDS (Plano, TX) will be adding more than 100 financial services-focused senior-level consultants to its Solutions Consulting business practice. The move—geared toward greater industry specialization—was designed to provide industry-specific expertise so that EDS can compete with other consulting players such as IBM Global Services.

EDS began to ramp up its financial services-specific consulting operation late last year when it named 23-year Accenture (previously Andersen Consulting) veteran Robert Baldock to head the Financial Services Solutions Consulting Group. Baldock left the Chicago-based firm as a managing partner. "I guess you could say that there are really 137,000 people in solutions consulting," Baldock says, referring to the number of employees at EDS. However, before Baldock joined, there was not a single person dedicated to financial services consulting, he relates. "In today's market, you need to have people who are very focused on particular industries," he adds. "We are looking to add approximately 100 executives who are practitioners in financial services." Approximately one-third of the EDS executives will be focused on insurance, with the remainder of executives focusing on banking and securities.

Getting Specific

Recently, Baldock named the first executive with insurance-specific expertise to EDS' Financial Services Solutions Consulting Group with the addition of Scott McConnell as vice president, financial services solutions consulting group. McConnell will be responsible for pulling together solution offerings for insurance and driving business within the sector. "Scott is one of the first people that we have added who is pure insurance," Baldock says. Previously, McConnell was a vice president in Cap Gemini Ernst & Young's insurance practice.

Baldock says the Financial Services Solutions Consulting Group will work closely with other areas that focus on insurance and financial services in EDS, including the Global Insurance market segment of EDS' Global Financial Industry Group. The Global Insurance segment is headed by Faith Trapp, managing director, and focuses on delivering technology solutions.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio