Financial data integration specialist Volante Technologies has opened an office in Dubai to serve the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions.

Mick Fennell, general manager MEA, has been appointed to run the Dubai operation, reporting to Fiona Hamilton, vice president EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Fennell joins Volante after more than 20 years at Misys where he was latterly head of transaction banking MEA with responsibility for front-to-back processing of payments, trade finance and cash management, based in Dubai. 

Prior to this role, Fennell held numerous positions within the Misys organisation largely in the payments and financial messaging fields covering functions from product management, to business development, to sales, implementation, and product marketing.

Fennell says: “I am very excited about the opportunities for Volante in the Middle East and Africa region. Volante is committed to helping clients navigate and manage the diverse, complex and growing mass of message formats, standards and protocols throughout the lifecycle of any financial transaction.   We handle the management of message complexity, so firms can improve their straight-through-processing (STP) rates and take full advantage of their commercial opportunities.”

Chris Stares also joins Volante in London, as principal technical consultant. Reporting to Hamilton, Stares brings more than 16 years of financial message data integration experience to Volante’s EMEA customer base. Stares previously worked as a senior integration consultant for Bank of New Zealand, Mercator and Braid Systems. His focus will be to develop Volante’s technical capabilities within the region and to work with clients’ architecture and development teams to define best practice integration solutions and assist with implementation and the transference of skills and knowledge.

Vijay Oddiraju, chief executive officer, Volante, says: “Core to the continued growth of Volante is a strong management, relationship and market engagement team which will ensure we can expand and deliver the services required by our customers right the way across the trade lifecycle – from initiation to settlement. In the quest for greater efficiency, cost reduction and reduced operational risk we are witnessing a growing appetite for the automation of message management in corporate payments, treasury, trade services, remittances and clearing. We welcome conversations with regional, country and domestic partners to help meet this growing demand.”