Matt Bergerman

Director, DTCC

Matthew Bergerman joined the DTCC Data Products team in July of 2015 as a Director charged with the development of solutions in the Equity, Fixed Income, and Reference Data space. He has worked in the Financial Information industry for over 20 years, on the vendor side at Refinitiv and Pershing, as well as the client side at AllianceBernstein, Fortress Investment Group, and Deutsche Bank. Matthew has an undergraduate degree in Finance from Syracuse University and a Master’s of Business Administration from the New York Institute of Technology with a concentration in Accounting & Information Systems.

Herb Blank

Senior Consultant, Global Finesse

Herb Blank is a senior consultant and practice leader in the Global Finesse Product Strategy and Implementations Consulting Practice. He has more than 30 years of experience in financial product innovation and quantitative analysis. Recognized as a pioneer in the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) industry, Herb established the first family of ETFs to trade on the NYSE and was portfolio manager for the fund. Herb is credited with the product development and launch of iShares, GLD, and X Shares. He developed the construction and maintenance methodologies for Dow Jones Global Indexes.

Herb has considerable experience in working with unconventional and alternative data sets and applying them to investment applications. His work in developing SRI and ESG indexes and portfolios since 1987 fall into this category. He also assisted Thomson Reuters in the creation and maintenance of the Thomson Reuters Corporate Responsibility Ratings and Indexes and consulted onsite at Calvert to help establish a quantitative basis for pass/fail decision there and to facilitate the creation of ESG index funds. Many years prior to that, Herb worked with Arbitrage Pricing Theory creator, the late Dr. Steve Ross, to create and manage APT-driven factor portfolios. In many ways, these can be viewed as a forerunner of today’s smart Beta indexes and ETFs.

Firms that have engaged Herb’s expertise include: Brand Loyalties; Haugen Equity Signals; James Investment Research; Exponential ETFs; Deutsche Bank; NYLIM; Thomson Reuters; NYSE; UBS; Morningstar; S-Network Global Indexes; World Gold Council; BGI (now part of Blackrock); Rapid Ratings International; XShares; and Fidelity Bank (now part of Wells Fargo).

Herb frequently publishes industry white papers and articles, and is credited with having a large network of institutional investment professionals, RIAs, and wealth managers. Mr. Blank also serves as Steering Committee chairman for the NY Chapter of QWAFAFEW, an informal society for quantitative investment discussions. His MBA in Finance is from NYU Stern; his BA in Mathematics is from the University of Pennsylvania.