As Program Manager and Technical Product Owner for the Design and Development team, I have led the OCC Renaissance Initiative: a multi-year transformation replacing a 20-year-old monolithic clearing system with Ovation, a cloud-native clearing, settlement, and risk management platform targeting a H1 2026 production launch across 16 exchanges.
OCC clears 100% of listed U.S. options trades. Its ENCORE system required full-platform regression testing for every feature change, creating 6 to 12 month deployment backlogs. The 2020 pandemic exposed how badly the architecture had aged: volatility surged, remote operations became mandatory, and a system designed for stable on-premise conditions could not adapt. A failure at a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility does not stay local. It cascades across the entire U.S. derivatives ecosystem. The problem was not whether ENCORE needed replacing. It was that no safe path to replace it existed.
Most technology transformations begin with platform or vendor choices. I began with outcome clarity: feature deployment in weeks not quarters, real-time risk visibility, 10x volatility surge capacity, and instant regulatory data access via API. Every technical and team decision cascaded from those four goals.
Each completed phase de-risked the next. The June 2025 testing pause is consistent with this discipline: OCC does not launch until every dependency, internal and external, is fully resolved.
Production results will be documented post-launch. The following have been achieved through phases 1 to 3. Anticipated post-launch outcomes are noted where relevant.
Complex programmes. Regulated environments. High-stakes stakeholder landscapes. That is where I do my best work.