Growing up in Ireland, I was always told “it’s who you know” that matters. While, increasingly what you know is important, clearly business is conducted and money flows based on ‘who you know’. People with strong relationships do great things and in some cases do ‘bad’ things. No one ever heard of two people who barely knew each other suddenly getting together to commit fraud or insider trading. These people usually know each other well and go back a bit.
Law enforcement has known this since time began. They know, for example, that 98% of all murders are conducted by someone known to the victim. This means that it pays to first understand the people part of an investigation before corralling people and asking questions. However, that’s not how we do investigations today in the corporate world. We usually collect data and search it. This is akin to conducting interviews before fully understanding the people, the connections and the timing.
Catelas was founded to redress this issue. In everything we do, we first look at the people, how well they know each other, how they connect and then we look at what they said and the language that they used. And the results are staggering: investigations are concluded in 1/10th the time and the results are so much better – nothing is missed.
After 7 years in business we then took this a step further. We collated a library of behavioral signatures found in these large datasets during investigations and converted them to rules, whereby we proactively look to detect high risk behaviors. The interesting thing here is that we don’t look at what is said to detect risk – we look at how people are interacting and how they behave. Which means we don’t collect email & move it around to uncover problems such as data theft, conflicts of interest, vendor kickbacks, personnel poaching among other issues. We simply look at the meta-data.
So essentially, you can deploy Catelas and go live within 24 hours and you don’t integrate with anything so very little IT resource is required. Within days of deploying you will immediately uncover so many things you just did not know existed. You did not look for them before because you had no easy way. Now you do.
Our Team
Eddie Cogan
Founder and CEO
Eddie Cogan is CEO and founder of Catelas. He has studied behavioral analytics for more than 20 years and obtained his first patent to measure relationships & trust using communications data. Catelas is currently leveraged by 3 of the Big 4, and global corporations for Information Security, Investigations, Legal and Regulatory Compliance.
Mr. Cogan has over 25 years of experience in engineering, product development, sales and business development. Eddie began is career as an engineer with the British Broadcasting Corporation and NEC. Eddie graduated from University College, Cork, Ireland with a degree in Electrical Engineering.
Blake Hausladen
Vice President Product & Client Success
Blake joined Catelas in 2016 but has been a user of Catelas technology since 2010. In his career, Blake has both served as a RIA compliance officer and has deployed and operated Surveillance solutions at global firms. Most recently Blake was co-founder of a machine learning trade surveillance software company.
With such deep yet diverse experience Mr. Hausladen is uniquely positioned to both ensure client deployments are successful and also to help our clients navigate towards a holistic surveillance paradigm. He has implemented and was a Catelas user at two previous firms, Citadel LLC and SocGen Newedge.
Nilesh Shroff
Chief Technology officer
Nilesh has 20 years of software development experience involving Product Definition, Architecture and Implementation. Mr. Shroff has extensive experience developing new products and bringing them to market.
Nilesh earned a Master of Science in Information & Computer Science, and a Master of Science in Structural Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. Nilesh additionally holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering at the MS University Baroda, India.
Venki Sivaswami
Senior Vice President, Engineering
Venki has over 20 years experience in software engineering, from design and architecture through to product development. Venki has an extensive background working in startup environments leading engineering teams in product development
Venki earned a Master of Science in Computer and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
Marek Wakar
Managing Director, Catelas UK
Marek has 20 years experience in retail financial services covering strategy, distribution, operations, and general management. He has held senior positions within the Lloyds Abbey Life Group and then moved on to Accenture where he was an Associate Partner.
Prior to Catelas, Marek ran and part-owned a consultancy company which specializes in advising financial services firms. Marek graduated in 1980 from the University of Durham and in 1987 obtained an MBA from the London Business School.
Advisory Board
Nick Baker
Board Advisor
Nick Baker joined the Catelas Advisory Board in 2020, having been a seed investor in Catelas’ early days. Nick brings a wealth of experience to Catelas as we look to extend our strong presence in both the Asset Management and Wealth Management sectors.
Nick Baker was the co-founder and a long-term Board member of Alpha Financial Markets Consulting (as Global Chief Commercial Officer and previously Global CFO), the world’s leading consulting firm to the asset and wealth management industry.
Adam Toms
CEO at OpenFin Europe
In 2017, Adam Toms formalized a long relationship with Catelas beginning in 2014 to advise Catelas on product strategy and market direction. Adam Toms was most recently Chief Executive Officer of Instinet Europe.
Under his leadership, the firm ranked #1 for customer volume on the London Stock Exchange, #3 for Pan-European equity customer volume, achieving record market share and profitability.
Today Adam is CEO at OpenFin Europe, the operating system of finance to modernise desktops and accelerate innovation
Alan Morley
Financial Crime Risk management consultant
Alan has over 20 years in strategic consulting in Financial Services. As Managing Director at JP Morgan he was responsible for Trade and Broker Compliance, AML,e-Comms Surveillance, and Legal Discovery.
Most recently, Alan acted as Compliance and AML/KYC advisor (tech and operations) with Oliver Wyman, working with US and international clients throughout the US, UK and Asia.
Alan originates from Cap Gemini UK where he was responsible for the introduction of strategic consulting services to Cap Gemini USA.
Industry Advisors
Mitchel Kraskin
Former CEO & Founder, Compliance Science
Mitch Kraskin serves on the Catelas Advisory board and provides Catelas management with both Strategic and Operational advice as Catelas continues to expand its footprint into the compliance markets.
Mr. Kraskin is founder of two successful technology companies that specialize in regulatory compliance products for investment firms. In 2003, Mitch founded Compliance Science which remains a global leader in providing governance, risk and compliance solutions to the financial services community. Clients include leading RIA's, B/D's, PE firms, hedge funds, banks, pension plans and public companies. In 1997, Mr. Kraskin founded Compliance Tools Inc. which provided Personal Trading Surveillance Systems for Buy Side Firms
Hadrian A. Tucker, ACA
Country Compliance Officer
Hadrian Tucker is the Senior Compliance Officer for the State Bank of India, US Operations, based in New York City. He is responsible for overseeing the US branches’ compliance with US and Indian regulations and is the bank’s Anti Money Laundering Officer. He also acts as standby CFO when the Chief Financial Officer, US Operations, is away from the office.
Prior to joining the State Bank of India, Hadrian was a Senior Vice President (2000-2005) at Fidelity Investments’ parent company (FMR Corp.) in Boston where he was the Chief Compliance Officer and Anti Money Laundering Officer for brokerage operations. Before moving to Boston, he was a First Vice President at Prudential Securities Inc. (PSI) in New York where he directed all capital markets audits from 1996 to 2000. Prior to 1996, Hadrian had been based in London as the Vice President, International Audits for PSI since 1991 when he was promoted from being the Far East Regional Audit Director based in Hong Kong.
Joel Wuesthoff Esq., CISSP
Legal eDiscovery
Joel Wuesthoff is a New York City based eDiscovery expert, a former practicing attorney, and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Mr. Wuesthoff is an Adjunct Professor, University of Maine School of Law, where he has been teaching a unique eDiscovery “Meet & Confer” course since 2006. He is also the Director of the ESI Institute, a private initiative which promotes legal education to the nation’s law schools and evaluates new legal technologies.
Mr. Wuesthoff has advised the Securities and Exchange Commission, other regulatory agencies, members of the United States Congress, and Fortune 100 companies on data analytics, data mapping, and best practices in information management and litigation readiness, and has twice appeared before the New York Supreme Court advising on best practices for the management of electronic discovery issues, and participated in similar trainings for the Massachusetts Supreme Court.