Independent trading analysis and data science company, Ideal Prediction, has appointed Walter Bell as its Chief Technology Officer. An industry leading quantitative analyst and technologist, Walter has more than 20 years of experience in capital markets, working in a variety of roles across multiple asset classes.

Walter joined Ideal Prediction from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he led an international team as the Global Head of Rates eTrading Quants. Prior to this, he managed technology teams in eFX Development, Cross Asset Trading and Global Arbitrage Trading at Credit Suisse. Earlier in his career he was a Senior Product Manager at Broadway Technology.

In his current role Walter leads innovation across Ideal's product suite, which includes the recent redesign of Scope, the award winning independent service for monitoring trading for market abuse and adherence to the FX Global Code. Walter is responsible for extending Scope's product coverage to include cross-asset functionality for Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) surveillance and other regulatory regimes. He will also oversee the support of Ideal's global systemically important bank (G-SIB) clients.

"Walter is one of the best inventors I’ve met in my career. His expertise in systems architecture and algorithmic trading is a powerful, rare combination. As Ideal's CTO, he will evolve Ideal's products and, most importantly, help our clients to successfully mitigate risk and improve profitability," said John Crouch, Founder and CEO of Ideal Prediction.

"Bank compliance teams are demanding increasingly sophisticated services for monitoring their human and algorithmic trading. I'm excited about Ideal's ability to use our knowledge of the intricacies of FICC trading to independently deliver advanced analytics to firms using modern and flexible technology," said Walter Bell.