Rich’s most recently served as Vice President, National Branch Operations at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, where he created and led a national operations platform designed to virtualize branch operations and enable straight-through processing. In this role, he partnered with Risk, Compliance, Registration, Trading, Technology, Margin, and ACATS teams to modernize workflows, improve controls, and free branch teams to focus more directly on client relationships.

He played a key leadership role during the Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney merger, coordinating globally across operations teams in London, Australia, Mumbai, and the U.S. to manage risk, audit remediation, data integrity initiatives, and procedural harmonization. He also helped launch and manage new business units, including the National Branch Operations (NBO), Client Advisory Center (CAC), and Service Review Unit (SRU), strengthening supervisory controls and client service frameworks nationwide.

Previously, at Credit Suisse First Boston, Rich led Treasury Operations and managed the reconstruction and reconciliation of $6 billion in physical securities following the events of September 11, 2001, an effort requiring complex coordination with issuers and transfer agents.

Earlier in his career, Rich served as VP, Margin (Risk) Manager at First Albany Companies, where he co-managed margin operations, modernized margin call systems, and helped lead firm-wide process re-engineering initiatives focused on workflow efficiency and document digitization. He also co-founded a margin software platform in the mid-1980s, pioneering real-time margin calculation capabilities for major broker-dealers.