As emerging technologies create efficiencies in this age of rapid and unprecedented disruption, operations professionals in banks have never been more essential. That statement sounds counter-intuitive until you consider the complexity of the loan asset class. A loan is not a security and much of the way the market operates is not standard. If you think of origination, syndications and trading as separate and distinct branches, operations is their vine. Just as a car doesn’t move without gas (or electricity!), without the hard work and dedication of the operations team, front offices can do nothing. However, hiring operations talent at the banks these days is not easy and retaining them is far more challenging. This, in a nutshell, is quite an impediment given how critical operations is to the current and future functioning of our market. So how does the market resolve this conundrum? As discussed in the LSTA Summer Loans Magazine Operations Update, knowing your loan ops specialists – and what makes them tick – is critical.