About us

FS-Innovators B.V. (Financial Services Innovators) was founded by Professor dr ir Joost M.E. Pennings (chairman of the board) and ir Erik Walker (CEO).

Professor dr ir Joost M.E Pennings is the AST professor in Theory and Practice of Commodity Markets of Wageningen University (NL) and is a professor in marketing and decision sciences of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U.S.A) in the Office for Futures & Options Research (OFOR), the ALEX beleggersbank professor in behavioral finance at Maastricht University (NL) and a professor of Marketing at Maastricht University (NL).

Professor Pennings is an authority on risk management and use of risk management instruments with special focus on commodities and energy. Professor Pennings is an expert in financial product development (developing new derivatives and initiating new futures and option exchanges) and has a broad network in the financial services industry.

Professor Pennings has written more than 60 articles in international refereed scientific journals and has held more than 80 presentations at scientific congresses. Professor Pennings consults for international operating companies and governments on risk management, product development and strategy.

Look at the papers and books section for articles that illustrate the cutting-edge research of FS Innovators.

Ir Erik Walker has studied at Wageningen University where he met professor Pennings. He has done research on risk management for Amsterdam Commodity Exchange and NLKKAS Clearing. He was a visiting scholar at OFOR where he has worked on his second thesis “A Model for Optimal Futures Margining: Credit Risk versus Attractiveness for Participation”.

Between 2000-2006, Walker has worked in the financial services industry for Amsterdam Exchanges, Merchant Bank Kempen & Co and Dexia Bank. The knowledge areas of Walker are amongst others product development, market- and credit risk management, hedging and management of complex product portfolios and derivatives clearing.

The scientific approach is central in the service of FS-Innovators. Using the in-house developed scientific models, methods and insights result in the high quality of services. FS-Innovators is not ‘one of the large number of consultancy firms’ who use ‘old’ knowledge, instead we develop active new knowledge and offer this to our clients. The team of FS-Innovators B.V.currently exists of eight professionals in amongst others (Agricultural) Economics, Commodity Trading and Econometrics