One of our most hotly contested awards, FinTech of the Year recognises the pioneers shaking up the way the industry operates, creating new pathways and developing best-in-class, cutting edge technology solutions. This year we’ve got a diverse and eclectic crowd competing for the crown: including an algorithmic book-building platform, a cloud-based OEMS, a low-code app development platform, and more. Read on to discover the candidates for 2022’s FinTech of the Year. 

Appital 

FinTech pioneer Appital, in partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) pan-European trading venue, Turquoise, this year launched crucial new bookbuilding technology for the buy-side.  

Mutual buy-side users are now able to gain access to liquidity sourced on Appital’s platform and a single point of access for deal execution via the Turquoise venue, with straight-through processing to its network of settlement venues. The Appital platform allows institutional investors to execute large volumes with minimal market impact or risk of price erosion, and to filter the types and sizes of opportunities they are looking for using specific requirements. 

It aims to give buy-side firms better exposure to deal flow opportunities by providing heads of trading and portfolio managers a more holistic picture of liquidity and illiquid small and mid-cap stocks. 

The platform went live in August, with Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) completing the first trade, and it has proven to be highly popular with the buy-side, with over 30 asset managers signing up prior to launch.  
 
The initiative has also been heavily supported by the industry, recently receiving an additional £1.7 million from Frontline Ventures and several other angel investors earlier this month, taking its total investment to date to £4.85 million. 
 
“[It] gives asset managers the opportunity to be proactive, gain access to deal flow opportunities and encourage liquidity in the market,” explained Paul Squires, head of trading for EMEA equities and Henley fixed interest at Invesco, a buy-side user of Appital, speaking to The TRADE. 

Capital Markets Gateway (CMG) 

CMG’s platform streamlines workflows and delivers information and analytics in real-time providing users with speed to market and analysis vital to decision making. CMG’s platform offers a simpler way to monitor the capital raising landscape, perform due diligence, make investment decisions and collaborate. 

Earlier this year, the FinTech launched its end-to-end equity capital markets (ECM) platform, CMG XC, which digitally connects the buy-side and the sell-side. 

The XC platform transforms ECM, CMG said, by providing connected infrastructure across industry participants and streamlining the entire new issue lifecycle – essentially improving the way ECM deals are managed. 

Speaking to The TRADE, Greg Ingram, co-founder and CEO of CMG said: “The value of streamlined communication and workflows from a broad range of participants underscores the efficiencies of leveraging a common platform to serve the mutual benefit of both underwriters and institutional investors.  

“Underwriters will use XC to publish an offering to potential investors simultaneously, thereby eliminating the inherent inefficiencies of analogue communications, namely redundant emails and a wave of telephone calls.” 

Following several trial offerings, the launch enabled connectivity across syndicate banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley interacting with asset managers such as Fidelity Investments, Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, amongst others, via the CMG XC network. 

Enfusion 

Cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider Enfusion this year launched a pioneering new order and execution management system (OEMS) named Enfusion Express, backed by Cowen.  

The new solution is tailored specifically to the needs of smaller fund managers with AUM typically less than $100 million. Enfusion describes the new system as a means for smaller managers with limited recourses, but comprehensive requirements, to access sophisticated pre-trade, execution, and post-trade solutions. In addition, Enfusion Express will help reduce manual processes, improve real-time, portfolio-level visibility, and streamline connectivity to managers’ execution, fund administration, prime brokerage and other partners. 

As the size and complexity of these small funds grow, they can easily upgrade to Enfusion’s platform for enhanced OEMS capabilities, full portfolio management and accounting functions, analytics, and outsourced managed services. 

“Enfusion Express addresses the operational needs of smaller funds, both newly launched and existing, that remain an underserved but growing segment of the market. Sell-side firms are recognizing and responding to their unique needs, as evidenced by an uptick in solutions like outsourced trading desks. We see an opportunity to provide best-in-class solutions to these managers as they look to scale their firms while deepening our relationships with our ecosystem partners,” said CEO Thomas Kim. 

Genesis Global 

The Genesis low-code application development platform accelerates the software development process for clients across financial services.

Following a $200 million Series C funding round earlier this year, the firm received a further $20 million from investors including Bank of America, BNY Mellon and Citi, which will allow the app developer to expand its operations as interest in its platform continues to grow. 

Genesis has been utilised by financial markets companies to accelerate the application development process, allowing for an increase in the pace of technology innovation alongside operating and upgrading complex legacy systems. 

“Our clients and environment demand more innovation and productivity in terms of IT output,” said David Trepanier, head of structured products, global credit and special situations at Bank of America. “The low-code solution provided by Genesis accelerates the development process and allow us to more quickly build out and launch new trading protocols and processes.” 

Financial services firms have made digital transformation a priority as they seek to differentiate themselves, reduce the cost and complexity of existing systems, innovate and to adapt better to changing regulation, and Genesis is being used by firms across the software value chain to automate spreadsheet processes, enhance existing systems, replace legacy technology and to develop new, more robust, first-time applications. 

“Our investment in and collaboration with Genesis allows us to create applications and solutions faster to meet the increasing demands of our clients,” said Avi Shua, CIO, head of investment management, wealth management and pershing technology at BNY Mellon. “The ability to develop, customise and integrate applications with speed is critical, and provides our developers a toolset to make robust and flexible platforms that can scale. 

OpenGamma 

London-based margin optimisation FinTech OpenGamma helps asset managers to increase the efficiency of portfolios through collateral management.  

In February this year Allianz X, the digital investments unit of the investment manager, and its subsidiary PIMCO, led a $21 million funding round for the firm, the proceeds of which were used to expand its existing offering, including the launch of automated workflow solutions for the treasury management of asset managers.  

“OpenGamma’s solutions are a small revolution for many investors and asset managers,” said Kevin Harder, manager at Allianz X. “Thanks to OpenGamma, collateral management is no longer a back-office issue but instead becomes an active performance driver.” 

The additional funding follows several partnerships with OpenGamma in the last few years with the buy-side and other analytics providers. Most recent was its partnership with hedge fund Aspect Capital in March 2021, which saw the systematic investment manager increase its use of OpenGamma’s margin analytics across the markets it trades, building on an existing relationship since 2018. 

Saphyre 

Saphyre has been making waves this year with its interoperable AI technology that helps firms to digitise, structure and maintain memory of shared data and documents in pre-trade. This allows firms to assess risk faster, as well as speeding up the onboarding process by eliminating inefficiencies in the booking, confirmation, and settlement process. 

Saphyre claims it allows firms not only to assess risk faster and more clearly, but also speed up their onboarding processes and eliminate 70-75% of redundant or inefficient post-trade activities. 

Since its launch in 2017, the firm has received 104 issued patents and has been integrated with seven different platforms as part of its interoperability design. 

In March 2022, JP Morgan and BNP Paribas backed the firm in a Series A round of $18.7 million, which the FinTech is using to accelerate its product development initiatives in both its pre- and post-trade offerings, as well as to support its ongoing expansion of interoperability initiatives with a number of other FinTech/vendor solutions in the industry. 

The winner of Best Challenger Exchange will be announced at the Leaders in Trading 2022 gala awards dinner at The Savoy Hotel on 2 November.  

The post Leaders in Trading 2022: Meet the nominees for…. FinTech of the Year appeared first on The TRADE.

Adam Toms, CEO, OpenFin Europe

Annabel Smith: How does it feel to win the LiTDX FinTech of the Year 2020 award?

Adam Toms: We at OpenFin feel honoured to have won the FinTech of the Year 2020 award. OpenFin is the operating system (OS) of finance, an open and collaborative platform for the industry to be more successful. We are building for the industry and that has always been our goal. To be recognised in an industry vote is fantastic.

AS: What role has FinTech played during 2020 and the pandemic?

AT: FinTech has played a significant role in providing solutions across the industry. There are endless stories of FinTechs who saw demand for their products grow aggressively and subsequently experienced rapid growth during 2020. Most market participants already had an agenda of change in place, including tech modernisation and digital transformation programmes, but these were accelerated over the course of 2020.

AS: What has been the biggest challenge faced by traders during 2020?

AT: In the early months of the pandemic the greatest issue was the set up and coordination of workforces as they transitioned to a home environment from an office one. With this, however, we’ve lost important conversations had in the office and passive listening that goes on in a working environment. That passive listening is an important learning tool which is used to build a picture of what is going on around you. I like to think all of our team members are continuously learning and I think they learn a lot from passive listening. With people hopefully returning to the office in the next few months I think this will be an important element to get back.

AS: What has OpenFin done in 2020 to meet the challenges posed by the pandemic?

AT: OpenFin powers applications and user experiences on the financial desktop. One of the things our product has done is help users manage their workspace much more effectively and manage the changing attitude to screen real estate in 2020. A lot of traders went from working from six screens in the office to working from two at home and so our ability to save and restore different work spaces for users, allowing them to maximise their screen real estate space and to configure different workflows on their desktop, was critically important. This was very powerful in a ‘work from home’ setting.

We launched our notification centre aimed at financial institutions including banks, buy-side brokers, and financial services vendors, which was designed in collaboration with our clients. We believe notifications are essential to communicating, alerting people to data insights and helping people make faster decisions. There was a strong and rapid uptake of that solution during the pandemic.

AS: What role will FinTech play in the market’s evolution in 2021?

AT: I think the current situation is a new normal, and with that we will have to think more deeply about the future of work and the need to be able to work from anywhere. Different companies will make different calls on the level of flexibility they offer their employees, but we certainly believe there will be a strong movement where people will be looking at their future work agendas and thinking about how they want to evolve based on the learnings of the last 12 months – there are many solutions available to assist with this.

Now that workforces have been largely distributed there will need to be a greater emphasis on collaboration tools such as OpenFin to unify experiences across teams that are no longer sat together in the same office.

AS: What have you learned from 2020 that you will take into 2021?

AT: I think the ability to adapt and be resilient at a company and team level is really important, as a smaller high growth company we are lucky to be very nimble. Throughout 2020 important topics such as mental health and well-being were more heavily discussed. These have always been important topics, but I think organisations will now place a higher level of priority on them going forward.

For us, being really mindful about each individual’s personal situation and associated working environment, wherever that may be, is something that we will continue to pay close attention to.

AS: Have you ever seen conditions like the ones seen during 2020 before?

AT: It has certainly been unique. I have seen some extraordinary events in the marketplace including the dot com bubble and the significant bankruptcy at Lehman Brothers in 2008. These sudden, significant tail risk events have a high degree of similarities with stresses and challenges for the markets during the pandemic.

2020 presented a number of challenges for the markets and companies alike, I think we are all looking forward to a return to some form of normality, but we will carry the unique experiences from 2020 with us for some time to come.

All digital content from Leaders in Trading: The Digital Experience (LiTDX) is available to view on-demand now. 

The post LiTDX: FinTech of the Year 2020 – OpenFin appeared first on The TRADE.

In the first ever FinTech of the Year award to be decided by an industry vote, OpenFin has been declared the winner after more than 300 votes were cast from market participants.

OpenFin’s financial markets operating system aims to resolve operational challenges with system connectivity and has proved itself essential during the remote working conditions brought on by the pandemic.  

In a special digital production for LiTDX, CEO of OpenFin Europe, Adam Toms, told The TRADE that the company has always had the ability to save and restore different layouts to manage increasingly competitive desktop space.

“We also had other features that perhaps people were necessarily as aware of, things like consolidating different views into one single component which proved incredibly important,” Toms added.  “The other element is of course application interoperability, it became more powerful to have apps linked together.” 

OpenFin is backed by major institutions including JP Morgan, Barclays Standard Chartered, Wells Fargo and HSBC. The firm was nominated in the FinTech award category alongside big xyt, Cloud9 Technologies and Vela Trading.

FinTech has played an essential role in preventing the markets from collapsing during heightened volatility and amid new working conditions, Toms added. 

“There are endless stories of FinTech who rapidly signed new contracts with clients in 2020, I think that was a sign of people really adjusting to pandemic searching for those solutions,” he said.

“The underlying themes, are strong movement around people trying to update their technology stacks, moving into web technologies, employers thinking about their employees and giving them the best possible experience, all of these accelerated dramatically during the pandemic and FinTechs were providers of a lot of solutions around that.” 

The post LiTDX: OpenFin wins FinTech of the Year 2020 Award appeared first on The TRADE.

The US exchange group said it acquired privately-owned Solovis to bolster its analytics, reporting and multi-asset class portfolio management tools across both public and private markets. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

As part of the deal, the Solovis platform will be available through the eVestment group. The cloud-based platform, monitors risk, portfolios and performance across asset classes and will provide the same services for eVestment’s 600 institutional investors.  

“The combination of eVestment and Solovis bolsters our capabilities to serve the investment community. Together, they create a global leader of proprietary content, insights and portfolio analytics,” said Lauren Dillard, executive vice president and head of Nasdaq’s global information services group.

The co-head of eVestment, Jerrod Stroller, added that when combined, both FinTech firms offer major decision-making power to its investor clients, across pre- and post-investment processes.

Nasdaq acquired the analytics provider eVestment for $705 million in 2017 to strengthen its buy-side relationships and information services division. eVestment provides data for traditional and alternative strategies, and had a client base of more than 2,000 firms at the time it was acquired.

“Our mission aligns seamlessly with eVestment’s and makes us well-positioned to capture the opportunities inherent in the evolving global markets landscape. We are excited to join the Nasdaq family through this acquisition,” said Josh Smith CEO and co-founder of Solovis.

The post Nasdaq acquires buy-side portfolio management FinTech Solovis appeared first on The TRADE.

The move means that users of the BidFX app will be able to manage and trade spot FX, forward and NDF positions at anytime and anywhere in the world. It will also provide access to BidFX trading functionality in real-time via a secure framework.

“The FX market is constantly evolving to keep apace with new, disruptive technologies. And from being a taboo subject as little as five years ago, mobile currency trading has come a long way as the need to trade on the go via a secure access point has evolved from a nice-to-have into a necessity,” said Jean-Philippe Male, CEO at BidFX.

As well as its on-the-go trading capabilities, the app can also be integrated across mobile and desktop devices with a security framework, which BidFX said passed testing at a higher standard than competing trading apps.

London-based investment firm, H20 Asset Management also commented on the importance of fast decision-making in the sector, and the need for simple integration between mobile and desktop.

“With the BidFX mobile app running in conjunction with their desktop app we can now ensure enhanced coverage across the FX markets which will further enhance our clients’ liquidity in the market,” said Stephane Leclerc, COO for Monaco and counterparty relationship manager at H20 Asset Management. 

Late last year, BidFX expanded its execution management system (EMS) with the addition of algorithms from Nomura and RBC Capital Markets. In March, Singapore Exchange also acquired a 20% stake in BidFX, which is a subsidiary of order and execution management systems specialist TradingScreen, for $25 million. 

The post BidFX unveils upgraded mobile trading app for institutional clients appeared first on The TRADE.

The results from Innovate Finance’s report suggest that market participants are shrugging off concerns about Brexit, as the UK’s FinTech investment climbing to a record $4.9 billion during the year.

Europe’s major FinTech hubs, including, Germany, France, Sweden as well as the UK, also saw record investment during the period as the region’s total investment surged 49% year-on-year to $8.5 billion.

In terms of deals, the UK has consistently represented more than half of all mega deals in Europe over the past five years, continuing that trend in 2019 after accounting for seven of the top 10 largest deals in Europe. 

“We are a world-leading FinTech hub, and as the figures reveal, the epicentre of FinTech in Europe – all of which is a testament to the fact that the UK is a leading destination to start and scale a FinTech business,” Charlotte Crosswell, CEO of Innovate Finance, commented on the UK’s performance.

Globally, however, the FinTech investment landscape suffered a 28% decline during last year to $35.7 billion, compared to $49.9 billion the year prior. Innovate Finance said the decline was driven by a sharp fall in funding for Chinese FinTech firms.

Almost all global regions saw an increase in FinTech investment apart from Asia, which saw figures plummet a significant 73% year-on-year from $28.8 billion to just $7.8 billion, with larger deals in China falling 32% in 2019 compared to 2018.

The US took the top spot globally from China following the declines in capital invested. North America’s FinTech investment surged 23% from 2018 to $16.3 billion across more than 1,000 deals.

Innovate Finance concluded its report by revealing that female-led FinTech firms attracted just 10% of all investment in the UK, and just 11% of all deals in 2019, as the not-for-profit FinTech group urged investors to do more to grow the sector. 

“The missing piece of the puzzle is ensuring we are also boosting female-led companies, and providing the capital to this area of the market,” Crosswell added. “There’s no excuse for investors to be overlooking female founders, and as a collective we must do more to better to ensure long-term success and growth of the sector.”

The post UK drives record $8.5 billion FinTech investment in Europe appeared first on The TRADE.

Michael Horan, director, head of trading, Pershing

The relentless march of algorithmic trading into execution workflows will continue to add to rising volumes in closing auctions across Europe. This will show more intensity around blue chips stock and ETFs as passive investing takes a further hold on equity trading investment profiles, further compounding the skew of liquidity dispersion towards the close. Intraday trading will see growing use of systematic internaliser liquidity and periodic auctions as the sell-side attempts to squeeze implicit trading costs as low as they can throughout the coming year.

Enrico Bruni, head of Europe and Asia business at Tradeweb

As market participants look to cut costs and operational risk, demand for more efficient trading solutions will increase. Portfolio trading will be a key focus for institutional investors and trading venues. Electronic portfolio trading will drive the migration to fully electronic workflows. We’ve already witnessed this shift after we launched our own portfolio trading solution, which we’ll continue to tweak and enhance in 2020. In a market where ETF basket trading is so vital each day, electronic portfolio trading is an innovation that will shape the future of the fixed income space.

Naz Quadri, global head of enterprise data science at Bloomberg

In 2020, we will continue to see the democratisation of data and proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) reshaping the financial services industry. The front-office was the first to fund and research AI’s potential to unearth valuable insights and possibly improve portfolio strategy and performance, and next year will be critical as organisations evolve the culture necessary to realise these benefits firm-wide. Commitment from senior management to foster firm-wide collaboration and investment in data-driven technology will be pivotal to establish and spread a more data-centric culture across organisations.

This cultural transformation should be approached like any strategic shift a firm undertakes, by allocating capital and rethinking the personnel and skills necessary to succeed. Data science talent, for example, will be at a premium as financial firms look to harness the power of ubiquitous data lakes for enhanced computing and advanced data analytics across the front, middle and back-office functions.

Tyler Moeller, CEO, Broadway Technology

Ongoing disruption in the capital markets will force banks to take a hard look at their FICC trading operations in 2020. To grow and thrive, they will need to establish a relentless focus on their franchise value, embrace more of the ‘build and buy’ model of trading technology, and deploy a rich application integration platform as the foundation of their technology stack. Banks will recognise they can – and must – outsource more of their trading architecture to trusted partners to accelerate internal innovation, deftly handle aspects like order management and Ecommerce, and enable trading workflow automation between various areas of their FICC operations. As banks search for efficiency, we’ll see a consolidation of technology and business areas and the creation of a centralised FICC trading desk. This evolution will be necessary to drive innovation while reducing costs and maintaining competitive advantage as trading margins and regulatory requirements continue to tighten.

Gareth Coltman, global head of trading automation, MarketAxess

2020 will be the year that data-driven, automated workflow becomes an essential and ubiquitous feature of the buy-side trading desk. The tipping point that has already been reached by the largest and most sophisticated firms will hit the rest of the market – no one will want to be left behind. And the size and complexity of trades being executed through AI-based tools like Auto-X will expand, as traders take advantage of faster, more accurate and more intelligent data to enhance their performance.

Andy Mahoney, head of sales EMEA, FlexTrade

Over the last few years, we’ve seen the beginning of a trading desktop revolution, where an open architecture approach is now finally being embraced, offering traders a seamless workflow experience across applications. At the same time, we’ve seen an explosion in the amount of data a trading system needs to ingest and analyze, with fast, secure integration options now being provided through the likes of OpenFin and Symphony. 2020 will see the dawn of the augmented desktop, where smart data and desktop interoperability meet with a focus on where trader and technology meet. The augmented desktop creates a seamless workflow experience for traders, where data is presented intuitively, with machine learning-driven next actions, consistently across all applications.

Lucas Nuzzi, director of technology, Digital Asset Research

For the past three years, conversations around the institutionalisation of digital assets focused in part on the lack of qualified custodians. That changed in 2019, as major institutions like Fidelity stepped in with custody offerings. In 2020, the issue of market manipulation and clean crypto prices will be the main focus of financial institutions and regulators alike. Over the course of this year, US regulators signaled time and time again that the lack of reliable pricing is the main barrier preventing the approval of exchange-traded products, like a Bitcoin ETF. This will necessitate the vetting of exchange pricing data in a way that identifies, quantifies and excludes manipulated data from price calculations. Clean prices will contribute to more reliable valuations and risk management, and will ultimately make institutions more comfortable with the asset class.

Adam Toms, CEO, OpenFin Europe

As we head into 2020, collaboration remains the focal point in order to accelerate innovation and solve real business challenges across the capital markets industry. Enabling individuals at the grassroots level to drive innovation, coupled with promoting the role of FinTech champions and heads of innovation at larger institutions, as well as creating structures and standards that support open and collaborative ways of working, will bring about a sustainable culture of innovation across finance services. In the current political climate, collaboration to drive innovation and economic growth as well as maintain London’s position as a global fintech hub, can only be a good thing.

Anders Kirkeby, head of open innovation, SimCorp

Alternative data (not data for alternatives!) will see a lot more new entrants, offering early adopters a chance to generate Alpha from more unique datasets. But the current number of vendors in this space is far too many – in excess of 100 at last count – making it difficult for the buy-side. To truly thrive, I suspect there will either be consolidation in the market or the attention will shift to alternative data aggregators, who can simplify the choice available. The latter outcome is the most likely and more effective; data aggregators get better at speaking to enterprises faster than any single alternative data vendor with a unique dataset, but few customers to learn from.

The post Predictions for 2020: Part two appeared first on The TRADE.

While the implementation and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning projects have continued apace in the industry, attitudes have noticeable shifted. Buy-side representatives at some of the industry’s biggest conferences ditched the usual hyperbole in favour of more nuanced opinions about the transformative potential of AI, extolling the virtues of patience and long-term planning or just straightforwardly dismissing the misconceptions of what AI is actually capable of. Despite the dangers and pitfalls that technology hype present, the buy-side is powering on with AI adoption and it looks certain to be a central facet to asset management strategies for the foreseeable future. The sell-side, for its part, is also heavily investing in AI for the future, evidenced through financing deals such as that led by Goldman Sachs in start-up H2O.ai.

One of the most interesting technology stories of the year also featured an industry-first, as BNP Paribas took a leaf out of Silicon Valley’s book with a Siri-style digital trading assistant, which launched alongside its real-time market analytics and interactive algorithms as part of major upgrade to the bank’s Cortex FX trading platform.

The TRADE’s annual Execution Management Survey found that EMS providers will have many reasons to be pleased, as scores continue to rise as the industry moves further away from the compliance-focused days of two years ago when MiFID II came into play. However, there are signs that some providers may be resting on their laurels, falling behind the high standards their peers have set in this year’s survey.

The fire around cryptocurrencies and digital assets may have not burned itself out entirely this year, but it is certainly dimmer than what we saw in 2018. In January, the European Markets and Securities Authority (ESMA) stated that certain crypto platforms should be subject to MiFID II rules on trading, while the chair of the European watchdog said the following month that regulators should show “objectivity and open mindedness” when it comes to developing frameworks for the supervision of crypto-assets and distributed ledger technologies. The lack of clearly defined regulation for crypto-assets hasn’t put major industry players off developing their own offerings, with Deutsche Börse outlining its plans for a regulatory compliant, full crypto ecosystem in March, while one of the buy-side firms to invest in the space with conviction, Fidelity Investments, announced at the end of the year that it would be bringing its own platform and custody services to Europe after first launching in the US last year. The less said about Facebook’s much pilloried entry into the space with its Libra project, the better.

There were markedly fewer big money acquisitions in the last 12 months compared to the previous year, but it was the analytics space that was most notable. In September, SS&C Technologies agreed to acquire risk analytics products and services from IBM’s Algorithmics division, expanding its range of data products, while in October, cloud-based portfolio analytics and data services provider StatPro was acquired by investment data automation specialist Confluence Technologies for just over £160 million. Elsewhere, Liquidnet completed deals for marketplace and aggregator RSRCHXchange in May and natural language processing (NLP) specialist, Prattle, a month later.

The post The TRADE’s best of 2019: Technology appeared first on The TRADE.

Christian Noyer has held various senior positions across central banks in Europe, including as vice president of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt when it was established in 1998, and as the governor of the French central bank between 2003 and 2015, following his reappointment for a second six-year term in 2009.

SETL, launched in 2015, has been working on implementing its multi-asset institutional payment and settlement platform using blockchain technology, known as OpenCSD. The vendor’s system allows market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, enabling immediate and final settlement of transactions.

“In the current environment, SETL’s technological leadership coupled with the deep experience of the team presents a unique and compelling proposition. I look forward to helping shape this extremely interesting initiative,” Noyer commented.

SETL’s recently-appointed chief executive, Philippe Morel, added that Noyer’s appointment will assist the blockchain group as it continues to develop its product.

“We believe we have a technological lead in the blockchain for financial markets arena having demonstrated the ability to process billions of transactions a day, and to be able to service over 100 million addresses concurrently. We are unique in having both a financial grade product and a proven deployment route,” Morel said.

Morel joined SETL as its CEO in October from The Boston Consulting Group where he oversaw private and principle investment for Europe. He has also previously worked at Goldman Sachs and within the credit department at Societe Generale.

“We do not underestimate the challenges of re-tooling some of the most fundamental elements of our financial infrastructure but the benefits of doing so are significant and widespread. We are strongly positioned to commence that transformation and look forward to making further announcements shortly,” Morel added.

The post Former governor of French central bank joins blockchain group’s board appeared first on The TRADE.

TABB Group surveyed 160 buy-side, sell-side and exchanges on their use of the technology and found that current internal budgets are modest, with 75% of respondents revealing they either have no budget in place, or a budget of up to $500,000.

However, 61% of asset managers said that they expect spend on AI technology to increase over the next 12 months, while 39% expect it to remain the same. At the same time, 80% of sell-side firms and 55% of exchanges, or trading venues, anticipate increased spend.

The research also found that buy-side firms are further ahead in their adoption of the technology, with 83% of asset management respondents stating that they were at least in the planning or research phase, while 73% of sell-side and exchange firms could say the same.

“It’s high on the change agenda at most firms, with the main use case being around the investment process, but also in trade execution and operations,” said Tim Cave, research analyst at TABB Group, and author of the research.

Actionable insight was cited as the major benefit of using AI technology by a majority of 56% of buy-side respondents, followed by 28% who said efficiency and automation was the key benefit. Strategy selection and risk management were also listed as major advantages for institutional investors implementing the technology.

In terms of the barriers to the adoption of AI technology, TABB Group found that data quality was the most prominent issue cited by 55% of all respondents as being the biggest challenge, followed by talent recruitment as firms are forced to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook to win staff.  

“Our survey revealed that the major roadblock to further adoption of AI approaches was data quality with over half of respondents citing this as their biggest challenge – it was a particular concern for the buy side,” Cave added.

“Right behind data quality was talent recruitment, followed by regulatory/compliance issues, an understandable major concern for exchanges and trading venues, reflecting high levels of regulatory scrutiny under which they operate… Challenges do remain in implementing AI approaches, particularly from a data quality perspective. The increasing reliance of machine over man is clearly a work in progress.”

A separate survey of 500 global asset managers, asset owners and insurance companies carried out by State Street late last year found that the buy-side is increasingly looking to emerging technologies, such as AI, to tackle concerns around hitting growth targets within the current market environment.

Almost half of respondents labelled emerging technologies, including AI and blockchain technology, as a ‘top enabler of growth’ over the next five years. The results reflected a significant increase from State Street’s 2017 survey, where just 18% of respondents thought that new technologies would be a top growth enabler.

In the summer, research services provider BarclayHedge also found that more than  half of hedge funds are currently using AI or machine learning technology to inform investment decisions and generate trading ideas.

The post Majority of buy-side firms anticipate increased spend on AI technology appeared first on The TRADE.