1. Tell us about your role in Itiviti?
I joined Itiviti as CEO on April 1st. Itiviti has a tremendous opportunity in front of it. We have the most modern technology in a market that is dominated by legacy players. Itiviti is investing heavily to provide tomorrow’s infrastructure for financial markets.
2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
To understand Itiviti you have to understand the landscape in which it operates. Financial markets are served by large technology firms that license old or in many cases legacy technology platforms. These platforms lock in high operating costs rendering many trading operations uncompetitive. These legacy providers in turn create the opportunity for banks to replace them with Itiviti’s modern infrastructure giving them far greater flexibility and lower operating costs.
3. How do you think technology is developing the Finance Sector?
The big trends driving enterprise technology that serves financial markets are increased use of automation, a move to public cloud and ultimately a reduction in the total cost of running trading floors. These trends produce a societal benefit in the form of a move of human talent out of finance to be deployed in ways to provide a greater benefit to humanity and its environment.
4. How have methods of trading in financial market evolved over the years, according to you?
Three big trends in financial trading are the growth of electronic trading, increasing use of automation and the reduction in cost of trading.
5. Can you explain how does your platform help buyers as well as sellers in obtaining better trading experience?
About 75% of Itiviti’s business is sellside, 25% buyside. Itiviti has four main business lines: the leading low touch agency trading solution; the most advanced principal trading technology using our award winning Tbricks platform stack, often used for market making and prop trading; a market leading 43% market share of FIX engines and associated tools; and NYFIX the market leading order routing network
6. How does your platform help traders in trading in multiple asset classes?
Cross asset capabilities are now essential offering for any trading platform. Itiviti has a fully cross asset low touch platform and our principal trading platform offers traders the ability to make markets in multiple asset classes and to specify alternative asset classes to hedge and price when the primary market is closed.
7. How do you differentiate your trading platform from others in the market?
Itiviti’s market differentiation is simple.
We have newer, more performant technology backed by dramatically higher levels of investment and better global support.
We are focused on supporting our clients to provide better service at reduced cost to their customers.
8. What advice would you like to give to the Startups?
I meet many startups with interesting technology designed to solve problems in large financial organizations – frequently the founding teams have first-hand experience having worked in those firms before. What they lack, however, is a clear understanding of how to distribute their solutions to large banks and buy sides. Given the growing clout of procurement departments in recent years this challenge is non-trivial. This is a recurring theme in the partnerships Itiviti has formed with fintech startups, where Itiviti can bring a global sales & marketing team and existing agreements with 1600 financial firms. This combined with investment capital dramatically accelerates adoption of our partners’ technologies.
9. Which Startup technology has grabbed your attention?
Alpha-Omega is an interesting firm. This Berkeley-based start up is disrupting the trade matching market which is dominated by legacy utilities such as DTCC’s Omgeo. Alpha-Omega’s strategy is to offer a superior multi-asset class service at a small fraction of the incumbent’s price. The strategy is working well with the firm signing landmark deals and growing revenue over 100% annually.
10. How do you prepare for a Technology-centric world?
Itiviti’s solutions are built from the ground up to support automation. Thus the growing electronification of trading and migration of flows from high touch to low touch are tailwinds for Itiviti’s business. Itiviti invests extensively in its solutions with 43% of staff working in R&D. This is further enhanced by Itiviti’s active corporate development program to partner with and acquire small, innovative fintech firms in spaces complementary to our existing business.
11. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
Itiviti has a very flat organizational structure which creates an entrepreneurial environment. Many of the team have extensive experience working in tier 1 banks giving them good understanding of the problems our clients are trying to solve.
12. What are the major developments you are planning, in recent time?
We have a focus on completion of our US trading offering and in integration of our principal and agency applications to enable us to provide enhanced product offerings to our customers. We will also be working on a new visualization layer that meets the need of todays workflows.
13. Which Book are you reading these days?
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.
14. We have heard that you have a very joyful work culture, we won’t mind having a look at some of the pictures?
A truly international company where we share a global mindset, Itiviti thrives on diversity and provides generous opportunities for growth and development. From offices on four continents, we not only offer rich opportunities to discover and experience new cultures and ways of working we also have a lot of fun along the way!
15. Can you give us a glance of the applications you use on your phone?
I spend a huge proportion of my time travelling. Unsurprisingly I have a disproportionate number of travel apps on my phone to streamline all this travel.
