ipushpull – Page 2 – Supercharge your business workflow

August 6, 2020August 6, 2020

Using Data-as-a-Service to Accelerate Digital Initiatives

Financial markets firms are increasingly capitalising on their data by taking advantage of cloud-based technologies that enable them to seamlessly connect with desktop applications. In a recent webinar, industry experts discussed how Data-as-a-Service enhances client experience, widens digital distribution channels and provides better workflow efficiency and automation for end-users.

Microsoft reported a record fiscal year in July 2020 with commercial cloud revenues surpassing $50bn for the first time, an increase of more than a third from a year ago. Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft, said on the earnings call that the previous five months had shown that digital technology intensity is key to business resilience. Nadella said: “Organisations that build their own digital capability will recover faster and emerge from this crisis stronger. We are seeing businesses accelerate the digitisation of every part of their operations to reimagine how they meet customer needs.”

Financial services firms have needed to digitise as Covid-19 has forced working from home while maintaining the same service to their clients. The Realization Group hosted a webinar in July 2020 with a panel of experts to discuss how firms of all sizes, from the sell side to the buy side, can use Data-as-a-Service to emerge better, faster and stronger in the post-pandemic world.

Data sharing in capital markets has historically been a very manual process, involving emails, file sharing and copy and pasting. Matthew Cheung, chief executive of ipushpull, explained that Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) allows firms to automate this process and seamlessly connect their data to their clients while providing the first or last mile of connectivity to end-user applications.

The fintech ‘pulls’ the required information from a database, a platform or even a spreadsheet and ‘pushes’ it to recipients in applications they already use, such as Excel spreadsheets or a chat platform. Clients will have preferences on whether that data is live, streaming or on-demand and DaaS can also meet the capital markets regulatory requirements of security controls and audit trails.

“The cloud is an enabling technology so Data-as-a-Service allows firms to share data in any application and it is all plug-and-play,” Cheung added. “Covid-19 has accelerated cloud adoption and digital transformation projects across markets.”

This was backed up by a poll which found that the vast majority of the audience, 85%, had heard of DaaS. In addition, Covid-19 was the top factor driving their firm’s digital transformation with 30% of the vote.

Capital markets firms have traditionally built their own technology but John Macpherson, deputy chair of the Investment Association’s advisory panel for Engine, a fintech accelerator for the asset management industry, said that ship has sailed. More than half, 58%, of the audience agreed as they said they would buy, rather than build, DaaS technology.

Macpherson added: “The buy side very much looks at DaaS as a cost-efficient responsive service that allows them to focus on selling their products.”

Data-as-a-Service also creates a faster path to innovation, giving firms a more agile decision making process and a more data-driven culture which lowers risk and leads to higher revenues.

“Once these dots are connected DaaS will become more prevalent,” said Macpherson. “There are phenomenal opportunities from getting the right data at the right moment in the right format so that people can make better decisions.”

Patrick Flannery, co-founder and chief executive of data infrastructure provider MayStreet, broke down the four stages of using data effectively – collection, storage, transformation and delivery. Each stage presents a challenge, for example, storing large amounts of data can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in each region. Flannery said: “Firms will have an ocean of unstructured data. They need to pull out the relevant piece and then integrate it into their downstream workflow. Giving it a go themselves may actually give them a first-hand view of the resources needed to do it right and push them into the direction of DaaS.”

Julien Dugat, fixed income client execution platforms and digital sales at NatWest Markets, explained that the main reason the bank chose to use ipushpull, rather than build, was the speed to market of using an off-the-shelf product.

“You don’t need to spend ages customising the product and integrating it with your own data feed, so you can get going really quickly”, Dugat added.

NatWest Markets uses electronic venues’ FIX API’s and ipushpull to distribute tens of thousands of daily axes to clients more efficiently than through phone calls or emails. Automating the process means the axes are always up-to-date, actionable, relevant and easy to access by clients. The bank sends a stream of live data to the ipushpull cloud and clients can pull the data in their preferred format, such as Excel or a Symphony chat. The majority of the audience, 63%, said they would prefer to use Data-as-a-Service through APIs, followed by Excel and then Symphony apps and bots.

Dugat said: “Clients don’t need to install anything on their desktop but can, for example, access our data through Symphony or the ipushpull web app or mobile app so it is a very low barrier to entry.”

The NatWest sales desks also use ipushpull to easily send highly targeted relevant axes to specific clients. A client may want auto sector bonds, and the salesperson can filter the axes and send them by clicking one button. Clients can also trade axes more efficiently as the bank has integrated ipushpull with SCOUT, an execution bot in Symphony.

Dugat said: “It is about getting the right data to the right person at the right time. Rather than just inundating everybody with lots of data, we make it relevant.”

Mark Woolfenden, managing director of futures and options reference data supplier Euromoney TRADEDATA highlighted that DaaS provides opportunities for small and medium-sized firms to access the same high-quality data as large firms, as they would be able to pay just for the data they used.

“More flexible business models could include offering data on-demand as part of the trade lifecycle from pre-trade risk validation to post-trade regulatory compliance and portfolio management,” Woolfenden added.

Cheung concluded that he expects digitisation and DaaS to become more common. He said: “Moving to this new way of data sharing unlocks efficiency and automation, so humans can spend time on higher-value tasks.”

Contact ipushpull at sales@ipushpull.com for further information or for a live demo of Data-as-a-Service in action.

June 25, 2020July 9, 2020

Enabling Data-as-a-Service on Legacy Platforms

In a previous blog, we wrote about the competitive edge that data-rich financial institutions and solution vendors can gain by offering ‘Data-as-a-Service‘.

But what are some of the key considerations when it comes to cloud-enabling a firm’s existing legacy platforms? How difficult is it to offer live data or real-time data sharing through commonly used desktop apps such as Excel?

A bank, broker or asset manager might want to take on-premise data that sits on an internal platform – trade data for example – and seamlessly share that to the cloud, thus removing the need for end users to be onsite or to remote desktop in via a VPN.

Or a solution vendor with products designed for on-premise installation or access via dedicated lines and specific client software, might wish to go cloud-based in order to offer real-time or on-demand data sharing into existing applications and workflows without its customers having to rely on clunky FTP or building to APIs.

The good news is that enabling Data-as-a-Service on these legacy platforms is not as difficult as it might seem.

Enabling Data-as-a-Service on Legacy Platforms –

Real-time data sharing in the real world

Amongst financial institutions, many firms, on both the buy side and the sell side, are looking to gain greater leverage from their own internal systems by cloud-enabling them, thus improving the service they offer to internal colleagues and external clients. Whether that’s through making real-time data available within chat and collaborative workflow apps, feeding live data to and from Excel or sharing data via other desktop apps, there are many benefits that such an approach offers.

A good real-world example of this is the e-commerce fixed income department of a well-known bank, which uses its own internally-developed platform to generate trade axes from its current bond inventory. Working together with ipushpull, the bank has cloud-enabled this internal platform with secure, real-time data sharing, so that customers are automatically updated with new trade axes via their own choice of desktop apps (such as Symphony or Excel) and can respond with indications of interest directly from within those apps.

From a solution vendor perspective, there are many companies that have fantastic products and services, but live data sharing is restricted by the fact that their customers need to have software installed onsite or can only access data through FTP or API integration with a centralised service. A number of these vendors are now seeing the benefits of cloud-enabling these platforms to offer Data-as-a-Service.

Again, it’s worth citing a couple of real-world examples.

The first is a risk solution vendor that offers intra-day margin calculations. They have a great product that enables customers to load up their position data and calculate span margining for those positions on the fly. However, the product was originally designed to be installed on premise at the customer’s site, which made it expensive and meant that it could only be sold to larger institutions. By working with ipushpull to create a multi-tenant version with a secure cloud presentation layer, the vendor can broaden the service out to a wider, more diverse customer base and offer more affordable subscription-based or on-demand pricing models.

The second example is a data vendor that has a centralised multi-tenant platform, where customers download large data files and upload trade files via secure FTP. Again, their legacy installation and onboarding process meant that their commercial model was limited to larger customers. ipushpull helped the vendor cloud-enable this service to make the data available on demand, which has now opened up the service to a much wider group of potential customers.

Seamless integration of data sharing tools

The common thread with all of these legacy systems is that they handle data, with a set of inputs and outputs. And there is no fundamental, technical reason why they should not be cloud-enabled with data sharing tools.

This is what ipushpull does. At the front end, we deliver these systems as true services with a unified presentation layer via the common desktop apps that people are already using. At the back end we develop APIs that plug into these legacy technologies. From the perspective of both service providers and end users, this is a completely seamless process. Services connect to ipushpull via the cloud and we take care of the rest, i.e. marshalling the data, providing access controls, presenting the data into multiple desktop apps and marshalling data back and forth to the service from within those apps in real-time.

Service providers benefit from not only being able to offer live and on-demand access through desktop apps like Excel, Slack, Symphony, Microsoft Teams and Eikon messenger, desktop containers like ChartIQ Finsemble and Openfin, and internal platforms and applications like pricing engines, risk systems and OMSs, without have to completely re-platform their existing systems, but also being able to deliver data-driven custom notifications into those apps based upon user-defined parameters.

In summary, Data-as-a-Service offers many benefits, and there is no reason that firms should be restricted to on-premise deployment or to API/SFTP integration. By working with a trusted partner such as ipushpull, firms that are looking to cloud-enable their internal platforms can minimise their internal development costs, broaden their reach and rapidly accelerate their time to market.

Download “Fintech’s Next Frontier: Data-as-a-Service” our Financial Markets Insights report. In collaboration with Natwest Markets, Maystreet, Euromoney TRADEDATA and Engine, part of The Investment Association, ipushpull explores the importance of Data-as-a-Service in facilitating remote working and accelerating digital initiatives within the financial markets industry.

June 22, 2020July 7, 2020

ipushpull participates in Integrated Workflows webinar by Chart IQ

Alongside industry experts from Citi Ventures, Bloomberg, Illuminate Financial Management and ChartIQ, ipushpull participated in an “Integrated Workflows: From Nice-to-Have to Business Continuity Imperative” webinar hosted by Chart IQ, which ran on June 9^th 2020. The webinar is now available for replay here.

In the environment of the pandemic, companies continue to operate, while discovering that their investments in digitization initiatives evolved from the need to increase efficiency and effectiveness to the currently critical business continuity infrastructure. The webinar discussion focused on how banks and technology firms are collaborating to handle the global shift to working from home with next-generation digital initiatives.

You can now watch the webinar replay for an exclusive demo of how ipushpull integrates into Finsemble, Bloomberg (through Finsemble), Microsoft Teams and FIX (around 00:38 min).

“Integrated Workflows: From Nice-to-Have to Business Continuity Imperative”

About ipushpull

Find out more about ipushpull or get in touch with our sales team at sales@ipushpull.com

June 16, 2020

ipushpull pre-trade workflow solutions a hit at Investment Association’s ‘Power Pitches’

On the 2^nd of June ipushpull participated in The Investment Association (IA) Engine Innovators Power Pitches, where cohort 3 of the buy-side focused Engine programme showcased the latest technology solutions for asset managers and hedge funds.

The Engine programme is a Fintech accelerator and hub that gives a platform to best-in-class Fintech innovators, connecting innovative, proven solutions with the investment management sector. In particular, as COVID-19 has highlighed the importance of technology and innovation in ensuring business endurance and growth, agility and scalability is now more crucial than ever for competitive success of organisations of all sizes.

A line up of 5 Fintechs, chosen by the heavy hitting IA Engine advisory panel, presented their solutions for 3 minutes each, highlighting how they can assist firms and bring in efficiencies, lower costs and enable opportunity. The webinar also included an engaging interactive panel of Q&As.

The IA Engine cohort 3 speakers included:

ipushpull – Matthew Cheung, CEO

Exabel – Neil Chapman, CEO

Fundipedia – Simon Swords, MD

KiteEdge – James Flavin, CEO

Rungway – Julie Chakraverty, CEO/Founder

Notable speakers also present:

The IA – Gillian Painter, Head of membership and Engine

M&G Investments – Siobhan Clarke, Chair of the Engine Advisory Panel and Head of International Investment

Pre-trade workflow solution for OTC trader presented by ipushpull:

For the 3 minute pitch, CEO Matthew Cheung explained how ipushpull can enable fully digitised data driven workflows on a trading desk. To showcase how ipushpull can be implemented, Matthew described the severe inadequacies in pre-trade workflow for non-standard OTC trades. To solve these, organisations can streamline their workflows and move away from the inconsistencies and inefficiencies of spreadsheets and emails. ipushpull allows organisations to reduce operational risk and manual touchpoints for a faster, more efficient investment process. Embracing data-driven workflows enables exponential data flywheel effects – faster feedback loops means more data, provides better insights, creates better workflow. All of this can be done without any development work and instead by ‘levelling up’ existing technology.

If you would like to find out more about this solution or the ipushpull platform please get in touch: sales@ipushpull.com

June 3, 2020July 2, 2020

How can data-rich financial institutions and vendors provide ‘Data-as-a-Service’ to their clients?

Banks, inter-dealer brokers, funds and financial data vendors maintain unique, and in many cases live, data sets. This data could provide a competitive edge to clients if it could be easily shared with them

It has become something of a truism that data is a valuable commodity in today’s economy. Particularly so in the financial markets sector, where the quality and timeliness of the data can have such a massive impact on the outcome of trading and investment decisions.

Data-rich firms, such as banks producing trade axes, inter-dealer brokers making prices, commodities firms quoting spreads, reference data firms providing the latest symbology and market risk analytics platforms sharing risk metrics are therefore in a strong position. Financial market participants are hungry for unique, high-quality, accurate and timely live and on-demand data, and willing to pay a premium if it gives them a competitive edge.

Increasingly however, end clients are looking for their counterparts, vendor and service providers to offer more data. They want a better user experience by being able to access live data on-demand, and to be able to easily access and integrate the data within their existing applications and workflows, with minimum disruption. They also want more flexibility to pay only for what they use rather than being forced to subscribe to large data sets.

These demands can be tough for data producers to meet. But for those able to rise to the challenge, many opportunities can open up in terms of new services they can offer, new business models they can capitalise on, and new types of clients that they might not otherwise be able to service.

Living in the past

The traditional model of live data delivery to end users in the financial markets sector – still prevalent at the majority of financial institutions – is via dedicated desktop applications or browser-based services where, with the appropriate licence agreements, users can access the relevant data and where specific functionality is provided within those desktop or browser applications to view and work with the data.

This is all well and good but somewhat restrictive from the end-user’s perspective. Sales and Traders generally use a range of core applications in their daily workflow, such as various pricing & analytics tools, spreadsheets such as Excel, and chat apps such as Bloomberg IB chat, Eikon Messenger and Symphony, for example.

The problem arises when they want to work with live data using these core tools rather than those offered by the data producer (that’s if the data producer even offers such tools). Typically, there’s no easy way to connect the former with the latter, so generally they have to rely on inefficient or expensive ways to get the necessary data into their own applications, ranging from copy and paste between applications (prone to error and no longer real-time) or downloading CSV files (very clunky), to building API connections (very expensive), with only the latter offering anything close to live data or real-time automation. So what’s the alternative you may ask?

Data-as-a-Service

In response to growing demand for more accessible data (exacerbated by covid related remote working) , data producers and service providers are increasingly looking at how to offer “Data-as-a-Service”(DaaS). But they need to be more intelligent than just providing users with access to a massive database and giving them the ability to select the subsets of data that they want over existing channels.

As its name suggests, DaaS is not just about the Data component. Data producers need to give equal – or even greater – weight to the ‘Service’ element, as this is where they can really differentiate themselves. Particularly as a younger generation of millennials are now entering positions of seniority within firms, with higher digital demands than the old guard. In the B2C world, these “digital natives”have become used to accessing the information they want, when they want it, in their chosen format, on their own device, and to be able to immediately act on it. Increasingly, they expect their B2B providers to offer similar levels of service.

With the right DaaS approach, data producers can satisfy these demands, to really set themselves apart and capitalise on this changing dynamic. But there are three key challenges they need to overcome:

First, they need to make it a lot easier for clients to pull data from data producers into their own core applications, without having to resort to significant – and potentially costly – API development or working with flat files.

Second, they need to build value-added services around two-way data flow, where clients are not just consuming their data, but acting on it and sending data such as prices or bot commands back from their own core apps.

Third, they need to adapt their business models to reflect what is happening in the B2C world, because this is increasingly what clients want, e.g. tiered subscriptions or usage-based licences, rather than an all-or-nothing approach.

Data-as-a-Service enablement

In the past, building these types of DaaS capabilities would have incurred significant development, particularly if the data producer relies on legacy technologies for its own data collection, storage, normalisation and distribution.

Fortunately, DaaS-enabling technology now exists that makes it possible for data producers to achieve all of this without having to re-architect their own data platforms.

ipushpull, for example, enables data producers to rapidly connect their service to a cloud-based platform and deliver standardised two-way interfaces and plug-ins into popular client desktop, chat and workflow apps used within the Financial Markets sector. Combining this with features such as data-driven notifications delivered into those same apps (so that the user is automatically alerted when key events occur), ipushpull can offer a genuinely new and superior client experience.

The benefits to this approach are significant not only for external data producers but for delivering in-house data and functionality internally as a service in the same way.

In-house systems can leverage this approach across a wide range of use cases by improving live risk, position and P&L monitoring across desktop and mobile apps, syndication desks seamlessly sharing flow to sales desks or speeding up trade exception management, for example. Data and service providers, as well as gaining a fast and cost-effective way to deliver data to their clients, also benefit by being able to offer more commercial flexibility and a far better user experience to their clients. And by being able to both push and pull data to and from their clients, they gain greater insights that enable them to develop new services around data sharing, data enrichment and workflow automation, for example.

By embracing this powerful, agile new approach to DaaS, data-rich financial institutions and vendors can now adopt more flexible commercial models while keeping ahead of the ever increasing demands of their clients.

April 23, 2020July 9, 2020

How Covid-19 and Remote Working will Create Permanent Disruption of the Post Trade Process within Capital Markets

James Maxfield, Managing Director, Ascendant Strategy

Digitalisation has been a hot topic for several years within the post trade environment, with industry commentators forecasting a revolution on par with the transformation of sales and trading, that years of electronification brought to the front office. But despite all of the posturing and big intentions, little has materially changed outside of pockets of innovation led by start-ups such as Access Fintech trying to drive industry collaboration. Email continues to be the dominant communication tool of choice, with spreadsheets and PDF’s being leveraged on the whole to provide the content to feed exception management processes. And in some cases, faxes still persist for the exchange of confirmations or signed documents that require validation against physical signatory lists.

That is not to say that there isn’t demand for innovation – there is significant pent up frustration at the C-level around the number of people typically involved in the process – but the lack of significant progress is more a reflection of prioritisation and allocation of resources to drive these agendas. With time and resources an increasingly scarce commodity for all but the largest global players, focus for most has been trying to keep on top of the day job. The fragmented operating models that persist for most after a decade of near and far shoring, creates an increasing disconnect between senior leadership and those doing the job on the ground. All of which makes the digitalisation agenda a thing to envy for most post trade leaders.

So, given the complexity of this problem, how will the current situation provide a catalyst for change that a decade of industry cost pressure has been unable to create?

Here are some reasons why.

Leaders are being forced to lead digitally. The pandemic crisis has fast tracked a generation of leaders into the digital age, in a way that no-one could have predicted. And being intelligent people, they are seeing the benefits this can bring. Ascendant Strategy spoke with the client service head in the markets division of a bank who was delighted with how Zoom was able to connect him with his teams. This was no sleight on his digital savviness, but more a reflection around banks still relying on old world tool sets to manage their day to day workload. They have now seen what is possible in terms of communication mechanisms such as Symphony, Slack and Microsoft Teams. And they like it.
Operational Resilience. This has been a focus area for some time by the UK regulator and will continue to be a global focus in the future. And whilst some will justifiably claim that the scale and impact of the pandemic could not be predicted, all regulators will expect resilience models to be updated to reflect the impact of it.

‘Delivering operational resilience requires firms to take decisive and effective actions, for example by replacing outdated or weak infrastructure, increasing systems’ capacity or addressing key person dependencies.’ FCA

These expectations will force organisations to look hard at capacity constraints and key person or location dependencies (individuals and groups) that have arisen and rethink some of their historic investment decisions. And whilst some commentary reads that this will push a ‘jobs return home’ agenda, we see this as uninformed opinion on the whole. Near and far shore centres provide well educated talent pools, capacity and skills that do not exist in the local job market – so Ascendant Strategy does not see a material shift in the global make up of resourcing. Besides, multi-location sites provide valuable BCP benefit (albeit of little value in a global lockdown). But where the investment decision was based solely on ‘cost of automation’ vs ‘cost of manual processing’ expect to see greater emphasis now being placed on how automation can deliver improved resilience.

‘Old School’ management no longer works. Traditional approaches to crisis management and severe market volatility typically relied on ‘old-school’ management styles. Key people (typically process experts) huddled together in a war room, from 7am till late with whiteboards and spreadsheets. With leadership getting into the detail and providing command and control through experience gained in prior battles. Tea and medals were won during these periods, with battlefield promotions not being uncommon. However, this is already showing itself as being unsustainable during this extended lock down period – anecdotally, fails and collateral management are key pain points within the industry right now – highlighting the lack of standardised processes and pinch-points within many post trade processes that cause them to lack scale in stressed situations. And these areas will have cost firm’s real money in terms of operational losses, given the ongoing levels of volatility (VIX has been over 80 in March 2020, having reached 30 once in the prior 5 years). People will adapt, but the reality is that this will force a change in leadership style (and leaders in some cases), pushing demands for process standardisation and greater levels of automation. All of which will unlock opportunities for digital solution providers.
The demise of the shared inbox. As the post trade process adapts quickly to the capabilities digital communication channels provide, other tool sets will quickly follow. Where FinTech’s have existing integrations with these channels, they will find opportunities to use them as a beachhead to accelerate opportunities to deliver automation and efficiency into the post trade space. The change is already happening with, for example, firms like ipushpull offering real-time workflow apps and notifications and as a service across multiple channels including chat applications. This is driving fast change with low hanging fruit such as the shared inbox being rapidly demoted as the preferred workflow tool.

The world is faced with a crisis that no-one would have predicted 6 months ago – and focus quite rightly is now tuned to survival. But once this passes and some sort of normality returns, reflection will start. And it is this process of reflection that will provide opportunities for FinTech’s to help capital markets firms accelerate their post trade digital agendas.

About Ascendant Strategy

Ascendant Strategy is a specialist post trade consultancy operating within capital markets. We bring technology and operations together, bringing experienced, practitioner expertise to deliver transformational outcomes for organisations where complexity has overpowered efficiency.

Find out more here at www.ascendant-strategy.com or follow us on Linkedin or twitter @Ascendant_Strat.

April 21, 2020April 27, 2020

The Investment Association selects ipushpull to be part of new UK FinTech accelerator

Powering the progression of tech adoption within the investment industry

LONDON, April 21st, 2020: ipushpull, a leading enterprise platform that improves efficiency by allowing secure live data sharing and workflow automation, is pleased to announce that they have been chosen by The Investment Association (IA) to be part of its latest FinTech hub ‘Engine‘.

The accelerator programme will connect best-in-class FinTech innovators with investment managers looking to transform the industry. It will act as a catalyst for industry transformation and bring together focused tech solutions.

Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull, said:

“We are delighted to be part of the IA’s unique programme driving greater adoption of new technologies across investment management. ipushpull and our data-as-a service solution has been recognised for innovation, quality of solution and our focus on key industry problem areas within the investment industry.”

ipushpull transforms data-driven workflow and improves efficiency across capital markets with real-time data sharing and workflow automation, delivering fast time-to-market and cost savings for data producers and services.

Working closely with the buy-side, the data as a service solution standardises and automates workflow using an innovative approach of bots and widely used chat applications. ipushpull has seen a dramatic increase in adoption of these solutions as buy-side traders are forced to work from home due to COVID-19.

John Macpherson, Deputy Chair of the IA Engine Advisory Panel, comments:

“We have certainly witnessed transformational changes over the last couple of months and have seen technology enable firms to operationalise and compete in these unusual and difficult times. We’re thrilled to offer ipushpull access to our industry-recognised programme and excited at such new and innovative technology which the IA can showcase to trading desks of UK based asset managers“.

ipushpull will work with the IA and harness the industry expertise of its partners and networks. Also, as part of the eight-month accelerator program, the participants will receive mentoring from an industry-expert Engine Advisory Panel to help unlock potential for solutions throughout the sector, including Schroders, Aberdeen Standard Investments, Insight, Legal & General, M&G and UBS Asset Management.

Alongside ipushpull, the firms chosen are Exabel, Fundipedia, KiteEdge and Rungway.

Media contact for ipushpull

Melanie Budden

The Realization Group

+44 (0)7974 937 970

Melanie.budden@therealizationgroup.com

Media contact for The Investment Association

Katie Martin, Head of Communications: Katie.Martin@theia.org

44 (0)20 7831 0898

Press@theia.org

About ipushpull:

ipushpull is transforming data-driven workflows and improving efficiency across capital markets with real-time data sharing and workflow automation. The Data-as-a-Service platform delivers fast time-to-market and big cost savings for data producers and services, providing unified, access-controlled data distribution into client applications (Custom Apps, Excel, Symphony, chat bots, notifications, APIs) and streamlining high-touch processes across the trade lifecycle with the ipushpull no-code custom applications and bot framework.

For more information about ipushpull and our solutions visit www.ipushpull.com.

About The Investment Association (IA):

The IA champions UK investment management, supporting British savers, investors and businesses. Our 250 members manage £7.7 trillion of assets and the investment management industry supports 100,000 jobs across the UK. Our mission is to make investment better. Better for clients, so they achieve their financial goals. Better for companies, so they get the capital they need to grow. And better for the economy, so everyone prospers. The UK is the second largest investment management centre in the world, after the US and manages 35% of all assets managed in Europe.

For more information about The Investment Association visit www.theia.org.

April 21, 2020April 21, 2020

First cohort of firms join rebranded IA FinTech hub – Engine

The latest five firms chosen to take part in the IA’s FinTech accelerator programme have today been unveiled by the Investment Association (IA), as the trade body announces the programme and FinTech hub will be rebranded ‘Engine‘.

The six-month FinTech accelerator programme (formerly known as Velocity) aims to connect best-in-class FinTech innovators with investment managers looking to transform investment. The evolution of the IA’s FinTech offering from Velocity to Engine reflects the growth and maturing of the IA’s FinTech ambitions – expanding its hub and accelerator in London, to power national and international FinTech adoption with the co-working ‘Engine Room’ in Birmingham and the development of global initiatives and partnerships.

The selected firms will benefit from unparalleled access to the IA and its industry expertise, as well as gaining valuable exposure to industry networks and potential clients. Participants benefit from mentoring from the industry-expert Engine Advisory Panel, which helps firms unlock their potential and implement solutions throughout the sector.

The following firms were selected to take part in the Engine accelerator programme due to the quality of their solutions and focus on key industry problem areas:

Exabel delivers cloud technology solutions to buy-side firms which enable active fund managers to complement their investment strategies with more data-driven techniques and perspectives, including powerful AI predictive models.
Fundipedia is a leading data management platform empowering the asset management industry to govern their data with ease, make smarter, faster decisions, and meet regulatory reporting requirements with confidence.
ipushpull is transforming data-driven workflows and improving efficiency across capital markets with real-time data sharing and workflow automation, delivering fast time-to-market and cost savings for data producers and services.
KiteEdge turns knowledge into advantage through a combination of leading-edge technology and human expertise, empowering asset managers to maximise their value by identifying insights and delivering improved outcomes.
Rungway, the workplace advice platform, is a management tool to foster a safe, inclusive culture and strengthen your conduct & culture framework.

Chris Cummings, Chief Executive of the Investment Association, said:

“18 months after the launch of our FinTech offering, our accelerator programme is moving from strength to strength. The unveiling of Engine is fitting of our ambition to drive broader adoption of new technologies across investment management. Engine will continue to act as a catalyst for industry innovation, bringing together buy side focused tech solutions addressing current and future business needs.

“Congratulations to Exabel, Fundipedia, ipushpull, KiteEdge and Rungway who have succeeded in securing their place in the first Engine cohort.”

Engine will also feature a new taxonomy and search functionality (in partnership with The Disruption House) on its new website that allows for quick identification of solutions across the value chain, asset classes and technologies, providing a single source directly applicable to the specific needs of investment management businesses.

April 16, 2020April 9, 2021

Coronavirus Forces Change for Sales and Traders Working from Home

Firms embracing the latest communication, collaboration and workflow platforms have a significant advantage

Coronavirus has caused a dramatic shift in working practices globally, with particular challenges for front office workers in capital markets. Financial institutions have moved operations in differing ways but there has been a clear progression from staff split between office and disaster recovery sites, through to the entire workforce working from home.

Initially, due to both the nature of how a sales and trading desk runs as well as regulations around recorded phone calls and record keeping, front office workers were still going into the office. However, as lockdowns tightened and following the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) temporarily waiving some of its supervisory rules the majority of sales and trading staff are now working from home with a reluctant few still having to travel in to man a skeleton staff dealing desk.

Contingency planning

Fortunately, the post credit crisis increase in financial regulation and focus on operational risk has led to improved contingency planning, and regular comprehensive testing of offsite technology, with many firms enforcing days or weeks working from home before the tightened lockdown to ensure a seamless transition.

In conjunction with improved planning there has also been a change in the way businesses operate over the last decade – expensive city locations have led to a desire to downsize available space for workers. Many firms do not provide enough desks to cover all staff and hence increased home working has become prevalent in many teams. The cost of any perceived reduction in productivity was seen to be easily offset by savings on desk space and the benefits to employees of a more flexible working environment; from easier childcare logistics to lack of a commute. Whilst these employees in capital markets were more likely to be away from the front line of trading it has been a valuable learning exercise in how to improve the home working experience.

#WFH – A new paradigm

Working at home for the most part involves remotely connecting to a work computer via VPN – this places less stress on home PCs and internet access. Although reliable broadband can still be an issue, especially when combined with multiple other users such as family members, who are all isolating in the same location. As home setups are unlikely to have the 6-8 monitors that a dealing desk has, contingency planning in the weeks before lockdown went as far as arranging work screen layouts to fit into those available at home. Unfortunately, those that were looking for additional home screens have struggled with both rocketing demand and global shortages in PC equipment making new screens, webcams and hardware hard to come by.

As governments further tightened restrictions and lockdowns, operationally these moves have appeared to have been a success – core tasks have been achievable, levels of service have remained superficially similar, but activity levels have fallen.

The challenge of remote working now moves away from the physical logistics to how to operate in this new environment. The proliferation of systems, screen real estate, applications and communication methods need to be simplified. The new working environment needs to adjust working practices towards less screens and less verbal communication while allowing for more non-work interruptions (particularly if young children are at home) as well as a new interpersonal dynamic.

Technology steps up

During the first phases of lockdown, cloud providers have seen a meteoric rise in usage with many additional datacentres being brought on-line, with even the likes of Microsoft suffering outages in Azure (its cloud platform) and Teams (its chat platform) due to surging demand in mid-March.

Meanwhile chat platforms are seeing record numbers of usage with Symphony seeing 40% increase in daily users in Q1 and Microsoft Teams usage has more than doubled to 44 million users, while video conferencing applications like Zoom are now a household name.

Recreating a sales and trading desk to work from home

One of the biggest complaints so far from sales and trading has been around screen real estate. This is a problem at the best of times (with 4-8 screens in the office) but now this issue is significantly amplified due to home set ups only having 1-3 screens. However that hasn’t stopped some traders sharing their home trading setups, which now even has its own hashtag on Instagram – #ronarigs.

The prolific rise in chat usage has gone some way to replace the rapid fire communication on a dealing desk – a combination of shouting, absorbing chatter through osmosis and hoot-n-holler speaker systems – which have all but disappeared. These dealing room conversations, and camaraderie among peers, form a valuable part of market colour, which now needs to be recreated digitally.

Sales and traders from both buy-side and sell-side have said that there has been a significant increase in chat and calls, making it harder to stay on top of everything. The increase in communication results in a slower speed of trade. What is needed is a better, smarter and faster way to aggregate and consolidate communication, data, notifications and workflow, with less back and forth communication.

Therefore, there is ample demand for digital initiatives, such as:

Simplified workflows with manual interventions becoming the exception rather than the norm – emailed trades sent within spreadsheets or prices copied and pasted into a chat that are then entered into pricing systems should be replaced with data driven flows outside of email or fully integrated into chat
User defined notifications become ever more important, as not all apps may be visible on a desktop particularly with limited screen space
Axe collation and distribution, commonplace on many sales and trading desks, should integrate tools to monitor performance and client interest
Price or economic data aggregation, to condense 10+ sources into one front end, reducing screen space and enabling more effective filtering and watchlists
Key risk and performance metrics should be timely, easy to collate across disparate systems and subsequently made available in the best possible way to users
Elimination of sequential file sharing and increasing the ability to work on the same documents in parallel
On screen charts that colleagues used to walk over to view, now need to be accessible, more self-explanatory and intuitive

With a thriving capital markets fintech ecosystem, vendors like ipushpull, Symphony, ChartIQ, Adaptable Tools, Openfin and Greenkey not only interoperate between each other but also provide the tools to streamline workflow more efficiently for sales and traders working at home.

One UK investment bank that has embraced the fintech ecosystem has seen a significant increase in price requests from digital channels, further reinforcing investment to ramp up more digital initiatives. Technology is very much providing an edge in this current climate.

During this time ipushpull has seen significant increase in adoption. The platform makes it simple to connect, share and automate workflow between data, applications and people in real-time. Ease of collaboration, the clarity of information and how it is displayed all become critical. As face-to-face contact has diminished live data, sharing across differing groups of teams and systems becomes paramount to future remote working success, all whilst retaining the monitoring and audit controls necessary for regulated institutions.

Because many business user tools were not built for dynamic and unstructured work and front office dealing desks were not built for home working, there is a huge opportunity for lasting and improved workflow efficiency through the use of technology like ipushpull and other leading collaboration and workflow platforms.

April 7, 2020April 8, 2020

Data Connectivity Essential For Remote Work

Extracted from the article “Data Connectivity essential for remote work” by Shanny Basar.

Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull, said there had been an increase in interest in the company’s ability to provide live data sharing as more staff are working remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cheung told Markets Media: “The cloud has a couple of silver linings. As more people are working remotely, firms want the ability to share data in real-time while maintaining their institutional controls over access.”

London-based ipushpull allows users to securely share data in real-time across desktop applications, databases, messaging platforms and cloud services.

Cloud technology

The Data-as-a-Service platform was launched three years ago and allows data to be easily shared using cloud technology.

“Cloud deployment was a big challenge in capital markets,”Cheung added. “An enormous tanker started slowly turning three years ago at a slow pace and has picked up speed in the last 12 months.”

He predicted there will be an acceleration in deployment of the cloud in the next nine to 12 months, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic has caused staff to work from remote locations while still needing access to real-time data.

In capital markets ipushpull has initially focussed on non-exchange traded assets that require manual processes. For example, when dealers make prices for options in Excel spreadsheets and then have to copy and paste the information into emails for distribution. ipushpull has been used by an interdealer-broker to automate this process by uploading the excel data into the cloud so it can be shared live it in various formats such via chat or an API.

“We make the data interoperable enabling live collaboration,”added Cheung.

Data-as-a-Service

Financial institutions such as NatWest Markets and data vendors such as Euromoney Tradedata use ipushpull to deliver data direct to their clients.

To learn more about Data-as-a-Service and how institutions are utilising the ipushpull platform read the full Markets Media article by Shanny Basar.

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