workflow – ipushpull

April 7, 2021April 8, 2021

Enhancing chat through standardisation of data

The importance of technology and data connectivity was highlighted a year ago in March 2020 when the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the Vix, which is also known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, reaching levels that were even higher than during the financial crisis in 2008. Staff had to deal with extremely high volumes while working from home and there has since been an acceleration in the digitisation of workflow to cope with the inefficiencies and inconveniences of remote working. Firms have needed better data in order to become more efficient and continue to serve their customers.

Standardisation of data – one syntax

However, where dealers are still carrying out pre-trade negotiations over voice and chat there are often manual processes for recording quote data. By taking the heavy lifting away –the copy and paste, the rekeying, the robotic tasks – that employees do every day you free them up to do the tasks you want your humans to do – spark conversation, cultivate relationships, generate ideas and create revenue. Standardised syntax means you can rely on a set format and build technology to use those messages. This helps automate the repetitive processes to avoid failures. This could be something as simple as recognising a pricing request and pushing notifications out to the involved parties.

Standardisation of data and syntax also drives automation and whilst we look towards global uptake of these standards an interim state can still offer more efficient, safer processes that lead towards full electronification. Where standards are not adopted across the board there exists the ability to develop a translation layer so that both sides can use their native formats but still understand their counterparts requests and responses. When you can connect data sitting in existing tools and applications you can build data-driven workflows on top of that data. You are unbundling the data that was in spreadsheets, file shares, voice and chat and giving it a structure. That workflow becomes easy to record, auditable, trackable but more importantly it’s real-time and collaborative. Everyone sees the same real-time data and can interact with it and make decisions on it at the same time. This doesn’t just mean sales and traders but across the organisation as a whole – from compliance to operations to finance, legal and beyond. In order to analyse client relationships and focus on improvements for mutual gain you need a high quality, consistent, agreed data set to work from. That will only exist when you record your interactions accurately and at all stages of the process.

Artificial Intelligence

For the buyside to fully leverage value contained in their data its essential to bring Artificial Intelligence into the workflow to present insights and opportunities based on data that AI has processed. This means we preserve the human interaction, whilst leveraging automation and ultimately allowing the trader to make a better decision – the trader will no longer interface with the data directly but with the possibilities of the AI processing the data.

ipushpull has recently launched PPQ (Pushpull Quotes), which standardises and automates the negotiation process to help both the buy and sell side achieve these aims. PPQ fits within existing workflows so neither the client or their counterparties need to install a new system. Trading and sales can enhance chat by communicating pricing information in private bilateral conversations more quickly and efficiently using a standardised syntax. Chatbots interpret key features within the standardised data and display customised information on the desktop so the user can manage their workflow from just one screen. Standardised syntax also allows bots to take on the heavy lifting of repetitive administrative tasks so trading and sales can minimise operational risk by removing manual touchpoints.

If you would like to know more about standardisation of data, feel free to get in touch.

December 3, 2020

Digitisation of Pre-Trade Client Workflows

Streamlining workflow for sales and trading desks

Although some areas within capital markets benefit from the efficiencies of electronic trading, the more complex and less liquid instruments still involve a great deal of manual, unstructured pre-trade activity. This creates friction (summarised in this SIFMA report), which is bad for client services, increases costs for both the buy side and the sell side, hampers liquidity and creates unnecessary operational risk, which arguably feeds into systemic risk at an industry level.

Can these issues be addressed by bringing more standardisation and automation to the market, particularly around pre-trade client workflows?

This was the topic of an online panel discussion hosted by The Realization Group and ipushpull on Tuesday 17th November, 2020. The webinar was led by Clive Posselt of The Realization Group, and featured Andy Mosson, Head of Strategic Partnerships, FICC eCommerce Sales, J.P. Morgan; Ayaz Haji, Head of Enterprise Reference Data, Goldman Sachs; Richard Turner, Senior Trader, Insight Investment; Craig Butterworth, Global Head of Sales & Account Management, Symphony; Andy Ross, CEO, CurveGlobal; Chris Scott, Senior Product Manager, TP-ICAP; and Matthew Cheung, CEO, ipushpull.

Spreadsheets on the trading floor

There are many inefficiencies resulting from over-reliance on manual processes and the continued use of e-mail, spreadsheets and copy & paste in pre-trade, particularly for non-standardised instruments traded bi-laterally via voice or chat. These manual processes are not only slow and cumbersome, they are also inherently risky and do not add much value from a trading perspective.

Messaging standards such as FIX and FpML can work well for simple products traded on electronic markets. But for more complex instruments, the various parameters of the trade are often not easily expressed in a machine-readable and understandable way.

And the inefficiencies persist across the entire pre-trade lifecycle for both the buy-side and the sell-side, impacting price discovery, negotiation, execution and booking of trades.

Spreadsheets are the common standard denominator and remain ubiquitous on the trading desk, because a) they serve a useful purpose and b) they can be quickly deployed. Firms that are constrained in their development resources have to be very selective about where those resources are assigned, and it is generally much quicker and easier for someone with business subject matter expertise to solve a problem by creating an Excel spreadsheet than to wait for a solution to be developed in-house. The issue with such spreadsheets and workarounds however, is that they are not standardised and they do not scale.

Towards a standardised approach

There is no shortage of potential solutions designed to help automate pre-trade workflow, both from established vendors and newer fintechs. However, the problem with many of these is that although they provide incrementally better tooling, they are still point solutions. The wider mission is to cohesively bring together some of these tools to leverage a common secure and compliant collaboration platform, to create standardisation at an industry level, where the buy side, sell side, exchanges, clearing houses, vendors and service providers all benefit from the network effect.

FIX is a good example of a well-governed, well-accepted protocol that has been widely used across the industry for some time. More recently, bodies like FINOS are creating standards for desktop workflow, enabling standardised tools that previously might have taken years to build, to be deployed in weeks or months. There are also situations where firms just get together and create what becomes a de-facto standard.

As these standards improve and become more widely adopted, they enable greater workflow automation. Fintechs, utilising tools like data mapping, allow firms to create a data-led approach and a more efficient client-focused process, thus providing the ability for firms to interoperate between all of these different types of standards and approaches, so that they can communicate seamlessly.

Financial institutions can leverage this technology to drive efficiency with the least amount of disruption to workflow, improving their speed to market and building and deploying bespoke solutions that no one else has, thus creating competitive advantage.

Impact of COVID-19

The onset of COVID-19 and the resulting increase in remote flexible working has certainly accelerated digitalisation initiatives. Anecdotally, there has been more digital transformation in the past eight months than in the last eight years. Long held biases against working from home have been disproved by necessity and highlighted the need for firms to have a coherent omni-channel strategy.

In this current environment, end users need to be able to seamlessly switch between multiple different communication channels as it suits them, by having device and data interoperability. But with the financial services industry being so heavily regulated, the challenge is enabling that whilst still maintaining the strictest levels of compliance and security.

The goal therefore, is to be able to take communication that historically might have been siloed or non-compliant, and funnel it through a more comprehensive, standardised platform that addresses those shortcomings, and at the same time meshes them into a broader workflow digitalisation strategy.

The rapid transformation we have seen due to COVID, converging with a thriving capital markets fintech ecosystem, has led to an increased demand for solutions that can unbundle the legacy data – spreadsheets, emails, file share, voice, and chat – and rebundle it together with the tasks that were spread across different applications, into new structured workflows.

Future State of pre-trade workflow

The future state of pre-trade technology is a world where instead of having highly paid professionals doing robotic tasks, we can instead combine the human and the machine conversations, the messages and the data, eliminate manual processes and improve efficiency by creating and adopting standardisation.

The ultimate goal for most technology providers is to free up traders and sales people to do the things that only humans can do, i.e. discuss the markets, give opinion, and create value, using new, live, collaborative, interoperating tools.

The industry now needs to address its legacy silos and re-engineer its manual pre-trade processes, with a mindset of delivering an improved experience, better internal efficiency and, at the same time, a significant reduction in operational risk.

On-demand Webinar & Report: Digitisation of Pre-trade Client Workflows

Learn how J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Insight Investment and TP-ICAP are approaching the digitisation of pre-trade client workflows.

Understand how market infrastructure providers like CurveGlobal, Symphony and ipushpull are facilitating this by improving price discovery and building liquidity through standardisation, automation and live data.

GET YOUR COPY

November 11, 2020April 9, 2021

Automating Data-Driven Workflows in Financial Markets

By Matthew Cheung, CEO, ipushpull

In previous blogs, we have focused some of the benefits of Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), discussing how DaaS can be used to accelerate digital initiatives, for example. We’ve also discussed the practicalities of how firms can enable DaaS on their legacy platforms and the steps that data-rich firms can take to offer DaaS-based products to their clients.

In this blog, I’d like to clarify why it’s important for firms to progress from pure data distribution towards data-driven workflows in financial markets, examine some use cases, and explore the benefits that automated data-driven workflows can offer.

The need for financial markets workflow automation

As a starting point, what do we actually mean when we talk about data-driven workflows? It could be argued that all workflows – regardless of their simplicity or complexity – are data driven. Something happens (an event), resulting in new or updated information (data), which triggers an activity or a process (the workflow).

In the financial markets sector, workflows across the front, middle and back office have typically been established over a number of years. And while these workflows may serve their purpose, many entail manual processes that are inefficient, time-consuming, labour-intensive and not scalable.

This is a problem for the industry, and why greater automation is needed. Particularly in the front-office, where information tends to be time-critical. Firms may not realise how much these manual processes – acting on instructions received in chat windows, sending and receiving emails, transferring spreadsheets or other files back and forth, and so on – is hampering their ability to grow. A common attitude around existing workflows is, ‘that’s just the way things are’.

But things don’t have to be that way. And automating data-driven workflows can lead to greater efficiencies, cost savings, and higher growth potential.

So how do we get there?

The first step is recognising that data needs to be at the core of everything. What often happens at the moment with existing processes, is that they can result in multiple versions of the data (in multiple formats) residing in different places, with users needing specific applications, spreadsheets, chats or emails to support their version of the data.

In an automated data driven workflow, a golden source copy of the data sits centrally, and as it moves around, processes based upon that data are triggered automatically. So all of the workflow happens around the data. This approach is faster, more efficient, more scalable, easier to streamline and automate, easier to integrate, and there’s always a clear audit trail.

Use Cases: Data-Driven Workflows in Financial Markets

How does this work in practice? Let’s look at a few examples.

Real-time Pricing of basket trades

ipushpull is helping a leading institutional broker create automated workflows, for both the broker and its clients, around live pricing of basket trades. Previously, the workflow was a highly manual, labour-intensive process, where the client would send to the broker (via e-mail) a spreadsheet containing hundreds of lines of individual stocks, which would then have to be copy/pasted into the broker’s format for pricing, with the resulting data being copy/pasted back into the client’s spreadsheet format and e-mailed back to the client.

Although this a fairly standard workflow in the industry for pricing basket trades, it is time-consuming, error-prone and totally unscalable – there are only so many of these types of trades a broker can do in a day, given the manual effort involved.

Working with ipushpull, the broker is now automating a data-driven workflow whereby clients can push their basket directly from their spreadsheets, the stock data is recognised and mapped to the brokers format so the pricing can be rapidly generated. It is then automatically sent back to the client in Excel, with little or no manual intervention other than oversight of the process. This is enabling the broker to work much more efficiently, pricing more trades, in a more accurate and timely manner, and gaining new scalable business as a result, as well as eliminating keystroke risk.

Distributing Bond Axes

The fixed income division of a leading UK bank has created an automated workflow to send live prices for bond axes to its clients. In this case, the bank’s dealers are able to publish relevant axes with live prices in a Symphony chat window, which the client can execute directly from a chat. That then triggers a full STP process to automatically trade and update the bank’s internal systems.

Previously, this was a much more manual process, involving e-mails being sent back and forth, or copying information from other systems and applications into chat windows. Whereas what the client sees in the chat now is live, executable data that can be acted upon immediately either with a bot or direct with a sales person.

Streamlined pre-trade Workflow

The third use case is an investment management firm building automated data-driven workflow for FX options. The manual workflow they had – again, fairly standard in the industry – was that the trader would receive an instruction from a portfolio manager via their internal system, manually type that into a chat to its dealers and negotiate pricing across mulitple different counterparts.

Using ipushpull, this workflow has been streamlined removing any manual processes – any related operational risks – on the buyside.

Conclusion

The key to all of this is understanding the data, looking at the manual processes that still exist around time-critical workflows, finding the bottlenecks, and determining which processes are ripe for automation.

The good news is that the technology is now available from ipushpull to automate those processes without significant upheaval to firms’ current workflows, so users are still able to work within familiar chat and collaboration apps like Symphony and Excel Spreadsheets, but without the manual inefficiencies.

As these tools and technologies become more widely used, firms will no longer be able to remain competitive by over-reliance on manual workflows. Instead, moving to data-driven workflows will accelerate the path to a data-driven enterprise yielding significant benefits.

On-demand Webinar & Report: Digitisation of Pre-trade Client Workflows

Learn how J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Insight Investment and TP-ICAP are approaching the digitisation of pre-trade client workflows.

REGISTER HERE

August 18, 2020April 14, 2021

Moving towards future state in capital markets – The Financial Technologist

It’s a very wide spectrum in capital markets between legacy user environments at one end and the equivalent of the SpaceX Dragon 2 mission and its recent launch at the other, where automation is center stage. There is a lot that firms can be doing today to move towards the latter, especially as fast evolving consumer products set a precedent for other industries. The number of growing millennials in capital markets who are taking up senior positions expect technology in office environments to offer regular improvements and functionality updates as standard. The future state in capital markets is evolving.

Areas which before were considered a nice to have, are becoming the new norm in the dynamic that the COVID pandemic created. Standardization and aggregation of data, multi-application interoperability and reducing the overall screen real estate are becoming essential in the migration to the new environment.

There is one component for many users across the front, middle and back office which is even more often used than Bloomberg, one that has achieved notoriety – Microsoft Excel. An integration of this component is key, whether between users, chat apps or an ecosystem of other applications which can be used to further workflow.

How can we build a better user experience? How can traders optimize their workflow in and out of the office? What is the best way to collaborate on data between departments and locations?

Find out more in the interview by Matthew Cheung in The Financial Technologist ‘Phoenix’ out now.

Tune in to hear more on “Creating a Blueprint for Pandemic Recovery in Financial Technology” webinar on 19^th August at 5pm BST, where Matthew Cheung and an expert panel will be discussing the topic in more detail.

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

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.

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.

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.

March 10, 2020September 22, 2020

Euromoney TRADEDATA Releases Symphony App in Partnership with ipushpull

LONDON, March 10, 2020: Euromoney TRADEDATA is pleased to announce the release of its first reference data application that can be deployed into the Symphony secure team collaboration environment, in the second deliverable from its strategic partnership with ipushpull, the powerful data sharing and workflow platform.

The application will provide licensed Symphony users on demand access to Euromoney TRADEDATA’s reference data sets. Enabling secure data transfer between internal and external counterparties, to resolve trade-processing, including incorrect or missing trade data, pre-trade risk, clearing, settlement and regulatory reporting issues.

Commenting on the announcement, Mark Woolfenden, Managing Director of Euromoney TRADEDATA, said, “The release of our first Symphony application endorses our strategy of providing embedded, on demand workflow functionality to clients accessing our reference data. Community messaging solutions are a perfect medium for requesting and retrieving unique data sets as part of rapidly developing workflow technologies.” He added, “We also look forward to working with ipushpull to develop a clutch of bots, to further enhance our customers’ experience in using our data services.”

Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull, said, “We are very pleased to be working with Euromoney TRADEDATA, who are using ipushpull to dramatically improve workflow efficiency for their clients. Through a single connection to ipushpull, Euromoney TRADEDATA is now able to deliver live and on demand data into Symphony, as an App and as a chatbot, and direct into client-side Excel.” Adding, “Our rapid delivery provides both a fast time to market and a new way for Euromoney TRADEDATA to monetise their data.”

About Euromoney TRADEDATA

Euromoney TRADEDATA provides an aggregation service for the global exchange traded derivatives. Recognised as specialists and innovators in the F&O market, the up to date data we provide is essential for accurate and timely settlement of trades without the additional overheads of collating, validating and maintaining in-house data.

Information about Euromoney TRADEDATA: www.euromoneytradedata.com

About ipushpull

Information about ipushpull: www.ipushpull.com

For further information:

Mark Woolfenden
Managing Director
Euromoney TRADEDATA
Tel.: +44-(0)1277-636-914
Email: mark.woolfenden@euromoneytradedata.com

Matthew Cheung
CEO
ipushpull
Tel.: +44-(0)20-3808-4085
Email: matthew.cheung@ipushpull.com

October 29, 2019November 4, 2019

How to Excel in your Post-Trade Digitalisation Workflow

A senior manager at a major bank noted at a recent conference that some staff spent well over 60% of their time in email, chat and spreadsheets. As we complete the journey from paper to digital, with increased compliance and regulatory burden in our industry, is there an opportunity to innovate here?

A lot of post-trade workflow is spent managing exceptions and reconciliation breaks, which means viewing data from different systems in a normalised way. Spreadsheets lend themselves to this challenge and have become the norm, since they do not care what the source is. So long as the data is tabular and there is a common key across systems you can just copy the data across or re-enter it.

Alastair Rutherford, MD Ascendant Strategy says:

“Getting on top of all the data exchanges and workflows that occur to support post-trade activities is a key element of any Digital strategy in Capital Markets organisations. To industrialise post-trade, and make a step-function reduction in TCO, firms must understand these processes properly in the context of their target operating model, and implement automation that complements their core applications.”

There is a rich ecosystem of tools and applications to provide the glue such as external data lookup or calculation tools. Once you have added that glue it becomes transportable to your peers. Those with whom you share these spreadsheets can see exactly what you see and the method behind your conclusions.

Well, not quite… if you want to modify the recipe in your calculations, a new spreadsheet needs to be sent. When speaking to your peers (especially outside the organisation) how do you know you are looking at the same spreadsheet? What happens if the data that drives the calculation is changing or perhaps only available for you? What happens if you have incorrectly entered some of that data. Before long you have a huge pile of legacy, complicated spreadsheets, hopefully accurate for the moment they were created but with a context and scenario unclear in the document and certainly unclear to anyone auditing it. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Accenture has estimated £125bn of complexity costs in pre-trade and post-trade workflows.

The solution here is to use a common set of tools in an environment which is centralised and maintained. Platforms such as Symphony can deliver the environment securely, meeting the needs of Information Security. However, the tools need to allow users common access to shared data with the appropriate interface to meet the needs within the post-trade workflow.

At ipushpull we are seeing a great deal of interest in our collaborative data platform to deliver exactly this – the ability to share data in real-time between groups of users, for workflow tools to rapidly enable decisions to be made which are then fully audited, but also the ability to rapidly adapt.

The success of the spreadsheet has been its ability to provide a quick solution to a business problem which is generally planned to be temporary. Over time, however, the overhead of navigating and maintaining the collection of spreadsheets has become too high. ipushpull addresses this challenge by providing an ecosystem for collaborative workflow across the post-trade community, delivering efficiency savings in terms of time spent converting data, but also cost savings in terms of accuracy – reducing the data errors means less resolutions. Less resolutions means more efficiency savings.

If you would like to speak to ipushpull please get in touch with sales@ipushpull.com.

October 24, 2019November 4, 2019

Euromoney TRADEDATA partners with UK fintech ipushpull to create on-demand ‘Data-as-a-Service’

London, UK – 17^th October 2019: Euromoney TRADEDATA is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with ipushpull, a powerful data sharing and workflow platform.

Euromoney TRADEDATA recognises that the on-demand model is the future of data consumption, particularly within community chat and messaging networks, as part of a suite of delivery systems required to service all parts of the market that need futures and options ref erence data.

Through a single connection to ipushpull Euromoney TRADEDATA can distribute data into a variety of applications including Symphony, the secure collaboration platform, with nearly half a million connected financial market users. The ipushpull platform provides Euromoney TRADEDATA with new distribution channels for secure, audited, access-controlled data delivery.

Mark Woolfenden, Managing Director of Euromoney TRADEDATA, comments:

“This is a very important integration for Euromoney TRADEDATA, as we begin to experiment with embedded, on-demand workflow functionality and delivery systems for our reference data. We recognise ipushpull as a leading exponent in data sharing workflow technology and we expect further benefits from their connections to other community messaging solutions. Also, as part of the offering, we can now offer a functionally rich Excel plugin for desktop users to access our reference data, which integrates seamlessly within users’ existing workflows. In addition, we look forward to working with ipushpull to develop a clutch of bots, to further enhance our customers’ experience in using our data services.”

Matthew Cheung, CEO of ipushpull, comments:

“We’re excited to offer Euromoney TRADEDATA new avenues to deliver and monetise their data to a variety of desktop and cloud services. We see this innovative approach as the first step towards an on-demand ‘Netflix’-style distribution model for data producers and consumers.”

About ipushpull
ipushpull is a live data sharing and workflow automation platform improving efficiency by connecting data, applications and people in real time. The API-first platform enables the access-controlled and audited distribution of live, streaming or static data between multiple client applications.

About Euromoney TRADEDATA

Euromoney TRADEDATA is an established and trusted reference data provider to the futures and options industry for over 20 years. The company works closely with its customer base to innovate, develop and implement enhanced customised reference data solutions and market data vendor symbology.

Contacts

ipushpull

Katya Mironova

info@ipushpull.com

Euromoney TRADEDATA

Rebecca Storrar

rebecca.storrar@euromoneytradedata.com