Brad Levy, CEO of Symphony, discusses the biggest drivers of desktop interoperability across financial institutions today and how interop-solutions are being implemented across the front-to-back office.
He unpacks where firms are seeking to drive efficiencies and improve communications between systems such as across settlement, collateral management, and order and execution workflows.
Looking ahead, the CEO also discusses the future of interop workflows, their role in advancing financial tech stacks, as members of the industry explore emerging technologies like AI or quantum computing.
Interview
Dan Barnes Which vectors of change are driving desktop interoperability today?
Brad Levy I would say it’s a few vectors and waves of change over time. So if you think about wave one, it would be the big tech, mega tech wave of cloud and platform as a service and mobility. Wave two, maybe five years ago, were the industry solutions delivering interoperability in FTC3 open source or the commercial solutions like OpenFin and Interop or low code platforms like Genesis over time? But really wave three now which we’re seeing are markets, technology companies like exchanges, clearing houses, data companies, and OMS, EMS, PMS really stepping in and leveraging these technologies. First cloud, you know, down to interop solutions including Symphony.
Dan Barnes How is that interoperability displayed throughout the enterprise?
Brad Levy I think it really does accelerate change across front, middle, and back office, which all need to communicate at least loosely, if not very directly at times. So you have this globally and by asset class, which actually can get quite complicated. You have technology and operations teams that need to be a lot more connected these days because there’s a lot kit to build there. The bigger challenges in the middle and back office tend to be email flow. We’re wrestling with that and implementing a lot of solutions that start to remove that from workflows. And we’re really focused on meeting users where they are, whether it’s their inbox or some case manager system. And then on the front office side, it’s really that front to back view of risk, middle to back office, looping back around to your market making every day.
Dan Barnes Can you give examples of the work you’re doing with clients to support them through this process?
Brad Levy We have some really good examples of partnerships in the middle and back office that have been announced starting with NYFIX, Broadridge platform embedding symphony, DTCC TM (Trade Management) has embedded symphony all involving settlement flows. Euroclear Tasksize announced. We’re working with them on collateral management. So all its quite exciting in the middle and back office. Trade exception management, collateral management, lots of cues to be challenged there. In addition, we’re building out granular user identities to drive alerting notifications and better workflows and even filtering the AI noise coming at you or to create the AI. And then we have a number of data companies that are now leveraging Symphony for data distribution, TradingView, and others, Market News International, Amberstone. And then as you move to the front office, we’re working across the exchanges, the venues, and the OEM PMS (Order execution management and portfolio management systems) world to embed and interoperate there. So a lot more to come this year from Symphony across front, middle, and back office interoperability.
Dan Barnes How can firms ensure that they’re ready to embrace these new developments?
Brad Levy Well, maybe it’s cliche, but tech really does have to be at the table. I’m not sure it’s the front office, but it’s the fabric of everything in reality and really communicating those needs clearly to the engineers. The business problems have to be clear because without a problem, the tech really isn’t interesting. And then ultimately, you do need to move forward clearly, but our view is incrementally. There are step function changes that happen and you need to embrace that. The cloud, maybe quantum in the future, but we need to moves swiftly, cautiously, and maybe a bit more together to deliver what is more fully interoperable workflows, which from our seat is not too distant in the feature for all of us.
Dan Barnes Well, that’s been great. Thank you so much.
Brad Levy Thank you, Dan.
Dan Barnes I’d like to thank Brad for his insights today and of course you for watching. To catch up on our other shows, including Trader TV This week, at 6.45am UK time every Monday morning, go to TraderTV.net
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