The FTF Exchange Podcast

For this podcast, Alexander Sokol, founder, executive chairman, and head of quant research at CompatibL Technologies, focuses on how trading and risk models are getting an exponential boost from machine learning. For instance, the standard models for interest rates are based on incremental changes in rates but those models are falling short now as rates are in turmoil across the globe as central b...

The cost of data is exploding for securities firms and that may be due to inflation and firms being locked into a data platform that sometimes comes from the same data provider, says Roy Kirby, head of core products at SIX, in the latest edition of the FTF Exchange podcast from FTF and FTF News. “I would say that now we’re back in an inflationary environment. I think that some larger companies are...

Banks, broker-dealers, buy-side firms, and other capital markets participants are getting closer to their digital transformation goals as they put clients at the center of their journey, says Marc Natale, head of presales and marketing for America at Murex, a provider of financial software for trading, treasury, risk, and post-trade operations. Earlier this year, the Murex MX.3 platform won Softwa...

Cost pressures are dominating the agenda for many securities firms and they are likely to be seriously considering new ways to consolidate their post-trade operations, says Brian Collings, CEO of Torstone Technology, via a new FTF Exchange podcast. The new consolidation can take several forms and will be impacted by major market changes such as the push for shorter, T+1 and T-0 settlement, Colling...

In this edition of the FTF Exchange podcast series, FTF News speaks with David Kirk, the chief technology officer for QUODD and Justin Van Til, who serves as a senior vice president, product and strategy for QUODD. QUODD describes itself as a provider of market data on demand to the global financial services industry. The upstart serves clients by providing capabilities to stream, embed, look up,...

Participants in derivatives trading markets are coping with the need for speed driven via two very challenging trends – market volatility and the need for a pre- and post-trade holistic view of risk management for each transaction. Both situations are compelling firms to look to cloud computing, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and other cutting-edge technologies in an effort to keep up...

Despite IT advances, many financial services firms still rely on manual processes to manage collateral and related operations because their existing systems were either built internally or procured via a third party and cannot support new levels of automation, says Neil Murphy, triResolve business manager at OSTTRA. Murphy and Joakim Stromberg, senior director, head of triResolve Solutions at OSTT...

A key deadline is looming for the set of regulatory overhauls known as the Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR), which began a phased-in approach in 2016. The sixth and final phase begins on September 1 of this year. Gemma Bailey, director, business management, for triCalculate, and Neil Murphy, business manager at triResolve, both part of OSSTRA, which is the new home of TriOptima, have been keeping an e...

Financial services firms that want to meet investor requirements for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) compliance will find that it boils down to a data challenge that would be helped by greater transparency, says Todd Moyer, president and chief operating officer (COO) for Confluence, in a new FTF Exchange podcast “An area of focus for Confluence, and I think for the industry in general,...

The industry push to shorten the U.S. securities settlement cycle from trade date plus two days (T+2) to trade date plus one day (T+1) will end batch processing, drive operational costs down, but may cause an uptick in operational risk, says Brian Collings, CEO of Torstone Technology, in this installment of the FTF Exchange podcast series The T+1 move will be “quite significant” for most securitie...

CompatibL Technologies, a cutting-edge trading and risk management solutions vendor, has established a direct line between product development and its research and development efforts, says Alexander Sokol, founder, executive chairman, and head of quant research at CompatibL. CompatibL, which won the FTF Award last year for Best Cloud-Native Computing Initiative, bases everything it does, includin...

While Adenza was actually fully prepared to work in a virtual world, the importance of human contact cannot be denied, says Richard Bentley, chief product and engineering officer for Adenza, who is the focus of this FTF Exchange podcast. Adenza was created from the merger of Calypso Technology and AxiomSL in July 2021. “So, I’ve mentioned technical readiness for the pandemic and the remote working...

Are financial services firms more willing now to de-silo their operations than ever before? That question was posed to Roland Brandli, strategic product manager for SmartStream Air & TLM Aurora, during a podcast that is part of the FTF Exchange series. The TLM Aurora Trade Process Control (TPC) offering won the FTF Award for Best New Post-Trade Solution. “Definitely, de-silo is the only way to go,...

Institutional investment management firms are under pressure to provide hefty amounts of ESG-related information about their funds and portfolios to clients who have environmental, social, and governance concerns. Clearwater Analytics wants to do something about that issue and other related industry challenges. While the concept of ESG-compliant funds is easy to grasp, many investment managers are...

Corporate actions processing has become a heavy burden for securities firms facing surges in trading volumes while securities operations overall become more complex each day. To ease some of that burden and remain competitive, firms are seriously considering fully automating corporate actions processing. So say Neil Sheppard, global head of business development asset servicing at SmartStream Techn...

For Tobias Becker, head of risk capital optimization at Quantile Technologies, Lehman Day remains as a significant reminder of why the battle against systemic risk is ongoing. “September 15, 2008 is when Lehman Brothers … filed for bankruptcy and really almost created a snowball effect,” Becker explains in this latest edition of the FTF Exchange podcast series. That day and the Great Recession tha...

Financial services firms are in a conundrum because they face the dual pressures of compliance with a growing list of major regulatory reforms at the same that they have to meet budgetary constraints and cut costs. One way to break through that conundrum is for firms to investigate ways to cost-effectively integrate previously autonomous trading, risk, and collateral management operations, says So...

For Tanya Seajay, a former journalist and now CEO and founder of Orenda Software Solutions, a SIX company, the push to have environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) concerns guide investing is not a hippie thing but a survival thing. It’s also more than the honorable act of recycling Toward that end, Orenda, founded in 2015, applies advanced technology to social media and gathers data...

Complex corporate actions events with important voluntary aspects and ever-tighter deadlines are getting, well, more complex, says Dominique Tanner, head of content management for SIX Financial Information, who took part in another edition of the FTF Exchange podcast series. A key reason is that public companies want to make themselves more attractive to investors, Tanner adds. So, it’s probably t...

Is cloud computing turning securities firms into data hoarders? The issue came up during the latest in our FTF Exchange podcast series with two representatives from Alveo Technology, formerly known as Asset Control. FTF News got time with Nathan Wolaver, the managing director for the Americas at Alveo, and Boyke Baboelal, strategic solutions director for Americas at Alveo. When asked about the cau...

At a high level, Neil Murphy, business manager at TriOptima, says in the latest FTF Exchange podcast that the key challenges for compliance with the Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) deadlines can be summarized as all relating to the high volumes of required tasks and the number of firms coming into scope for these regulations. In addition to the many tasks involved, UMR requires many parts of the firm...

In this episode of the FTF Exchange podcast, Sara Poldaas from Mawer Investment Management talks about pandemic-induced lockdowns and ongoing remote staffing and how it is changing financial services in multiple, unexpected ways. For securities operations teams and their managers, the pandemic has had personal impacts that are catalysts for change.

This this episode of the FTF Exchange podcast we speak with Henry Napier, a vice president with ICBC Financial Services, on the new challenges impacting corporate actions processing.

There are telltale signs when firms have outgrown their systems, says Patrick Murray, the founder of STP Investment Services in this episode of the FTF Exchange Podcast.

In an FTF Exchange podcast, Lisa Iagatta, chair of ISITC, talks about the challenges of going virtual and the future of the organization.