Data mobility in the age of FinTech and SaaS: Why your data model, and your ability to transmit it is the key to success in the digital world.
By Jeremy Maswary, Senior Product Manager at MerQube.
Having been in various roles from back office, middle office, and FO sales on the buy, sell, and 3rd party vendor side, I have been exposed to more data models and applications that manage them than I can count. And what is clear to me as a result is that the growth of this industry, and the firms within it, depends more and more on the rapid, accurate, and reliable transportation of data. The evolution of high frequency trading is one of the most glaring examples of this. Trading used to be measured in hours, then minutes, into seconds and fractions of seconds. And yet, I have to conclude that organizations with the capacity to really address these challenges with next gen, cloud based, data technology are still the exception rather than the rule in more situations than most would expect.
When I look back over the last 15+ years, investing models have grown increasingly sophisticated. And to support that, the data models I have designed and used have grown from simple self-created tools to help me run calculations on exotic derivatives and market linked investments, to the backbone of my integration infrastructure buildouts combining flexible models with translation layers so data can be customized to the client region, language, and product set.
“What is clear to me as a result is that the growth of this industry, and the firms within it, depends more and more on the rapid, accurate, and reliable transportation of data.” — Jeremy, MerQube.
The world of investing has become more sophisticated over the years as new theories, trading strategies, and advanced technology have taken hold. The process of transmitting financial information that started with the ticker tape has morphed into a fully digital process that completes in milliseconds. Now through robo advisors and mobile apps you can check your retirement portfolio from anywhere in the world, or trade options and other financial instruments from a beach just as easily as from an office. All of this is made possible by the proliferation of efficient, and robust, data models being packaged into usable data streams and transmitted all over the world. The days of needing to call a broker for any trade have been replaced with cell phone executions through any number of applications.
What does that look like in practical terms? Any movement of data, be it internally or externally, requires a clean and robust data model that can handle dissimilar data types and inputs and then be able to harmonize that data to tell a story. That story can be a lifecycle calculation, a pricing response, a confirmation to a client, or any other combination of a countless number of possibilities. Data models are at the core of either success, or failure, and if you can’t assimilate your inputs from all your data sources, use it and distribute it effectively, you can’t scale.
One of the things that attracted me to MerQube is the use of cutting edge technology to create scalable answers and empower the most sophisticated rules-based investment strategies. I am thrilled to be part of a team that is providing our clients and partners with a multitude of connectivity solutions to meet their business need. As we continue to grow, options will continue to expand, and I am proud to be helping drive that growth within MerQube and the industry. There is no limit to the technology driven solutions we can implement to ensure we are meeting our expanding clients’ demands.
After all, trading consists of a long chain of data moving from one end of a transaction to the other, and then back to its origin for confirmation to the end client. Each data transformation is an opportunity to introduce errors into the cycle. In the rules based investing space, if you are building each implementation as a single use buildout, tech debt will eventually become an unsurmountable obstacle.
In an age when effective data transmission is the key to success, we can, and do, provide fast, accurate, automated information to meet any client’s needs. MerQube is bringing Silicon Valley speed and innovation to the rules-based investing business to create scalable, efficient solutions. My career has put me in the middle of one of the fastest developing sectors in FinTech and I have never been more excited to see what is coming next.
A version of this article was published on MerQube’s website: https://merqube.com/blog/data-mobility-age-fintech-saas
