Challenges that the financial services industry have faced over the past few years have “created opportunities” in the post-trade sector, according to an ‘Empowering Operations Through Technology Innovation’ panellist at the ISITC Summit in Boston.
They went on to say that the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged greater use of collaborative solutions, with Zoom and Microsoft Teams being integrated into platforms in order to better serve clients.
Another speaker added that over the course of the pandemic the industry found that technologies can be used across a wider range of areas than had been expected.
However, as the world makes its way back to business as usual, one panellist warned that the industry must be careful not to revert back to its old ways after pandemic-driven technology enhancements. There is a risk that faxes and wet signatures will once again become standard, reneging on the accelerated developments of recent years.
T+1, planned to come into force in the US next May, accelerates the need for technology development, according to one speaker. Another stressed the necessity of a focus on technology “that will move things forward today, but also tomorrow,” with the potential for a T+0 shift becoming ever greater.
Data arose as a key issue — it is “at the centre of everything we do,” one panellist stated, and requires consistent “health checks”. It’s important for firms to know how to best leverage their data, aligning it with their core initiatives and keeping it at the forefront of their operations in order to make better decisions. “When you know how to use your data, it becomes valuable,” another added.
One speaker highlighted the need for companies’ data to be extracted, cleansed and normalised by vendors to facilitate shared communication across the industry. Currently, they argued, there is no lack of available data but it is in unactionable formats. They went on to say that data should be interoperable, allowing companies to remain in their native technology systems.
When asked to give a one-word outlook for the technology in the year ahead, the panellists predicted “interoperability,” “democratisation,” “opportunity” and “flexibility” to be industry focus points. Closing the discussion, the panel moderator reminded audiences that just because operations have been run a certain way for a number of years, that doesn’t mean that they can’t change.
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