THE FINTECH CAPITAL THIRD EDITION

Transcription

1 THE FINTECH CAPITAL THIRD EDITION LONDON S FINTECH LEADERS TALK REGULATION & LEGISLATION, FAST GROWTH, DIGITAL CURRENCY, CTRM, BUY SIDE IMPLEMENTATIONS AND THE FUTURE OF FINTECH EVEN MORE of the Most Innovative Names In FinTech Speak Out! Watson Wheatley The Realization Group Redline Trading Navoh Partners Violin Memory Waratek BRT Ffrees SmartCo BT Financial Technology Services Xenomorph Gmex Fincad Microexchanges Volante Liquity AlphaKinetic SunGard Code:Red Commodities Now Cake Solutions Cappitech Tradeweb Midvision Elix-IRR Elliptic Sagepay Gold-i MDX Technology Planlogic R3Cognition Contango Hatstand Arkk Solutions INCLUDING FEATURES FROM TOBY BABB, NADIA EDWARDS-DASHTI, ELLIOT PARFITT, JAMES HOUNSLOW, TOM KEMP AND ANDREW THOMAS GLOBAL LEADERS IN FINANCIAL SERVICES AND COMMODITIES TECHNOLOGY RECRUITMENT

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3 LONDON: THE FINTECH CAPITAL RIGHT PLACE/RIGHT PEOPLE/RIGHT TIME! ELCOME TO THE FINTECH CAPITAL, Harrington Starr s quarterly celebration and showcase of the most W exciting, disruptive and innovative companies in London s Financial Services and Commodities Technology sector. The third edition of the FinTech Capital comes at a time when London has never been more prominent on the international map. Throughout 2014 we have seen the Capital grow and grow to establish itself as the World s most prominent FinTech centre of excellence. Talent seems very much at the centre of that. Nowhere else in the world does such a high concentration of World Class financial technology engineers and innovators exist. Our talent is the envy of the world and the right people have come together at the right time in the right place. To expand: Toby Babb Managing Director, Harrington Starr RIGHT PLACE London has done the UK proud by making startups and technology companies such an attractive proposition. We are delighted to include Level39 in this edition and they, alongside numerous other accelerators, incubators and programmes, have allowed pipe dreams to become reality. Confidence in London FinTech has surged. VCs and investors have clamoured to back strong management teams and are attracted by the large, growing and disruptive market opportunities, super premiums available from FinTech brands and strong recurring revenues. A combination of enticing investor tax incentives and strong government support has allowed the sector to flourish and the banks have been keen to get involved too. A fascinating sub text has emerged where banks have embraced rather than feared the disruptors. Aware that they are unable to take the same risks as the start-ups and confident that the tide is too strong 0 0 3

4 Continued to fight, London s banks have created eco-systems of innovation that have allowed companies to flourish and in turn created the platform for them to share in their success. Programmes such as the Barclays Accelerator have been pivotal in changing the financial technology landscape. Toby Babb Managing Director, Harrington Starr A combination of well thought out FinTech communities, enthused investors, government backing, outstanding facilities and banking encouragement ensure London is punching well above its weight. Without question, London is the right place for FinTech companies to flourish. RIGHT PEOPLE As highlighted before we are also blessed by having the right people in London. The strength of the Capital s technologists has long been to identify disruptive opportunities and develop the world s best products and solutions to them. Many of the sector s most successful vendors and solutions providers have grown from exceptional UK talent. Talented, visionary leaders have been complimented by the world s most exceptional software engineers and together market issues have been identified, new solutions created, opportunities seized and profits quickly generated. Rival capitals suffer from huge competition. The other prime contender for the crown of FinTech Capital is New York who battle a consistent talent drain to the digital revolution in Silicon Valley. Whilst digital is growing fast in the UK, FinTech has remained firmly at the pinnacle and the best in class remain keen to work in the sector. Our FinTech companies have fought hard to ensure that the excitement, environment, purpose and culture is delivered in more and more compelling employer brand propositions. Our financial companies are getting the message and fighting hard in the war for talent. Our Universities are the envy of the world in their consistent churn of World Class technology talent and we are able to attract the best in Europe to grow and develop on these shores. As the snowball continues to roll and momentum gains, we will continue to see more and more of the best technologists in the World gravitate to the City to share in the success and be a part of the revolution. As long as we continue to encourage and entice the best technology talent into the sector, then London will continue to house the right people to enjoy its phenomenal growth. RIGHT TIME The timing is perfect as well. There is a tornado of change in financial services and technology is positioned in the kernel. Regulations, security, cloud, data, 0 0 4

5 Continued payments, mobile, HFT, Dark Pools, FX, Challenger Banks, Peer to Peer lending and the list goes on. There is so much opportunity in FinTech for companies to see issues and opportunities and provide solutions to make things better. The traditional conservatism in the financial markets is thawing, market confidence is soaring with an ever improving economic situation, and the customer base is demanding and expecting innovation from our banks. Toby Babb Managing Director, Harrington Starr Whilst the crisis has hurt, the beneficiaries have been the Financial Technologists and the upside the huge scale of opportunity that has exploded within the space. So often the poor cousin of the boardroom, the CTO/CIO position has become essential. Technology is no longer seen as the cost but instead the potential saviour. Those who have embraced it have prospered. Companies are ready to embrace disruption, something that has never been the case in financial services before now. Investors are keen to back the right ideas. Boards are open to ideas and the talent pipeline is prime. The time is right! So who is going to take advantage? Come on in, the water is warm right time, right people, right place! I would like to conclude by thanking all of the contributors to this publication and indeed all previous issues of the FinTech Capital. Harrington Starr are ardent fans of the community and we are absolutely delighted to give something back by showcasing the exceptionally talented companies who have graced our pages thus far. Entombed within the pages that follow, the right people mentioned previously show exactly why London has become so successful in the FinTech space. Covering regulation, start-ups, new technology, Dev-Ops, Buy Side Implementations and more, there are some truly fascinating pieces that educate, inform and entertain. We hope that you enjoy the read and if there is anything that we can do to introduce you to the authors or indeed help connect you and your business with the community in any way, please do not hesitate to get in touch. Toby 0 0 5

6 CONTENTS 010 THE FUTURE OF FINTECH Watson Wheatley Duncan Wheatley The Realization Group Colin Slight Redline Trading Mark Skalabrin Navoh Partners Bill Gilbert and Robert Betts Harrington Starr Nadia Edwards-Dashti Violin Memory Steve Willson Waratek Howard Tolman BRT Michael Armitage BT Financial Technology Services Robin Farnan Xenomorph Brian Sentance Ffrees Alex Letts Harrington Starr Elliot Parfitt Microexchanges Ralph Hazell Volante Fiona Hamilton 043 LONDON VS OTHER FINANCIAL CAPITALS Liquity Barry Shrier Harrington Starr James Hounslow CONTINUED

7 CONTENTS 049 BUYSIDE IMPLEMENTATIONS Alphakinetic Jon Hodges SmartCo Pascal Mougin SunGard Kevin Potter Code:Red Thomas Yasin 059 CTRM Commodities Now Guy Isherwood Harrington Starr Andrew Thomas 065 DEVOPS Cake Solutions Ltd Anirvan Chakraborty Cappitech Ronen Kertis Midvision Andrew Turner CONTINUED

8 CONTENTS 073 DIGITAL CURRENCY Elix-IRR & Elliptic Graham Busby & James Smith Harrington Starr Tom Kemp Sagepay Simon Black 079 FAST GROWTH & HANDLING HIGH GROWTH PERIODS Gold-i Tom Higgins MDX Technology Paul Watmough 085 REGULATION & LEGISLATION Fincad Matthew Streeter GMEX Hirander Misra Tradeweb Simon Maisey Planlogic Darren Stevens R3cognition Richard Seaman Contango Richard Wilkinson Hatstand Silvano Stagni Arkk Solutions Andy Gent 0 0 8

9 London, October 2 nd at Pullman London St Pancras The CTRM Conference is a unique 1-day event taking place in London on Thursday, October 2 nd and focused on the $1.6 billion CTRM software category. The conference brings together end user, service practitioners and vendors to spend a day focused on some of the key issues and trends impacting this software category. Hosted and facilitated by Commodity Technology Advisory (ComTech), the leading analysts in the CTRM software space, together with Commodities Now, the CTRM Conference brings a compelling agenda of presentations, knowledge sharing and roundtable discussions involving key users of CTRM and associated software and services in the industry... all supplemented by excellent networking opportunities. Organised by The chances of succeeding in this market are is increasingly dependent on the trading technologies deployed and utilised to address the big challenges, including CTRM, data aggregation and analysis, trading surveillance, business intelligence, and reporting. The CTRM Conference will help equip you for this dynamic and challenging future. The conference will kick off on October 1 st at 6:30pm with a sponsored networking reception. The main conference takes place on Thursday, October 2 nd 2014.

10 THE FUTURE OF FINTECH

11 RECONCILIATION SYSTEMS; A NEW GENERATION? HERE IS A LOT OF ACTIVITY IN THE reconciliation systems market. A new generation of vendors are building T exciting and innovative systems. Hedge funds, commodity firms and asset managers are buying. This is more than just recovery from a recession; but what is driving this and what are the key characteristics of the new systems? WHY RECONCILE? Reconciliation is a necessary evil. As soon as data exists in more than one system you need to compare it to find the differences and take corrective action. Until we have a single central record for all trading data this need for reconciliation will not go away. If it matters that data is in line, as with securities trading, and the rate of change of data in the two systems is high, then the need to reconcile quickly and efficiently becomes acute. New regulatory demands underpin this of course but the rules are not prescriptive and operate more as a fear factor than a real incentive to change. It is the pragmatic demands from clients and prospects for robust operational controls that make the difference. As the trading gets faster and more complex it is the reconciliation system that delivers operational excellence whilst keeping costs tightly under control. Duncan Wheatley Managing Director, Watson Wheatley MATCHING DATA BETWEEN SYSTEMS MAY SOUND EASY BUT IN PRACTICE IT IS ANYTHING BUT. HERE ARE SOME OF THING THAT MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT: SECURITY OR ACCOUNT REFERENCE DATA WITH NO COMMON IDENTIFIERS PRICES AND YIELDS QUOTED USING DIFFERENT STANDARDS DIFFERENT ACCOUNTING METHODOLOGIES (TRADE/ SETTLEMENT DATE, AVERAGE COST, LIFO, FIFO ETC.) DATA PROVIDED IN FILES WITH NO COMMON FORMATTING OR ENCODING STANDARDS SPEED OF TRADING AND VOLUME OF DATA Add to this that these systems are not going to sit still whilst you reconcile them. There can be inherent 0 1 1

12 Continued lags in data flowing between the systems; they will never be equal. How does one reconcile two systems that are in this sort of dynamic equilibrium? When you add this together you begin to see the need for dedicated specialist systems to keep track. Duncan Wheatley Managing Director, Watson Wheatley TACTICAL SOLUTIONS Most companies start out with the most prevalent reconciliation solution available; Excel. It has everything you need; imports from many different formats, you can cross reference and normalise data with vlookups, and there are numerous functions for comparing numeric and text data. To all intents and purposes it is free and accessible on every desktop. Before long this tactical approach runs out of steam. Certainly it is not scalable, has no audit trail and is a single user system. Move outside these boundaries and you need something else. SPECIALISED RECONCILIATION TOOLS There have been specialised reconciliation systems around for many years but the gap in price and accessibility between Excel and these is enormous. These have typically been only in the reach of sell-side firms with large IT budgets. The buy-side, certainly with more modest budgets, smaller volumes but arguably more complexity has not been well served. So what are the characteristics of this new generation of reconciliation systems and why are they gaining market share? COST For systems to be successful in this market there needs to be a very clear return on investment. Whilst hard to quantify in terms of reducing operational risk it is a simple to make the case in terms of improving operational efficiency. Automate the reconciliation and allow your staff to focus on more important things. Pricing models have changed from up front capital investment to ongoing usage charges; far more palatable to this market and much easier to justify. TECHNOLOGY Of course the cost of technology is falling but it is how the technology is accessed that is having the bigger impact. You can still buy a system and have it installed if you want the control and immediacy that this offers. Alternatively you can outsource the function completely and have the results delivered back. There are solutions that are in between. What the technology is matters less, it more to do with which services you choose to own and those you wish to rent. CONNECTIVITY The newer reconciliation systems are built with ease of connectivity built in. Most data for reconciliation for the buy-side come in the form of files sent by ftp or . Systems are now available that can completely manage the process from remote site through to the reconciliation system with complete security and a full audit trail. All data parsing and aggregation is handled with rules built by end users who understand the data, not programmers who don t. What appears to be an unmanageable mess of files can be streamlined into a robust data collection and aggregation process with little effort. Solving this issue solves more than half of the problem. FUNCTIONALITY The newer systems are functionally very rich and highly usable. With a wide diversity of reconciliation needs to be satisfied successful systems need to be generic, configurable and rapid to deploy. The ease of use pioneered by Xerox, Apple and others prevails here. Software should be intuitive; training should be unnecessary. The old school of reconciliation system employed a generation of consultants to help you configure the system and ensure you needed them every time you wanted to change something! The key to the functionality is that it has been designed to meet the needs of the buyside firm. No longer does it stop at matching trades and positions; systems are at home handling static data, cash, P&L, prices, market values and NAVs. Some are now adopting accounting logic to maximise their ability to understand data from other accounting systems. Configurable workflow tools are being embedded to control the flow of data though the system and in particular to make automatic adjustments to the source systems. Add in the availability of real time dashboards and you have a complete control system dynamically managing discrepancies between multiple systems and telling you only what you really need to know! NO WONDER THIS IS SELLING FAST! 0 1 2

13 TANKS, PEASHOOTERS AND THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH... ACE TO FACE IT S STILL THE SAME I ve been working in New Business sales for over 23 years and it has F always been a tough job. The rewards can be high but it s a brutal and unforgiving place when things aren t going well and the targets aren t being met. In those 23 years one aspect of the job has never changed it s the face time that you spend with prospects that is the most important part of the process. People do business with people. Back when I started, cold calls, trade shows and networking would get you that valuable time in front of prospects. In fact, cold calling was relatively easy. Buyers would meet salespeople simply to get information about what was going on in the market. HOW DIGITAL HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING In the late 90s the Internet completely changed the sales engagement model. Buyers would go looking online for information and no longer felt the need for face to face meetings. Recently, with the use of social media and other interactive digital channels, getting that valuable face time has become even more challenging. According to Forrester, it is estimated that 75% of any sales decision will have been made before a salesperson has any face time with a prospect. These days any salesperson in FinTech should be asking a current or prospective employer: WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT 1. GETTING THE COMPANY STORY OUT THERE DIGITALLY, TO MAXIMISE OUR CHANCES OF BEING SELECTED TO BID? 2. WORKING TO GET ME FACE TIME WITH PROSPECTS A LOT EARLIER THAN 75% OF THE WAY THROUGH THE SALES DECISION MAKING PROCESS? Colin Slight Joint MD & Co-Founder, The Realization Group Any firm that isn t able to answer these questions is failing in its duty to the salespeople who have to go into battle with competitors armed with the latest marketing weapons. The firm is asking the sales team to fight tanks with peashooters. If I couldn t get an answer to those questions then as 0 1 3

14 Continued a salesperson in 2014 I d be looking for another firm to work for. So how can the owners of FinTech firms give their salespeople the weapons to beat the competition and how can firms like The Realization Group help? MOMENT OF TRUTH: AN INSTANCE OF CONTACT OR INTERACTION BETWEEN A CUSTOMER AND A FIRM THAT GIVES THE CUSTOMER AN OPPORTUNITY TO FORM (OR CHANGE) AN IMPRESSION ABOUT THE FIRM WINNING THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH Consider a marketing model originally designed for B2C and published by Google. At the forefront of digital for 15 years they know a thing or two and this model expresses the current reality of digital. According to A.G. Lafley, former leader of Procter & Gamble, a consumer s first moment of truth was in store or when approached by a salesman. A second moment of truth would take place when they got the product home, out of it s packaging & experienced it in situ. Now consumers can find a wealth of content online about a brand s products and those of competing brands: websites; review sites; videos; forums and social networks are full of opinion, reviews and information. A consumer may make up their mind before they even see the product in the flesh or experience it. THIS IS ZMOT... THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH. When a consumer goes on to buy the product and the First and Second Moments of Truth occur, they may publish their experiences online - thereby creating the next consumer s Zero Moment of Truth. Colin Slight Joint MD & Co-Founder, The Realization Group Brands must win the zero moment if they are to achieve the sale. ZMOT AND FINTECH B2B MARKETING B2B marketing has always had a ZMOT: reputation and credibility are everything; networking, word of mouth and tradeshows all affect the chances of you getting a sales meeting. The situation now is that the ZMOT has moved online and firms must identify and use the digital equivalents to succeed. Particularly effective is inbound marketing through thought leadership. Vendors with a high level of subject expertise use social media tools 0 1 4

15 Continued such as blogs, podcasts, webcasts, webinars and videos to discuss key challenges facing their section of the industry. If the content is produced in a thought-provoking way and distributed via the right channels - and if feedback is elicited and acted upon - this type of inbound marketing can be incredibly powerful. To enable our FinTech clients to run highly effective thought leadership programs, TRG has Created Financial Markets Insights - a series of interviews with thought leaders in financial markets. The series provides exclusive insights into industry developments through in-depth conversations with key experts from banks, exchanges, vendors and other firms within the financial markets ecosystem. Examples of content created can be found at Because the thought leadership content is created in collaboration with related firms in the sector then as well as firms publishing this content via their own digital and social channels, content is also published via the channels of the collaborating partners, which significantly amplifies the message and gives additional credibility via brand association with the partners. Colin Slight Joint MD & Co-Founder, The Realization Group Additionally, the firm can also submit the content to industry-facing publications and websites (which in FinTech could include the likes of The Trading Mesh, Best Execution, Tabb Forum, The FinTech Capital etc.) and use social media (e.g. relevant LinkedIn Groups, Facebook pages and on Twitter) to publicise the content further. If this is done on a regular basis then the firm can quickly build up a high level of credibility in their FinTech vertical. Once that credibility is established, then that valuable face to face time with prospects can be much more readily achieved in a variety of ways, including invitations to roundtable discussions based on the thought leadership topic, warm calls to parties who have expressed an interest in the subject, speaking engagements at industry forums and other networking events. And - when the Zero Moment of Truth arrives - inbound enquiries inviting you to come and discuss your products and services. GOOD LUCK FIGHTING THOSE TANKS!!! 0 1 5

16 THINKING OF FPGA FOR TRADING? THINK AGAIN! Mark Skalabrin CEO, Redline Trading IGH FREQUENCY TRADING (HFT) IS AT an interesting point in its technology maturation lifecycle, in which many H assumptions and even definitions that previously were valid now need to be rethought, particularly with regards to ultralow latency requirements: How do you know if you are low enough? How much are you willing to invest to be lower? How do you differentiate when everyone is low? Part of this reassessment concerns the role of specialized hardware, notably FPGA accelerated systems, versus mainstream Intel Xeon-based platforms. Up until the last few years, the requirement for lowest latency may have required custom hardware to achieve. However, technology trends and market forces now make those investments and customizations unnecessary. Indeed, the paradigm has flipped and we must now ask when taking into account the full latency cycle of tick-to-trade, can a FPGA solution compete with a properly written trading solution on mainstream platforms? And, should a FPGA-based solution offer a performance advantage today in some specific use cases, at what cost does this performance come? This paradigm shift is not a new phenomenon. The High Performance Computing (HPC) landscape is strewn with the gravestones of specialty hardware companies that were overcome by mainstream Intelbased systems leveraging the power Moore s Law and volume economics. CAN A FPGA SOLUTION COMPETE WITH A PROPERLY WRITTEN TRADING SOLUTION ON MAINSTREAM PLATFORMS? HOLISTIC VIEW It is tempting to benchmark a single algorithm or component of the HFT process in an 0 1 6

17 Continued evaluation and ignore time to market tradeoffs, lifecycle costs, and the true sophistication of a trading strategy. Unfortunately, this narrow approach may lead to decisions that do not optimize performance for the overall trading cycle nor are sustainable in the larger picture of technical trends and business objectives. Mark Skalabrin CEO, Redline Trading Comprehensive benchmarking requires measuring the full tick-to-trade latency across a range of anticipated message rates and market conditions. This must be done consistently across all the platforms under consideration. Those interested in rigorous benchmarking processes can reference the Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC, Another latency that is rarely considered when comparing systems is the time to implement exchangedriven changes and deploy new trading algorithms. While a FPGA accelerator does not execute traditional software, it is important to note that they still must be programmed they are, after all, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays. Writing microcode for a FPGA is much more labor intensive than traditional software programming. Thus, the FPGA approach may be suitable for a very static environment, but as the trading environment becomes more complicated and dynamic, the programming advantages of mainstream systems provide a significant time-to-market advantage. TECHNOLOGY TRENDS CPU performance has historically been identified as the main beneficiary of Moore s Law, but in recent years this gain has translated to increasing cores per processor allowing more processes to run in parallel within a system. A lesser known benefit of Moore s Law, but especially welcomed by HFT and other latency sensitive applications, is Intel s integration on chip of a wide range of functions that had previously been off chip (eg. memory & I/O controllers). THIS NEW SINGLE Intel and its OEM and OS partners also offer tuning SERVER PARADIGM and programming guides describing latency-specific COLLAPSES THE IT features that are now available. These advancements must be fully embraced by the application developer FOOTPRINT, SAVING (3rd party or in-house) if they are to achieve the desired performance. CAPITAL AND OPERATIONAL The capabilities available now in a single 2U server are truly remarkable: 48 cores, 1.5 TB Memory, COSTS. 120MB of L3 Cache and up to 6 PCIe slots for ultralow latency network adapters. For the first time, a full trading solution Ticker Plant (with as many market data feeds as desired), Trading Strategy and Order Execution can be deployed on a single server, with all communications done through low latency cache or shared memory. This new single server paradigm collapses the IT footprint, saving capital and operational costs. Such a solution, taking advantage of all the advances in hardware, OS, and system and application software, has reduced the tick-to-trade latency to less than 5 microseconds with a very high level of determinism, as documented by STAC (see DIFFERENTIATION As tick-to-trade latencies continue to shrink for everyone, it becomes exponentially more expensive to pursue custom latency reductions while at the same time the ability to profit from latency arbitrage is reduced. At 0 1 7

18 Continued many firms, this realization is driving resource allocation away from specialty hardware plays to the development of more sophisticated trading and risk management strategies. This is another consequence of Moore s Law that the ability to differentiate purely based on hardware is rarely sustainable. Intelligently written software provides value with a longer life span. It could very well be that in the future the focus of HFT will be information arbitrage rather than pure latency arbitrage. Moreover, other software functions that don t provide strategic differentiation, such as ticker plant and/or order execution management can be purchased freeing up further resources for trading strategy development. Mark Skalabrin CEO, Redline Trading CONCLUSION While zero latency trading remains a theoretical ideal, the costs in pursuit of such a goal are prohibitive and are not justified when sub-5 microsecond latency tick-to-trade solutions are easily available and affordable. A TRADING-STRATEGY-CENTRIC APPROACH BASED ON MAINSTREAM HARDWARE AND WELL-ARCHITECTED SOFTWARE PROVIDES: 1) COMPARABLE, IF NOT BETTER, PERFORMANCE THAN FPGAS FOR LATENCY AND DETERMINISM ACROSS THE FULL TRADING CYCLE 2) THE LOWEST HARDWARE ACQUISITION AND LIFECYCLE COSTS 3) THE ABILITY TO EASILY LEVERAGE THE POWER OF MOORE S LAW AND VOLUME ECONOMICS FOR FUTURE NEW TECHNOLOGY INSERTION 4) THE MOST DYNAMIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT 5) A COMPLETE TRADING SOLUTION IN A VERY SMALL IT FOOTPRINT A LONGER TECHNICAL VERSION OF THIS PAPER IS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST AT MARKETING@REDLINETRADING.COM 0 1 8

19 ADAPTIVE SOFTWARE AND LICENSING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE OULDN T IT BE GREAT IF YOU COULD get software that delivers core functionality for your business and W one that you could then customise to meet the needs and direction of your business as it grows and transforms? That software you would also own, it would be placed at the centre of your technology platform and it would not be dependent on an outside party or expensive bespoke development. You would also expect that software to let both users and customers conduct their work life on smart devices, on the move, and connecting in real time. and what if that software was free? As businesses begin to transform their approach in a more customer centric way, they are turning to technology to facilitate their new approach. At this point they are confronted with an array of software packages that are expensive, too generic, serve only 60% of the required functionality and another 60% of functionality they will never use. Alternatively they are faced with potentially time consuming and expensive software development projects. Bill Gilbert and Robert Betts Founder & CTO, Navoh Partners It is becoming increasingly apparent that the current software license agreement is outdated and needs reform as it typically favors the vendor and often does not give value for the money spent. SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DIGITAL AGE: TRANSPARENT, MODULAR FRAMEWORK ALLOWING FOR PLUG AND PLAY ADDITION OF FUNCTIONALITY REPLACEABLE MODULES THAT FACILITATE TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS. USER INTERFACES THAT ARE PORTABLE ACROSS MULTIPLE DEVICES LICENSE AGREEMENT THAT LETS YOU PAY ONLY FOR THE SUPPORT AND VALUE THAT YOU REQUIRE SOFTWARE THAT CAN GROW AND ADAPT WITH YOU CONNECT TO ANY OUTSIDE INFORMATION SOURCE AS REQUIRED AND USE THAT DATA, AS YOU REQUIRE Within financial firms, the Middle and Back Office 0 1 9

20 Continued is an area difficult to provide generic software as every firm has its unique characteristics and consequently unique requirements. Hedge Fund Operations are custodians of firm s customer facing information connecting with investors, administrators, prime brokers and fund managers. The Operations Team is at the front line of the digital revolution in this industry. There is a particular challenge for the industry to find technology solutions that support the industries continuously evolving requirements: quickly, completely and cost effectively. Navoh partners have developed Unify, a software platform designed and built for the digital age. Its functionality is targeted at the Middle Office and is extendable to match the needs of the entire fund. Deployable on-site or in the cloud with excellent integration capabilities, Unify can fit into any outsourcing model that the firm is currently engaged with. UNIFY IS FREE! Navoh Partners are part of the disruption taking place in the Fintech space, where technology supports the business and is remunerated based on its value added not punitive legacy license agreements. Unify is provided with a perpetual license and support agreement which flexes with the customers needs and requirements. Bill Gilbert and Robert Betts Founder & CTO, Navoh Partners 0 2 0