Why Financial Markets CIOs Should be Cloud First, not Cloud Last

By Ranjan Singh, Vice President, Product Management, IPC Systems

Ranjan Singh, Vice President, Product Management, IPC Systems

Structural changes, stricter risk management practices, evolving compliance requirements and a fluid regulatory environment continue to impact the global capital markets and how regulated users navigate them. For CIOs of financial markets companies, the challenges are multifold. Not only do they need to keep pace with digital transformation, but increasingly they are being relied on to turn a growing need for infrastructure flexibility and mobility, and addressing regulatory and market pressures, into a competitive advantage.

As CIO roles shift from keeping enterprises running to driving business results, previously unapproachable, untrusted cloud-based strategies are getting a much closer second look, and with good reason.

Business Alignment

With consolidation afoot and business around the clock and around the world, newly merged financial companies need faster integration, speedier time-to-market, and faster deployment in emerging markets. Financial participants need to have reliable, secure and “anytime, anywhere, any device” access to counterparties, liquidity, and trade lifecycle services. With a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, IT becomes more flexible and adaptable by turning it into something that’s delivered or used on-demand, when needed.

Newly merged financial companies need faster integration, speedier time-to-market, and faster deployment in emerging markets

Risk Reduction

Maximizing security and reducing risk are critical to any business, but those in the financial sector are bound by regulatory requirements like MiFID II that demand fail-safe measures in place at all times. As such, managing IT so that it minimizes downtime or impaired performance, and allows your company to swiftly deploy IT projects or apps is more important than ever. To ensure hardened security and operational visibility geared towards specific verticals such as financial, consider using a SaaS cloud solution delivered via infrastructure geared towards that vertical including private, diverse and secure network connectivity.

Shoring Up Financial Performance

A cloud-based SaaS platform helps CIOs minimize the need for internal IT projects, allowing IT resources to be redirected and invested in other higher value digital transformation initiatives. Pay per use models with flexibility to scale the service and functionality across geographies also has the potential to contribute to top-line revenue growth.

For example, we recently worked with a hedge fund that is managing billions of dollars in assets and servicing high net worth individuals as well as institutional clients. They needed secure, flexible and compliant connections to counterparties for financing, borrowing securities and accessing execution and post-trade services in order to capture liquidity, harvest alpha and do so with superior risk-adjusted strategy for clients. With a focus on their client, it’s no surprise that the hedge fund chose to outsource its connectivity, communications and compliance needs. With the IPC Unigy 360 cloud SaaS platform this hedge fund has been able to easily and securely connect to its counterparties throughout the trade lifecycle while reducing operating costs and IT infrastructure expenses.

CIOs at financial market companies understand how geo-political volatility, changing regulatory requirements, specific workflows and priorities impact their businesses, and as the need for digital transformation accelerates, taking those first steps to the cloud will have a positive and lasting effect on their organization.