Exchanges
Exchanges have specific requirements known only to the exchanges industry.
Most exchanges require nationals to operate them, who do not have the benefit from having worked previously in other Exchanges. This is where consultancy can help. Trading Technology's consultants have worked extensively with different Stock Exchanges, especially of those in the more mature markets of Europe and the United States. Trading Technology consultants are experienced at enabling nationals to define requirements based on industry best practise. Methods of enacting business plans or regulations for exchanges do not often follow obvious paths, as a result, experience counts a great deal.
Example projects undertaken:
Technology comparison and benchmarking
Many exchanges now have aging technology to support their core business and are looking to expand their product offering. With the current demand for lower latency and higher capacity, many exchanges are faced with the decision to upgrade or replace their existing systems. Trading Technology has preformed comparison analysis of existing systems vs that available on the market. In many cases concluding that an upgrade of the existing system fulfils all of the requirements whilst minimising cost and impact to the market.
Requirements gathering
One of the greatest risks in any project is that of "definitional uncertainty". Many organisations find it difficult to write an objective set of requirements when entrenched in a particular set of business processes in combination with a legacy system. External consultants can help in two main ways; 1) Through knowledge of best practise 2) Through objectivity and being able to see "the wood from the trees". Trading Technology has written business requirements for many exchanges, and use a methodology which includes all of the participants of the exchange system, from the CSD through to the regulators, brokers and data vendors.
Request for Proposal management
Trading Technology has run many request for proposal (RFP) projects for competitive tendering of new systems. A core part of the RFP process is to define the requirements and elicit proposals which are structured to enable direct comparison. Our methodology is based on that used within Government Funding agencies such as the World Bank, AIDB, EUFare and EBRD. It ensures openness to public scrutiny, fairness and transparency.
Project Management
General project management can be best performed by an external consultant who is not beholden to the politics and structure of an organisation. Trading Technology's consultants all come from the technology side of financial services and are well versed in project management methodologies such as Prince II.
Project auditing and reviewing
Trading Technology has a risk-based review process for examining the health of any Stock Exchange project. No two projects are alike, and any aspect of a project may force it to fail, from technical problems through to communication issues, customer management and funding. Using a risk based approach ensures that the review is specific to the project being undertaken, is targeted and avoids large numbers of participants and paperwork.
Regulatory work
Trading Technology has also worked with regulators on requirements and RFPs for market surveillance systems. Regulators are now hefty users of technology and are increasingly operating sophisticated systems of their own. The use of systems for market surveillance are critical in the era of low-latency, high volume transactions across multiple trading venues.