Welcome back! Last week Jeff Shoreman spoke about the interesting, if challenging, year facing the financial services industry in 2017. For us at Eze, it will be another big year of opportunity. Much of what we expect to see affecting our clients continues to center around challenges presented by regulatory and compliance environment to the investment management workflow. Our mission here at Eze is to resolve those challenges, so here’s a sneak peek at just a few themes we’ll be focusing on in 2017 from a product development perspective, in no particular order:
Extending TCA capabilities
Transaction cost analysis has cemented its central role in execution and analysis capabilities, thanks to multiple regulations such as MiFID II, FINRA’s TRACE and others looking to extend best execution reporting. Moreover, the role of the trader continues to evolve, and as the number of liquidity destinations continues to proliferate, trading desks are striving to become more efficient with cost management. As a result, transaction cost analysis is evolving from a purely post-trade exercise to a pre- and in-trade analytics-based enterprise. In order for TCA to be truly helpful in cost management, advanced analysis and order routing capabilities must be integrated directly into the trading workflow.
At Eze, we already have a pretty robust offering across Investment Suite at pre-, intra-, and post-trade junctures, and we’re committed to extending this feature set. Our focus in 2017 will be on building out enhanced features and thorough strategic integrations, so asset managers can stay ahead of the market and adjust their orders based on market conditions in real time.
MiFID II
With only 12 months to go to implementation deadline, asset managers are entering a critical preparation period. The effort is expected to cost the buy side as much as USD1 billion, and implementation is at the top of the list for many of our clients. As implementation guidelines continue to evolve, we’re actively monitoring the situation and innovating in response.
In addition to working with industry associations such as AIMA and FIX working groups, Eze has also held a number of regular meetings with top-tier investment banks to share information and ideas with their prime brokerage, trading and technology teams. We have built closer ties with TCA providers, post-trade reporting service providers, legal firms and consultants, to make sure we are at the forefront of best execution and transaction and trade reporting requirements under MiFID.
For our part, we’ll be delivering functionality for trade and transaction reporting, unbundling, trade capture and commission management in the year ahead; some of the enhancements will be featured in our cloud offering rollout.
Cloud on the horizon
Some of you saw some of our early demonstrations of our cloud platform in 2016. In a nutshell, we’re building a configurable solution around API product-to-product interaction, designed to support the entire end-to-end investment workflow. This is an iterative development project; we are aiming to deliver a full front-to-back web-based SaaS offering, initially focused on the needs of smaller, less-complicated clients, and then out to others overtime.
We expect a version of the cloud platform to be out to a handful of smaller clients this year. Over the next few years, we’ll continue to add more robust and deeper capabilities, and clients of all sizes and complexities will have the option, but not the obligation to leverage the cloud offering. Our vision is to support the full suite capabilities overtime via various deployment options, including multi-tenant, single-tenant, public or private cloud.
Further integrating investment suite
Follow on our recent integration enhancements across compliance, position checking, and transaction reporting, we will continue to work on advanced workflows and improved user experience in 2017. Just a few things on the horizon include an enhanced pairs workflow integration between the execution and order management functions, with a target of handling order origination in either system with compliance and position checking enabled. We’ll also be optimizing Eze Locate functionality across the system.
Last but not least, we’ll continue to work closely with the Client Services team to ensure that we’re equipped to deliver any needed enhancements to you quickly. Following our transition to a new model, we are striving to ensure a smooth flow of information and development deliverables so that you get the best possible service.
Overall, we are looking at a very exciting year here at Eze. With significant investment in R&D, we’re able to continue to invest in our core products, while also pushing toward next-generation cloud offerings. Additionally, we continue to keep an eye on financial technology that may fill in some of the gaps in the investment management workflows, and think of ways we can work them in.
Stay tuned for more product development updates from us on the Eze Blog in the coming months. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe to stay up to date.
To learn about Eze Software's award winning investment suite, please visit our applications page.
