Symphony Celebrates 10 Years. Read thoughts from our CEO.

In Praise of Standardisation

  • Tech4Fin

As a concept, “standardisation” doesn’t sound as exhilarating as “innovation” or “disruption.” But practically speaking, standardisation is a critical underpinning of progress and growth. Standardisation is why you can plug any appliance or device made by any manufacturer into any wall socket (at least, within a given country). And it’s why the variety of apps you download function on your smartphone, regardless of who developed them.

When it comes to technology driving the evolution of financial services workflows, standardisation has not been a high priority. The sooner financial institutions and software developers adopt some standard protocols, the sooner we can connect processes to all users to more seamlessly and efficiently create dynamic and custom workflows.

Digitisation + specialisation = fragmentation

Historically, digitisation of financial services workflows meant building large-scale, linear platforms like Murex, Bloomberg, and Fidessa that supported all necessary processes within key workflows – such as combining liquidity aggregation, pricing, portfolio management, and risk exposure mapping into one system. But more recently, niche firms are emerging that specialise in individual workflow components. A financial institution might consume risk management services from one platform, OMS from another, and news and analytics from a third.

This fragmentation of workflows creates three challenges:

  1. Connecting processes together
  2. Providing access to workflows where users want it
  3. Standardising data for ease of transfer

The Symphony platform provides solutions for the first challenge by way of our open APIs, such as BOTs and EXT apps, and our recent adoption of the FDC3 standard. For instance, the Quant Insight and FinTech Studios integrations, showcased at our recent Innovate conference, show these assets in action. The second challenge will be addressed by our soon-to-be launched Embedded Collaboration Platform, allowing Symphony to be embedded into third party applications, as well as our new Secure Event Service API, allowing for workflow to be delivered directly to two counterparties working from a third party platform, all while maintaining security and compliance.

But when it comes to the third challenge, each of these disparate platforms use their own proprietary blend of data formats and programming languages, making it difficult to connect them into streamlined workflows.

In order to enable these fragmented processes to function within workflows, the industry needs to standardise the data flowing from one platform to another, beyond just the format. And as more and more niche platforms come to market, this need for standardisation will increase.

But when it comes to the third challenge, each of these disparate platforms use their own proprietary blend of data formats and programming languages, making it difficult to connect them into streamlined workflows.

In order to enable these fragmented processes to function within workflows, the industry needs to standardize the data flowing from one platform to another, beyond just the format. And as more and more niche platforms come to market, this need for standardisation will increase.

Standardisation requires a mindset shift

For financial services platforms to embrace standardisation, firms need to shift away from the mindset that their data structure must be 100% proprietary. A lack of common standards was not a problem when there was no need for data to flow between platforms, and each financial institution could configure their workflows on a single, linear platform. However, as firms seek out best-of-breed solutions for niche components of their workflows, their data needs to flow seamlessly through those processes. However, without establishing common standards for how data is formatted and transferred, the industry is limiting the degree to which workflows can be customised and optimised.

This standardisation allows clients, developers and even individual users to create unique workflows with the constant ability to change processes seamlessly with no external support. The power to connect workflows while retaining the flexibility to make them custom is what will enable firms to be more dynamic and responsive in an ever evolving landscape.

As we look to develop this standardisation in the platform, we are looking to engage with the financial services industry to identify use-cases and workflows where the standardisation would be beneficial. If you are interested in getting involved, please reach out to your Symphony representative.

You may also like

Featured Image: Enabling Higher Trust in FDC3
Tech4Fin

Enabling Higher Trust in FDC3

FDC3 aims to simplify communication between different financial applications. Traditionally, traders juggle multiple displays, manually transferring data. FDC3 enables automatic context sharing between these applications, saving time and reducing errors. Common uses span from pre-trade to post-trade activities.

Symphony, a member of the open-source foundation FINOS, is deeply involved in developing FDC3 and promoting its use in global capital markets. Our focus is standardizing integration APIs, giving customers flexibility in choosing their Desktop Integration Platform provider while supporting FDC3.

November 18, 2024
Featured Image: A Decade of Symphony
Tech4Fin

A Decade of Symphony

The 2020s are an unprecedented decade of disruption and every market participant is either the disruptor…or the disrupted. Today, we stand at the precipice of artificial general intelligence and every well-run organization should be actively seeking to disrupt themselves right now. Symphony has been able to remain almost a decade ahead of disruption by understanding one simple truth—thriving through disruption. This demands three things from your technology: resiliency, stability and flexibility.

October 21, 2024
Featured Image: Waters Interview
Tech4Fin

Symphony celebrates industry recognition

See what makes Cloud9 standout in the financial services industry. In this interview between Symphony’s Michael Lynch and WatersTechnology’s Victor Anderson.

August 23, 2024
Back to Blogs