We did an exclusive interview with the CEO and Founder of Xignite Inc., Stephane Dubois. Recently named to Institutional Investor’s Tech 50 list of financial visionaries and innovators, Stephane Dubois is a recognized software and market data industry executive who founded Xignite to pioneer market data in the cloud. Stephane Dubois is a well-known FinTech thought leader and is frequently quoted in publications, including Forbes, Wall Street & Technology, Bob’s Guide, Inside Reference Data, and Venture Capital Journal.
He has spoken at numerous FinTech events around the world, including Finovate, FinDEVr, DKF, WFIC and The Money Conference. Prior to founding Xignite, Stephane was Vice President of Product Management at Advent Software, the leading provider of software solutions for the investment management industry. Prior to Advent, Stephane held senior product and marketing management positions at Walker Interactive Systems and Oracle Corporation. Stephane holds an MS in Management from M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and MS and BS degrees in international management from the MBA Institute in Paris.
LTP: There is a lot of interest in APIs but how exactly do APIs help a startup do things differently?
An API done well could be a huge advantage for a startup and can help a startup speed up the process of bringing a new product to the market. Earlier, startups used to build everything in-house and for on-premise. All FinTech companies now float their products on cloud services, so they should be able to access API data like an on-premise database. If it’s on the cloud, it’s on their fingertips. So in the case of using APIs, a startup does not need to build everything from scratch and they can use already existing APIs to build the product.
LTP: There used to be APIs in the yester years as well. What has changed and what are the new APIs all about?
Earlier, the APIs were usually built for slower networks. Now, the APIs are called over and over again, so they need to be very real-time accessible, robust and scalable.
The APIs that we build now are for the on-demand world. You can use as much as you wish. They are scalable, very cheap and fast. They require less on-premise storage once you start using them effectively, and the cloud based products should be like that. So we have built APIs for the modern world.
We serve 1 Billion calls per day. It means we can scale according to the requirements.
LTP: I hear a lot that somebody used an API and the problem was that it was not really built for their kind of use case. We also found out from somebody else that they were facing the same problems. Since APIs will be used by different types of clients, how do you make an API which could be used by all of them? If you customize it too much, it does not remain usable by everybody. So what do you do?
It requires deep domain knowledge to build a good API. And a good API should be usable across various use cases. So you don’t design it for only one specific use case but you design it in such a way that it is easy to understand, intuitive and can work across many use cases. Earlier, we had tools to customize the APIs and we used to provide them to the clients so that the client could customize them on their end. Now, with more experience and having our APIs used by various types of clients over and over again, we don’t need to really do that. We have built standardized APIs that work across the board. So now we have more than 1,000 clients and they are doing 1 Billion API calls per day. Our clients include Wealthfront, Betterment, Motif Investing, Personal Capital, Robinhood, StockTwits,Yodlee, BlackRock, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., BNY Mellon, Natixis, TD Ameritrade, Envestnet, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Of course, there are good and bad APIs. It all depends on how much effort you have put in, how good the API you have built is, how usable and scalable it is.
LTP: You have mentioned that GE and Starbucks use your APIs. Can you elaborate on that a bit more?
Starbucks has a big employee base. They also have an employee portal. So they display stock quotes using our API to their employee portal. GE has a big financial services division and they disburse corporate loans. In fact, they are the biggest in the country. So they use our API for the interest rates and other things. A lot of our clients use it for various reasons—price of commodities, interest rates, FX rates, financial data and so on and so forth.
LTP: What is your business model?
We usually charge for an unlimited use. There are 45 different services. So for each of the service, say, Equity, FX, real time, etc., you can pick and choose. For example, you can have FX in real time or you can have FX for historical and so on and so forth. So there are various combinations of services available for which you can get unlimited use and pay for the subscription. You can also pay per API call in some cases.
LTP: I see that you have also integrated with FactSet, and I have used FactSet in the past. So if we use FactSet directly versus if we use through you, is it cheaper or is there any other advantage?
It is not cheaper but it is easier to use. Instead of going for a large contract with FactSet, you can save money by just using what you want within FactSet and using it as much as you as want. Instead of taking the whole big contract, which is usually per year, you save by using our system on pay-as-you-go.
LTP: Tell me little bit about your company in terms of funding and how big it is.
We are about 40 employees right now. 1 Billion calls per day are made to our systems and we are providing information of (covering) about 55 countries. We have raised about $16.4M so far.
LTP: Tell me about your background.
Prior to founding Xignite, I was Vice President of Product Management at Advent Software, the leading provider of software solutions for the investment management industry. Prior to Advent, I held senior product and marketing management positions at Walker Interactive Systems and Oracle Corporation.
LTP: How do you differentiate from the competition? Who is your competition?
Our competition is really Bloomberg Terminals, Thomson Reuters and any other source which provides financial data in the same format. If you look at anybody else, they are old school APIs. We have built a modern set of APIs. There is nobody else across such a broad spectrum of APIs globally and, therefore, we are moving ahead at a very fast pace. We are being used by a lot of wealth management clients and non-fintech companies as well. Even other API companies like Yodlee are our partners. We want to focus on the data space and not branch out too much. We want to focus on data APIs which are around price of commodities, FX rates and similar other financial data points. That is our focus.
LTP: What are the drivers for the use of APIs?
First of all, you don’t require any data centers and infrastructure. You don’t need to invest in building up everything. You can pretty much use something which is pre-built and scales with you. If it is a good, scalable API, then you should be able to call it again and again, in a reliable fashion. These are the drivers because of which entrepreneurs/developers are increasingly depending on APIs to help them build products. They can focus on their core strength and build that part of the product, while for other things (such as financial data) they can just use the API.
Source: Let's Talk Payments
Partners with ESG Book to Drive Investor Sustainability Engagement
SAN MATEO, Calif., April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data API in partnership with ESG Book, a global leader in ESG data and technology. Xignite's brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase user engagement and retention with state-of-the-art sustainability trading products.
As ESG investment has gone mainstream, today's digital investors, institutional investors, and corporations alike require ESG data to help them answer questions that range from a company's workforce diversity to its commitment to a net zero future. In this context, brokers and wealth managers can use ESG data to increase client engagement around their portfolios and differentiate their offerings in a very fragmented marketplace.
"We are thrilled to extend our highly scalable and advanced API platform to include ESG Book's real-time sustainability dataset. With the recent SEC announcement of proposals for climate disclosure, the momentum for sustainability data in the U.S. just keeps on building. If you do not offer ESG data and portfolio analytics to your clients today, you will run into growth and retention challenges," said Stéphane Duboi, the CEO of Xignite.
Dr Daniel Klier, CEO of ESG Book, said: "As capital markets transition towards a more sustainable, net-zero future, demand for accessible, comparable and transparent ESG data has never been higher. We are delighted to be partnering with Xignite, a global leader in API solutions, to deliver our real-time ESG data products to clients at both speed and scale through the latest cloud technology."
Xignite's new ESG API is designed to fast track the launch of ESG powered products. Transparent, well-structured and easy to understand ESG datasets eliminate the need for robust in-house ESG expertise. Advanced screener endpoints further simplify development by eliminating the need to maintain a database.
XigniteGlobalESG API covers a comprehensive universe of public companies domiciled in North America, EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. In addition to ESG scores, this API provides Global Compact scores, involvement data, temperature scores, and raw emissions data.
About Xignite
Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite's APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow us on Twitter @xignite.
About ESG Book
ESG Book is a global leader in sustainability data and technology. Through a cloud-based platform, ESG Book makes sustainability data more widely available and comparable for all stakeholders, enables companies to be custodians of their own data, provides framework-neutral ESG information in real-time, and promotes transparency. It counts many of the world's leading financial organisations among its clients, which collectively manage over $120 trillion in assets. www.esgbook.com
04/12/2022
Sales Up 50%. API Volumes Now Exceed Half a Trillion per Month.
Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced that 2021 was a banner year for its business. Xignite experienced more than 50% growth in new client bookings over 2020. Most of this growth was fueled by heavy demand from new brokerage and wealth management applications as more firms entered the business. Xignite also saw a 53% increase in API consumption to a whopping half a trillion requests a month - driven mainly by increased activity from digital investors as they consumed more and more data during the pandemic.
The Digital Investor Revolution was created by the convergence of zero-cost trading, fractional shares, working from home, the pandemic, and the emergence of a new and more powerful generation of retail investors. This has created significant momentum in trading and wealth management, primarily US-based equity and options trading. And it has fueled the entrance of a considerable number of new prominent players in the field, especially embedded finance providers. It all came to light in early 2021 with the Reddit and Gamestop phenomenon. But it has not proven to be short-lived. The transformation could be profound. Indeed Xignite saw its momentum accelerate in Q4-2021, with bookings growth exceeding 310% over the same quarter in 2020.
“Xignite is one of the oldest and most scalable commercial API infrastructures globally. It’s not a surprise that our clients have grown to rely on us for their mission-critical business needs,” says Stephane Dubois, Xignite’s CEO and Founder. “It’s not only the mind-numbing volumes that we have to deal with,” adds Dubois, “It’s also the 4-nine+ level of availability we deliver day in and day out coupled with the awesome market data quality and the high touch responsiveness of our support teams. These metrics matter to large embedded finance firms entering the business or legacy firms migrating to the cloud. They spend tens of millions of dollars entering the business. They don’t want to see it evaporate because of poor data quality or API availability.”
About Xignite
Xignite powers the investing apps and services that enable millions of people to manage their portfolios and trade stocks from a phone or tablet with the industry’s best financial market data APIs. We help more than 700 fintech trading, investment, and analytics firms like Robinhood, SoFi, and Betterment provide digital investors with the market data they need, such as real-time stock prices and company news. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
03/10/2022
Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency data API. Xignite’s brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase the value and stickiness of their services to digital investors by taking advantage of the depth and breadth of data offered by this API.
Investment in cryptocurrencies has increased dramatically over the last few years and has proven to draw new investors into the world of trading. As a result, brokerage companies are trying hard to make buying, selling, and holding Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and other cryptocurrencies as easy as possible for their clients. The XigniteCrypto API is the first to bring together a vast universe of cryptocurrency information alongside the equity, ETF, and option data brokers and fund managers need to offer high-quality services to their clients. It also provides the depth of functionality required for them to engage customers and drive trading activity
“Cryptocurrencies tend to operate in their own world,” said Stephane Dubois, CEO, and Founder of Xignite. “This means that if you want to offer integrated equity, option, and crypto trading or analytics for your clients, you are going to have to cobble up a lot of heterogeneous data from many disparate sources, and that’s a pain,” adds Dubois. “With our new crypto API, you get the depth of coverage, the quality, and the reliability across all asset classes you need to grow your business - all in one integrated solution.”
Xignite’s new cryptocurrency API, XigniteCrypto, provides real-time and historical quotes for over 900 cryptocurrencies, including coins and tokens. It includes unique API endpoints that help firms engage digital investors, using the data and tools they need to make crypto trading decisions, including price alerts, historical charting, currency conversion, and cryptocurrency news.
About Xignite
Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003, when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually taken advantage of new technologies to help its clients grow their business and serve their customers better by using financial market data effectively. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite’s APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
02/15/2022
Xignite, Inc., a cloud-based market data distribution and management solutions provider for financial services and technology companies, announced a new Vendor of Record service for clients subscribing to real-time and delayed market data. The new service vastly simplifies the administration and reporting required by exchanges and often eliminates the need to pay redistribution fees, potentially saving clients thousands of dollars a month.
As an approved Vendor of Record, also called a Service Facilitator, Xignite can redistribute real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data from Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA), OTC Markets (OTCM), and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).
Adhering to the complex compliance guidelines required by exchanges is extremely difficult for investment advisers, financial advisers, or order management software providers that need to display real-time or delayed data. Each exchange has its own unique set of regulations and compliance requirements, and clients need to prove that they have control over who receives the data, in what format, and for what use case. Xignite’s Vendor of Record service eliminates the administrative burden of tracking these complex compliance requirements.
The new service utilizes Xignite’s cloud-native Entitlements and Usage Microservices to give firms complete control and transparency of their data consumption and usage. Xignite provides data entitlements, usage tracking, and exchange reporting across various data sets, users, and applications to ensure exchange compliance. Xignite’s new service sometimes eliminates the need to pay expensive redistribution fees. Exchange fees for display data, regardless of the number of users, can cost upwards of $10,000 per month. These high fees are especially difficult for smaller financial firms with just a few real-time data users.
“Maneuvering through the maze of required compliance policies, entitlements, usage tracking, and reporting requirements, and being subjected to frequent audits is no easy feat,” said Vijay Choudhary, Head of Product for Xignite. “Xignite’s mission is to “Make Market Data Easy.” Today’s announcement is another step towards this. We are taking away the administrative burdens and complexity of licensing market data and allowing our clients the freedom to focus on their investment and trading strategies and building innovative products.”
Xignite’s Vendor of Record service is available for professional users with internal and display-only use cases. The service is available now as an add-on service for subscribers of our real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data APIs. These include:
About Xignite
Xignite has been disrupting the financial and market data industry from its Silicon Valley headquarters since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually refined its technology to help Fintech and financial institutions get the most value from their data. Today, more than 700 clients access over 500 cloud-native APIs to build efficient and cost-effective enterprise data management solutions. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
09/21/2021
