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Financial cloud company Xignite on forefront of market data – LeapRate Interview with Stephane Dubois

Xignite

Article by Mike Fox

LeapRateContinuing LeapRate’s Exclusive CEO Interview Series, today we bring to you Stephane DuboisCEO of financial cloud company Xignite, a San Francisco-headquartered provider of financial market data on-demand. Xignite’s financial Web service helps build smarter websites and applications in minutes. Last month, Xignite announced that its market cloud data platform is now available for lease.

The company already has major websites using its cloud services including Seeking Alpha, Investopedia and StockTwits. With data moving into the cloud, Xignite is on the forefront in bringing the latest market data information to its end clients.

So, what does Stephane think about the future of cloud for the well-known data providers in the sector such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters? Where does Xignite get its pricing data from? For the Forex industry, Xignite provides a one-of-a-kind exclusive FX rate API with official data direct from central banks around the world.

You can read about all of this and more in the Q and A below:


LeapRate: Hi Stephane, thanks for joining us today…Xignite’s forex rates API, who is this made for? Traders or just data providers?

Stephane: Our XigniteGlobalCurrencies solution is currently used by more than 400 firms globally.

The XigniteGlobalCurrencies API is designed for use by a wide range of business and applications.
This includes:

– Forex websites and trading platforms.
– Currency transfer and payment solutions.
– General investor websites and mobile sites.
– Enterprise accounting and e-commerce application.

LeapRate: Can your information be programmed to display live streaming quotes data for websites?

Stephane: Yes, the XigniteGlobalCurrencies API can be used to display live streaming quote data for websites.

Developers have two options when implementing the API.

They can use our REST CloudAPIs and repetitively poll it to refresh data on the website.

Or they can use our CloudStreaming API which lets them push data updates over a very simple HTPP protocol.

Our XigniteGlobalCurrencies APIs alone serves more than 15 Billion API requests per month.

LeapRate: Where does your Forex OTC data originate from?

Stephane: Our data originates from a variety of data providers including Morningstar and others.

Contributors to the data include the world’s largest banks and trading platforms providing accurate and liquid information around the clock.

Such contributors include Allied Irish Bank, Commerzbank, Den Norske Bank, European Central Bank, Nordea Bank, SAXO, UBS, Banca D’Italia, Banco de Espana, SA, Banco de Mexico, Bank of Canada, Bank of England, Banque de France, Deutsche Bundesbank, Federal Reserve Bank, South African Reserve Bank, Swiss National Bank, and others.

Note that the XigniteGlobalCurrencies solution includes a VERY unique feature: Official exchange rates from the world’s central banks such as Bank of Canada, Banco do Mexico, the European Central Bank, the Central Bank of Russia, the National Bank of Poland, Banca Nationala a Romaniel, Magyar Nemzeti Bank, Banco Centrale de Chile, Czech National Bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia and others.

LeapRate: It was just announced that companies can now license your Market Data Cloud platform, have you had any major sign ups yet to the service?

Stephane: Yes, we do. Although the name of our first licensee is not public yet, it is major market data provider in Asia who intends to use the solution to deliver next generation market data solutions to its markets and aggressively replace competitive legacy data solutions. We expect an announcement for this customer in the early part of 2017 and expect to sign up additional customers next year as well.

LeapRate: Do you believe providers such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters will move to the cloud?

Stephane: I believe that it is inevitable that Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters will move to the public cloud because its cost effectiveness and scalability are just too great to ignore. While Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters falsely claim that they have “always been cloud”, they operate data centres and networks with limited computing capacity and designed on highly proprietary technology. Amazon Web Services (AWS) on the other hand, operates a massive global compute cloud based on an open standard. For comparison, Thomson Reuters runs around 30,000-40,000 servers globally while AWS operated more than 2 million servers as far back as 2014. Amazon puts every day more computing power online that it needed to operate its total business when it had 7B in revenue.

The great challenge Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters will face when moving to the Cloud that they have tied billions of dollars in proprietary technology and infrastructure that locks people into using specific devices to access the data. Be them terminals, or routers, or on-premise software.

People have built careers and job security around those devices and complex technology. If they move to the cloud, suddenly their data is unlocked. It becomes commoditized and they cannibalize their business instantly. They have no incentive to do that.

LeapRate: What does cloud financial data mean for the trading industry in the next 5-10 years?

Stephane: We believe data should be only stored once. And we believe that the public cloud is where the world’s market data will be stored. Give it a few years. It’s where data will come from. It’s where analytics will be run openly, it is where most financial applications will run as well. This will turn the industry upside down. The costs that will be removed from the equation will be staggering. The amount of transformation that this will enable will also be huge. This will enable machines to invest for us on a large scale. And the ultimate beneficiary will be the customer, the trade, the investor. The banks will benefit massively in the process of course. The role we will play in this in it is simple. We will be the layer sitting between the public cloud where the market data will reside and all the devices, all the apps, all the consumers of the data, all the analytics that distributes, tracks, controls, and manages the distribution of this data to those happy users.

LeapRate: What are the most popular asset classes Xignite offers?

Stephane: Our most popular asset classes are by far Equities and Forex followed by funds, futures, options and credit data.

LeapRate: Websites such as Seeking Alpha, Investopedia, and Stocktwits, use your data, are they already getting data from the cloud?

Stephane: Yes, they all do. Firms like SeekingAlpha even take it a step further. They let us directly deliver data to their millions of customer’s devices—savings themselves the huge headache of building and operating a large data “fanout” infrastructure. Market data is just as much about data that it is about infrastructure. And that infrastructure is moving to the Cloud. Firms like SeekingAlpha, Investopedia and StockTwits are on the forefront of this revolution.

LeapRate: Any other product evolutions from Xignite coming down the pipeline for 2017?

Stephane: Over the 6-12 months, Xignite focus will be on:

  • Respond to global on-the-ground demand in Asia in EMEA by opening offices in Singapore and Hong Kong.
  • Continuing to expand our global data offering by adding new global exchanges and global fundamental datasets, in which we’re seeing great demand from clients.
  • Grow our value-added service offering provided on top of our data by launching new open cloud analytics services and vendor of record services.
  • Promoting the use of our platform globally as an enterprise platform for large financial institutions and global data providers.
  • Continue investing in the quality and accuracy of our data sources and the scalability of our platform.

Stephane Dubois is a recognized financial 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, MarketsMedia, WallStreet & Technology, Financial News, Bob’s Guide, Inside Reference Data, and Venture Capital Journal.

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.

Source: LeapRate

RECENT NEWS

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:

XigniteGlobalOptions

XigniteGlobalQuotes

XigniteGlobalRealTime

XigniteGlobalRealTimeOptions

XigniteNASDAQLastSale

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