The global financial technology elite sets itself apart by understanding the strategic and societal implications of high-tech advances and pushing innovation at Silicon Valley–like speed.
Grounded as it is in information and money — and information about money — financial services is, was and always will be a technology business. “Good information received in a timely fashion” defined sound banking, the late Citibank chairman Walter Wriston said more than 30 years ago.
But money, banking and capital markets have come a long way from what they were in Wriston’s time, or even a year ago, because technology is advancing so quickly and changing industry and society as it goes.
That is the day-to-day reality for the Tech 50, the visionaries and innovators on Institutional Investor’s annual ranking of financial technology leaders. What sets these executives apart goes beyond their considerable understanding of software applications and system performance as components of corporate strategy. These leaders think big about the global or macro implications of technology-driven change — from cloud computing and machine learning to emerging sensations like the Apple Watch, cryptocurrencies and the Internet of Things. They relate such developments to their organizations’ and customers’ on-the-ground challenges and opportunities; set budget, investment and R&D priorities; and come up with solutions, to use the technological term of art.
And they put a premium on speed and agility. “It’s all about speed to innovate,” says Robert Alexander (No. 24), chief information officer of Capital One Financial Corp., which last year bought a leading user-experience design company to accelerate web and mobile app development.
Intercontinental Exchange chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher, repeating in the No. 1 position, brought his company from nowhere to the top of the global exchange world in part because, he says, “technology enabled us to scale quickly.” It also can fail. ICE’s three-and-a-half-hour outage on July 8 was only the latest to affect a major market platform — and demonstrate the importance of two other differentiating qualities: resiliency and recovery.
Catherine Bessant (No. 2), global technology and operations executive at Bank of America Corp., frets that the technology world at large is “moving at the speed of the consumer, not the speed of the enterprise.” The answer? “The best and brightest talent.” Bessant believes that “in conjunction with advanced-state thinking, financial services is magnetic for tech people.” But that means competing against Apple, Google and other name brands. For Bloomberg, one of the biggest and best-regarded development shops in finance, “ability to find talent is the only constraint” to hiring more technologists, says global head of R&D Vlad Kliatchko(No. 6). Citigroup chief innovation officer Deborah Hopkins (No. 8) calls the speed of change “exponential” and “almost violent,” and the necessary strategic response akin to a “lean start-up.” She views her organization’s “200 years of know-how” not as a liability but as something to be leveraged as new and “democratized” business models like the smart-phone economy and the blockchain present new opportunities.
The Tech 50 ranking was compiled by Institutional Investor editors and staff, with nominations and input from industry participants and experts. Four primary sets of attributes were evaluated: achievements and contributions over the course of a career; scope and complexity of responsibilities; influence and leadership inside and outside the organization; and pure technological innovation.
Of the 50 entries, 36 return from last year. The returnees’ 2014 ranks are shown, and the rest are designated “PNR” (previously not ranked).
The Tech 50 was compiled under the direction of Senior Contributing EditorJeffrey Kutler. Individual profiles were written by Kutler; Asia Bureau Chief Allen T. Cheng; Editorial Research Assistant Jess Delaney; Senior WritersFrances Denmark, Julie Segal and Aaron Timms; Associate Editor Kaitlin Ugolik; International Editor Tom Buerkle; and Editor Michael Peltz. •
1. Jeffrey Sprecher - Intercontinental Exchange
2. Catherine Bessant - Bank of America Corp.
3. Phupinder Gill - CME Group
4. Lance Uggla - Markit
5. Robert Goldstein - BlackRock
6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko - Bloomberg
7. R. Martin Chavez - Goldman Sachs Group
8. Deborah Hopkins - Citi Ventures
9. Stephen Neff - Fidelity Investments
10. Adena Friedman - Nasdaq OMX Group
11. David Craig - Thomson Reuters
12. Daniel Coleman - KCG Holdings
13. Michael Spencer - ICAP
14. Michael Bodson - Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
15. Charles Li - Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
16. Chris Concannon - BATS Global Markets
17. Christopher Perretta - State Street Corp.
18. Antoine Shagoury - London Stock Exchange Group
19. Kevin Rhein - Wells Fargo & Co.
20. Neil Katz - D.E. Shaw & Co.
21. Lee Olesky - Tradeweb Markets
22. Richard Mcvey - MarketAxess Holdings
23. Seth Merrin - Liquidnet Holdings
24. Robert Alexander - Capital One Financial Corp.
25. Frank Bisignano - First Data Corp.
26. John Marcante - Vanguard Group
27. Joseph Squeri - Citadel
28. Lou Eccleston - TMX Group
29. Claude Honegger - Credit Suisse
30. Chris Corrado - MSCI
31. David Gledhill - DBS Bank
32. John Bates - Software Ag
33. Michael Cooper - BT Radianz
34. Gary Scholten - Principal Financial Group
35. Sunil Hirani - TrueEX Group
36. Hauke Stars - Deutsche Börse
37. Brian Conlon - First Derivatives
38. Jim Minnick - Evestment
39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais - Saxo Bank
40. Tyler Kim - MaplesFS
41. Jim Mcguire - Charles Schwab Corp.
42. Steven O'hanlon - Numerix
43. Sebastián Ceria - Axioma
44. Yasuki Okai - NRI Holdings America
45. Stephane Dubois - Xignite
46. Mazy Dar - OpenFin
47. Brian Sentence - Xenomorph Software
48. Mas Nakachi - OpenGamma
49. John Lehner - BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group
50. Jock Percy - Perseus
Source: Institutional Investor
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
