LONDON’S FINTECH LEADERS TALK INVESTORS, START-UPS, COMMUNITIES & NEW FINTECH, TRADING TECHNOLOGY, ETRM/CTRM, BIG DATA AND OUTSOURCING VS. INSOURCING
The scene occurs at a San Francisco hipster bar in late 2014. She asks “And what do you do during the day?” He calmly says, while tucking his plaid shirt in and rubbing his fully-grown beard, “I work in a fintech startup.” “Me too,” she replies giggling. “Are you in payments or digital wealth management?”
The story draws a smile. Two years ago, few millennials in San Francisco knew what fintech (e.g. financial technology) was, but now they all see it as their ticket to fame and fortune-via-IPO. Move over social networks and micro-blogging; the next innovation frontier lies at the crossroad of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.*
Just in the month of October 2014, fintech companies in the US have raised more than $1B, including the $75M IPO of valley-veteran Yodlee, the $64M raised by digital wealth management fintech poster-child Wealthfront, and the $150M raised by payment darling Square. The capital flows and the hefty valuations don’t lie: fintech is on fire, and that fire is not only burning in the US; fintech ecosystems are flaring up in Singapore, London, Frankfurt and Paris, and many other technology centers in the world.
It was not always like this. If you tried to raise money in fintech during the years that followed the fall of Lehman Brothers, most venture capital and private equity firms would have gently pushed you out to the curb with a polite “We are not investing in fintech right now,” but today money is gushing out of their funds faster than their fledgling startups can spend it, and they are briskly updating their websites to make you believe they were in fintech all along.
So what has changed since the doom-days of finance?
The first change is economical: The markets are back in the saddle. As proof, the Dow Industrial has broken its all-time record high 79 times in 2013 and 2014 alone, and it closed on October 13, 2014 at its highest value in history. As a rising tide lifts all boats, the bubbling markets have boosted financial services and yanked financial technology in their trail. One thing that stands out in the growth of the markets is the meteoric growth of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)—which has exceeded every other asset class since their inception 20 years ago. Assets in ETFs now exceed 3 trillion dollars. Their inherent ease of use (as they combine the passive investment convenience of mutual funds with a level of trading ease that was previously only found in equities) could certainly explain some of the rebirth in the markets. In any case, finance is hot again. God bless America.
The second change is technological: It’s been almost 20 years since the Internet revolution began on August 9, 1995 (the day of the Netscape IPO), and technology has matured tremendously in many areas. Those concurrent evolutions have combined to create a cradle of innovation which is fueling the Fintech Fire:
The convergence of those trends is allowing startups everywhere to reinvent every vertical segment of financial technology with a new angle and with solutions that are easier, faster and better. This is hitting traditional financial service institutions like a high speed train. Most of them have had their heads buried in the sand focused on regulation and cost savings since the days of that infamous Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Wall Street is now petrified that Silicon Valley is about to eat its lunch, and it is scrambling to catch up. But once you see that most large banks still twitch when one whispers the word cloud, you realize that the technology and cost advantage of the fintech revolutionaries is significant indeed. God bless APIs.
The third change is social. It has to do with a generational replacement of a population that has grown up with the Internet, surrounded by mobile devices, and used to instant gratification and levels of ease-of-use never experienced by humanity before. That generation could not care less about traditional investment and advice models. They would not think twice about banking with Google, Starbucks or Facebook if it were available. They are not worried about security on the Internet, and the last thing they want is to have to talk with someone to get anything done. They are ready to use Siri to place a trade and expect an investment account to open and be funded instantly.
According to a survey conducted by eTrade, the majority (72%) of millennials want a financial advisor like R2-D2— “a copilot with diverse skills who helps you when you need it and offers a variety of tools you can use yourself.” Only 28% of them are looking for a friend like C-3PO (i.e., “a constant companion focused on your money who will always tell you what to do”). If you are betting that millennials will reverse their habits to that of their parents once they hit the age of 40, you may lose.
One may look at the mortgage crisis and think that because of it, financial services will never be the same. But the impact of the financial mortgage crisis is negligible compared to what millennials will have on the industry as they grow up. God bless our children.
So the fintech fire is being fueled by three deep-seated technological, social and economic transformations that are catalyzing to create an innovation bonanza that is turning the industry upside down. Of the three, only the first one is cyclical, and even if a bear market could put a cold shower on the whole phenomenon, the lasting characteristics of the two other trends allow us to safely predict that financial services and financial technology will never be the same.
* Technically a bit north of that, since Wall Street is now lined-up with condos and neglected for hip neighborhoods uptown by New York startups, and since Silicon Valley has been displaced by San Francisco as the startup capital of the world.
Stephane Dubois is CEO and founder of Xignite and a sought-after observer and contributor to the fintech community.
Source: The Harrington Star
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
