Forging ahead
13 October 2020
GLMX COO Sal Giglio offers insight into the platform鈥檚 new products, senior hires and future plans for growth in a post-COVID world
Image: GLMX
GLMX has forged several new partnerships this year on everything from SFTR to repo. What is the strategy here and can we expect more alliances to come?
GLMX has built a thriving ecosystem for pre-trade, negotiation and post-trade services and our business model remains clear and focused; build technology to automate our clients鈥� existing manual workflows. What we do every day is driven by our clients鈥� need to become more efficient and is directed by their requirement for innovative technological solutions to complex problems. With those solutions in mind and in order to make our platform easily accessible to the wide universe of participants in the funding market, GLMX has forged valuable and productive partnerships with industry leaders.
GLMX provides a wide range of connectivity options to our clients from low tech-lift conventions such as uploading spreadsheets and file transfer protocols to comprehensive pre- and post-trade application programming interface 鈥� using industry standard and custom protocols. We also have built connectivity to eight order management system\execution management system third-party vendors that support GLMX functionality. These platforms represent some of the largest household-named OMS providers in the industry as well as several smaller but growing firms. These partnerships are important as they provide our mutual clients with immediate access to GLMX direct via their existing technology stack. We are currently integrating with several more platforms and will continue to partner with third party vendors to support growing client demand.
As market structure in securities finance continues to evolve and as participants develop new tools in response, GLMX reacts quickly to support these changing behaviors. Some of these market structure changes demand tools to help control capital costs via dynamic balance sheet management such as 鈥榮ponsored鈥� repo while other changes respond to regulatory reporting requirements like the 色花堂Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR). In support of this important netting activity, GLMX has established relationships, both in the US and UK/Europe with market-leading clearinghouses to report cleared transactions and to explore comprehensive solutions for our clients. To further support our clients鈥� reporting requirements under SFTR, we have established relationships with major designated trade repositories.
Interconnectivity is a core tenet of the financial markets and GLMX believes partnerships are a key component of a successful business.
You have also significantly bolstered your bench with new senior hires this year as part of a reshuffle to reflect GLMX鈥檚 growth. How is everyone settling in?
As a financial technology company, we constantly seek the right balance between financial markets experience and technology acumen. In both respects, it is essential to add talented individuals who can adapt quickly to a constantly changing financial and digital marketplace.
We believe our recent management restructure and new senior hires puts the company in a perfect position to deliver uninterrupted, innovative, customised and creative solutions for our growing client base.
Our two most recent senior hires are examples of the high bar set at GLMX.
Andy Turvey, director of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and former head of EMEA securities financing sales for J.P. Morgan not only brings almost 20 years of repo experience and deep buy-side relationships, he also has been a vocal advocate of the digital transformation in the securities financing market. For several years before joining GLMX, Andy envisioned the virtues of electronic repo trading and enthusiastically communicated that notion with his clients and colleagues. The fruits of his ongoing efforts are reflected in the deep pipeline of new clients he has and continues to build for GLMX.
Kyle O鈥橠onnell, chief information officer, is a veteran of fintech startups. Formerly of Symbiont.io and TrueEx, Kyle is well versed in building enterprise infrastructure and data security that can scale with a fast-growing company like GLMX. While fortifying our infrastructure, Kyle has also implemented new technology to make the remote working model more efficient and secure.
As we continue to strengthen the GLMX management team, we anticipate adding one more senior hire to support our growth before the end of the year.
In addition to adding skilled leaders, we have taken a global approach to our client business as it better aligns GLMX structure with that of its clients, which engage their diverse counterparties across all currencies and asset types. This approach gives us a holistic view into our clients鈥� needs across all regions which empowers us to identify best solutions and prioritises development of those solutions.
We are on the verge of SFTR phase three. The first two phases went pretty smoothly, but this time it鈥檚 the buy side. Do you foresee difficulties?
We believe the transition, technology-aided as it is increasingly, will continue to be relatively smooth. Many technical teething problems were dealt with in the earlier phases. That said, we at GLMX feel the incremental challenges will revolve around pairing and matching. As the buy-side comes into play, a much broader range of firms will begin to report. The flows of these firms are less homogenous compared with the firms already reporting and matching. Our expectation is that any difficulties encountered with matching will further accelerate the drive to digitise the trade and lifecycle negotiation process so key details are agreed and shared at the point of negotiation.
At GLMX, we鈥檝e seen rapid adoption of our technology over the past six months as buy side firms looked to ensure their processes are ready for the new reporting regime in addition to the sell side wanting to streamline their trading and reporting flow. We expect this trend to accelerate as firms look to optimise their trade execution and reduce operational friction associated with breaks in the matching process. The trend towards electronification for SFTs has been growing organically over the past few years 鈥� SFTR and COVID have turbocharged that march to a digital future.
Earlier in the year you teased us that you had a busy pipeline of innovations to come. Can you give us any more detail now?
One of the many exciting things about working at a leading-edge technology company, is that our clients work with us to develop new functionality, protocols and trading options. Our engineering team has continued to develop new features and functionality, commensurate with our clients鈥� needs, and our integration team continues to be busy on-boarding new clients.
We are excited that as clients have become more comfortable with the current working situation, they have engaged GLMX to work on truly innovative projects that will be completed in 2021. Stay tuned.
GLMX has expanded its presence in the US and the UK. Can we expect further growth this year?
We will continue to expand our footprint in the US and the UK/EU in line with the growth of our client base. Working remotely, whether that be from home or elsewhere, has increased the need for streamlined, efficient and risk-mitigating workflows. Electronic trading platforms such as GLMX provide exactly those types of solutions and thus, clients already in our pipeline plus numerous new clients have hastened the onboarding of our technology since the pandemic took hold earlier this year.
Our average daily volume has roughly tripled compared with this time last year. By the end of 2020, we expect to have twice as many dealers on the platform as we did at the end of 2019 and we have seen both a significant increase in buy-side users and a diversification in buy-side type as well. Although hedge funds and asset managers were early adopters of our technology, we are encouraged that sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, money market funds and agent securities lenders are now moving forward with GLMX.
As evidenced by our recent senior hires as well as new additions to our client onboarding, infrastructure, and development teams, and our business realignment, we anticipate and are well prepared for continued growth in the US and UK/EU.
One of the main lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is the vital importance of automation. Will the securities finance industry gain a renewed emphasis on pursuing automation and digitisation?
The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of things, some existential and others theatrical, but it also will mark the moment when the largely manual workflow supporting repo trading officially flipped to digital. External events and regulation often are the catalysts which inspire innovation and drive market-wide adoption of new technology. The virtually overnight move to remote work in response to the pandemic and the need to digitise trade reporting for SFTR provided significant tailwinds for digitisation and automation in the securities financing markets.
The proverbial horse is out of the barn when it comes to the market鈥檚 advocacy of the long-needed efficiencies provided by electronic repo trading platforms. This is evident in the adoption rate of both the sell-side and buy-side. Leading dealers already are using technology to digitise trade negotiation, automate trade processing and to support the growing demand of their large buy-side clients. In turn, as the dealers reap the benefits of electronic trading and build tools to better access trading platforms, they are encouraging more of their buy-side clients to onboard GLMX. With remote work likely to extend well into 2021, this network effect will continue to be a key driver of GLMX鈥檚 progress.
Digital strategy takes many forms. Whether being an early adopter of low touch, fully-automated trading or accommodating trading partner requests for improved efficiency and risk management, participants increasingly need to support some form of automation. The level of complexity varies by participant but one thing is certain - If not currently working with a digital strategy, you are behind.
And, finally, while the efficiencies of digitised SFT trading flows provide significant value as a stand-alone, the increased access to liquidity which attends this electronic transition cannot be overstated.
GLMX has built a thriving ecosystem for pre-trade, negotiation and post-trade services and our business model remains clear and focused; build technology to automate our clients鈥� existing manual workflows. What we do every day is driven by our clients鈥� need to become more efficient and is directed by their requirement for innovative technological solutions to complex problems. With those solutions in mind and in order to make our platform easily accessible to the wide universe of participants in the funding market, GLMX has forged valuable and productive partnerships with industry leaders.
GLMX provides a wide range of connectivity options to our clients from low tech-lift conventions such as uploading spreadsheets and file transfer protocols to comprehensive pre- and post-trade application programming interface 鈥� using industry standard and custom protocols. We also have built connectivity to eight order management system\execution management system third-party vendors that support GLMX functionality. These platforms represent some of the largest household-named OMS providers in the industry as well as several smaller but growing firms. These partnerships are important as they provide our mutual clients with immediate access to GLMX direct via their existing technology stack. We are currently integrating with several more platforms and will continue to partner with third party vendors to support growing client demand.
As market structure in securities finance continues to evolve and as participants develop new tools in response, GLMX reacts quickly to support these changing behaviors. Some of these market structure changes demand tools to help control capital costs via dynamic balance sheet management such as 鈥榮ponsored鈥� repo while other changes respond to regulatory reporting requirements like the 色花堂Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR). In support of this important netting activity, GLMX has established relationships, both in the US and UK/Europe with market-leading clearinghouses to report cleared transactions and to explore comprehensive solutions for our clients. To further support our clients鈥� reporting requirements under SFTR, we have established relationships with major designated trade repositories.
Interconnectivity is a core tenet of the financial markets and GLMX believes partnerships are a key component of a successful business.
You have also significantly bolstered your bench with new senior hires this year as part of a reshuffle to reflect GLMX鈥檚 growth. How is everyone settling in?
As a financial technology company, we constantly seek the right balance between financial markets experience and technology acumen. In both respects, it is essential to add talented individuals who can adapt quickly to a constantly changing financial and digital marketplace.
We believe our recent management restructure and new senior hires puts the company in a perfect position to deliver uninterrupted, innovative, customised and creative solutions for our growing client base.
Our two most recent senior hires are examples of the high bar set at GLMX.
Andy Turvey, director of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and former head of EMEA securities financing sales for J.P. Morgan not only brings almost 20 years of repo experience and deep buy-side relationships, he also has been a vocal advocate of the digital transformation in the securities financing market. For several years before joining GLMX, Andy envisioned the virtues of electronic repo trading and enthusiastically communicated that notion with his clients and colleagues. The fruits of his ongoing efforts are reflected in the deep pipeline of new clients he has and continues to build for GLMX.
Kyle O鈥橠onnell, chief information officer, is a veteran of fintech startups. Formerly of Symbiont.io and TrueEx, Kyle is well versed in building enterprise infrastructure and data security that can scale with a fast-growing company like GLMX. While fortifying our infrastructure, Kyle has also implemented new technology to make the remote working model more efficient and secure.
As we continue to strengthen the GLMX management team, we anticipate adding one more senior hire to support our growth before the end of the year.
In addition to adding skilled leaders, we have taken a global approach to our client business as it better aligns GLMX structure with that of its clients, which engage their diverse counterparties across all currencies and asset types. This approach gives us a holistic view into our clients鈥� needs across all regions which empowers us to identify best solutions and prioritises development of those solutions.
We are on the verge of SFTR phase three. The first two phases went pretty smoothly, but this time it鈥檚 the buy side. Do you foresee difficulties?
We believe the transition, technology-aided as it is increasingly, will continue to be relatively smooth. Many technical teething problems were dealt with in the earlier phases. That said, we at GLMX feel the incremental challenges will revolve around pairing and matching. As the buy-side comes into play, a much broader range of firms will begin to report. The flows of these firms are less homogenous compared with the firms already reporting and matching. Our expectation is that any difficulties encountered with matching will further accelerate the drive to digitise the trade and lifecycle negotiation process so key details are agreed and shared at the point of negotiation.
At GLMX, we鈥檝e seen rapid adoption of our technology over the past six months as buy side firms looked to ensure their processes are ready for the new reporting regime in addition to the sell side wanting to streamline their trading and reporting flow. We expect this trend to accelerate as firms look to optimise their trade execution and reduce operational friction associated with breaks in the matching process. The trend towards electronification for SFTs has been growing organically over the past few years 鈥� SFTR and COVID have turbocharged that march to a digital future.
Earlier in the year you teased us that you had a busy pipeline of innovations to come. Can you give us any more detail now?
One of the many exciting things about working at a leading-edge technology company, is that our clients work with us to develop new functionality, protocols and trading options. Our engineering team has continued to develop new features and functionality, commensurate with our clients鈥� needs, and our integration team continues to be busy on-boarding new clients.
We are excited that as clients have become more comfortable with the current working situation, they have engaged GLMX to work on truly innovative projects that will be completed in 2021. Stay tuned.
GLMX has expanded its presence in the US and the UK. Can we expect further growth this year?
We will continue to expand our footprint in the US and the UK/EU in line with the growth of our client base. Working remotely, whether that be from home or elsewhere, has increased the need for streamlined, efficient and risk-mitigating workflows. Electronic trading platforms such as GLMX provide exactly those types of solutions and thus, clients already in our pipeline plus numerous new clients have hastened the onboarding of our technology since the pandemic took hold earlier this year.
Our average daily volume has roughly tripled compared with this time last year. By the end of 2020, we expect to have twice as many dealers on the platform as we did at the end of 2019 and we have seen both a significant increase in buy-side users and a diversification in buy-side type as well. Although hedge funds and asset managers were early adopters of our technology, we are encouraged that sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, money market funds and agent securities lenders are now moving forward with GLMX.
As evidenced by our recent senior hires as well as new additions to our client onboarding, infrastructure, and development teams, and our business realignment, we anticipate and are well prepared for continued growth in the US and UK/EU.
One of the main lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is the vital importance of automation. Will the securities finance industry gain a renewed emphasis on pursuing automation and digitisation?
The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of things, some existential and others theatrical, but it also will mark the moment when the largely manual workflow supporting repo trading officially flipped to digital. External events and regulation often are the catalysts which inspire innovation and drive market-wide adoption of new technology. The virtually overnight move to remote work in response to the pandemic and the need to digitise trade reporting for SFTR provided significant tailwinds for digitisation and automation in the securities financing markets.
The proverbial horse is out of the barn when it comes to the market鈥檚 advocacy of the long-needed efficiencies provided by electronic repo trading platforms. This is evident in the adoption rate of both the sell-side and buy-side. Leading dealers already are using technology to digitise trade negotiation, automate trade processing and to support the growing demand of their large buy-side clients. In turn, as the dealers reap the benefits of electronic trading and build tools to better access trading platforms, they are encouraging more of their buy-side clients to onboard GLMX. With remote work likely to extend well into 2021, this network effect will continue to be a key driver of GLMX鈥檚 progress.
Digital strategy takes many forms. Whether being an early adopter of low touch, fully-automated trading or accommodating trading partner requests for improved efficiency and risk management, participants increasingly need to support some form of automation. The level of complexity varies by participant but one thing is certain - If not currently working with a digital strategy, you are behind.
And, finally, while the efficiencies of digitised SFT trading flows provide significant value as a stand-alone, the increased access to liquidity which attends this electronic transition cannot be overstated.
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