Greg Schvey is CEO of Axoni.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2023?
We saw continued focus from financial institutions on increasing operational efficiency in an environment with growing cost pressures and regulatory scrutiny.
As major firms across the street reduced headcount to save expenses, the drive towards automation continued to accelerate. That can come in many forms; for Axoni, it meant heightened interest in products that reduce effort required from operations teams for trade processing and related data management.
Operational risk remains a focus as well in light of growing regulatory requirements and penalties related to how it is managed. Axoni’s products eliminate dependencies on spreadsheets, human processes, and data breaks driven by reconciliation challenges.
What was the highlight of 2023?
Highly anticipated product launches were the standout events of 2023 for our team. Most notably, we began shipping the newest version of our platform to clients, offering them dramatically improved ease of use, scalability, and integration flexibility. As a result of the update, existing or new data systems can be replicated in real time – in whole or in part – to other institutions securely and automatically. This capability went live with multiple market infrastructure providers in 2023 and will be announced as part of various new market-wide systems coming online in 2024.
What surprised you in 2023?
With most economists predicting a recession in 2023 amid macro headwinds and extensive central bank actions, it was unclear what the environment would be for enterprise adoption of new technologies. We were pleasantly surprised to not see any material slowdown in the implementation of new market infrastructures or adoption by financial institutions of new technologies, particularly those that enhance automation and efficiency.
What trend(s) will be most prolific in 2024 and beyond?
While there are a considerable number of financial services systems that remain on premises, we’re seeing a continued move to public cloud. For now, most firms that have made the migration have done so with a single cloud provider, albeit with an increasing eye towards multi-cloud solutions in the coming years. We also foresee growing adoption of artificial intelligence for trading workflows, albeit still in relatively early stages for most of the industry. Increasing familiarity and capabilities related to AI will enable more powerful localized AI tools. This will solve for the security-related adoption hurdles when firms must send data to AI applications hosted by third parties.
