Jeff Bolke is Chief Revenue Officer of Eventus.
What was the highlight of 2022?
The highlight is our continued growth, as clients and prospects face ever-mounting regulatory and compliance challenges and the need to do more with less. Markets have been volatile and uncertain. So firms are relying on us for our expertise, high-touch service, and customizable trade surveillance and market risk technology.
This year, we’ve signed more than 25 new clients across a wide range of asset classes and regions, with strong traction in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions, where we established a presence just in the past few years. These clients are diverse: broker-dealers, Designated Contract Markets (DCMs), algo technology providers, crypto asset trading platforms, clearing firms, proprietary trading firms and more.
We expanded our global footprint to more than 100 employees in 10 countries. We’re particularly proud to have been recognized with an additional 11 prestigious awards this year – for our work in the U.S., Europe, APAC, Canada and globally.
What are your expectations for 2023?
In 2023, we expect there will be higher stakes for compliance. Our experience is that when markets are volatile with notable cases of fraud and abuse, governments react. And when they react, their tool of first resort is typically enforcement.
We’re seeing more frequent insider dealing cases, and large fines for money laundering and sanctions violations. Regulators are asking about conflicts of interest and whether investors are receiving accurate information. The SEC’s new strategic plan leads with enforcement, and the agency doubled the size of its crypto enforcement squad. The SEC has also proposed the most ambitious market structure rule changes since 2005, and we expect that some of these will impact trade surveillance models.
Regulators globally are talking more about combating systemic risk and making sure financial institutions have the right transaction monitoring tools in place. They are thinking cross-border and multi-asset class.
We also expect a stronger regulatory focus on “explainability.” For example, the Bank of England and Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) this year issued a report about artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that being able to explain a model is vital. Firms should make sure the software they use to sift through alerts has adequate explainability.
Compliance teams need to be focused on staying ahead of these trends. They really must think about how actions today will be viewed by regulators years into the future.
What are your clients’ pain points and how have they changed from one year ago?
Our clients are telling us about their interest in cross-product surveillance and transaction monitoring with integrated AML capabilities. Regulators globally are more attentive to cross-product manipulation. A survey of compliance professionals this year identified this as a top reason to seek external surveillance software. For AML transaction monitoring, we’re hearing the need for more customization and tailoring of alerts. This is where we will continue to build into 2023. We’re well-positioned in these areas because we see our clients as partners in the next iteration of our products.
Clients are also intently focused on macroeconomic conditions – market volatility and inflation – so are asking how compliance technology helps them rein in costs. The answer is the right software allows a compliance team to focus on more higher-value tasks, which our clients say helps them retain talent. Our rules-based and machine learning parameters, along with robotic process automation, gives our clients the capability to identify the most consequential alerts.
