To Solve Cross-Border Order Workflow Visibility Stifel Integrates Multiple OMSs in Ten Days

01. Company

Stifel, a European subsidiary of global investment bank, offers full-service retail, institutional brokerage, retail and commercial banking services. Stifel recognized the benefits of having a desktop integration strategy in uncertain times and dynamic economic shifts. This full-service brokerage and investment banking firm was looking for ways to provide traders with the best technology available, improve user experiences and gain competitive advantage.

Like many other banks and financial institutions, the uncertainty around Brexit motivated the UK-headquartered investment bank to acquire a German bank to protect and enhance operations in Europe. In addition to the political situation, the remote working environment forced by the COVID pandemic created further business risk and hence consolidated the firm’s desire to pursue innovative solutions to keep them ahead of their competition.

02. Challenge

The main issue Stifel was struggling with was finding the best way to simplify trader workflows within and across critical applications including in-house web systems and third-party Order Management System (OMS). Stifel aimed to build a platform upon which future applications could be built and seamlessly hosted within a consistent user experience.

There were already five different instances of Fidessa’s OMS running within the bank. The acquisition of the German bank created a sixth instance and an opportunity to reexamine the integration strategy.

In preparation for a hard Brexit, Stifel also wanted to give their UK and European sales traders the ability to see where all the order flow was, understand where they could cross-sell and then send out IOIs accordingly.

With Brexit looming, they required a quick solution and did not want to engage in a costly and lengthy integration program.

03. Vendor Evaluation

Through their own independent research, the bank approached interop.io and Velox to help with their desire to integrate data between different systems while at the same time delivering a simple and intuitive workflow and user interface. They soon realized that the combination of these platforms could deliver a solution within very aggressive timescales. Integration was characteristically quick, with the first go-live requiring less than ten days of development effort.

04. Solution

Velox extracted and consolidated order data from the different Fidessas in real-time and presented this in a new web application. Using interop.io, the sales traders were given the ability to create IOIs in Fidessa from the new web application. This was delivered in less than ten days and has enabled the business to meet their goals.

The results were powerful:

• Complete business coverage: Full visibility of the European Order Book.
• Greater client coverage: Sales traders hitting more clients.
• Firm reputation: The firm is seen as one entity from the outside world.
• Increased productivity: Swivel-chair workflows and the need for double-keying have gone away.
• Decreased costs: Sales traders only have to log into one Fidessa.
• Happy sales traders: Delivered in less than 10 days!

05. Future Plans

The bank plans to build on their desktop integration and interoperability strategy in a step-by-step fashion with the integration of Fidessa with 3rd party predictive pre-trade analytics at the point of execution to understand how, where and when to trade, Excel analytics to facilitate better client conversations and Bloomberg for one-click market microstructure at any point in the trading lifecycle.