ISITC Recap: Less Competition, More Collaboration

Citisoft attended the September ISITC conference in Baltimore, MD last week. Of note were their general session speakers who were excellent across the board. The conference kicked off with a panel discussion on the on the future of middle office with a diverse and reputable set of participants from State Street, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Ernst & Young, Vanguard and itBit. The discussion centered on the shift in the middle office to a change management focus to adapt to the digitization trend, and more specifically emerging technologies and FinTech companies. Keeping up with changes in regulatory arena, trade lifecycle automation and client demands for more data solutions and front office optimization were also cited as driving forces behind the need to position middle office to be flexible enough to quickly adapt to industry demands. Learning the language of FinTech products and analyzing the impacts of Blockchain were two examples cited as opportunities for organizations to learn from each other and potentially work collaboratively to solution.

Following this panel, David Chavez, White Collar Coordinator/Complex Crimes, Federal Bureau of Investigation, gave an enlightening presentation explaining why the FBI has a presence on Wall Street. He explained that cyber-enabled crime and insider trading is prevalent in the industry, citing a number of case studies and the methods by which the FBI is identifying these cases and subsequently monitoring and tracking the people involved. Mr. Chavez stressed the criticality of organizations to have stringent compliance programs, senior management supervision and escalation policies in conjunction with our own personal awareness to help combat these instances.

The final speaker was Michael Gardner, President, Dome Advisors LLC with a focus on the 2016 presidential race and the economy. Mr. Gardner also gave an excellent presentation, taking what can often be a dry topic and infusing it with insight and humor. He explained the impacts of the pessimistic views of Washington to the financial industry and provided his views as to why things are not a bleak as they may seem. Mr. Gardner's infusion of optimism in light of the lackluster presidential race was encouraging, but only time will tell.

As seen in the past couple of ISITC conferences, the forums and working groups continued to carry the theme of less competition and more collaboration. As additional regulations, process automation and new utilities and products are introduced there will continue to be challenges with the integration of old and new technologies and reengineering of process models. Organizations are recognizing that although problems are not always universal and cannot always be solved across the entire value chain, many of the same issues are being experienced across the industry. It will be interesting to see if this spirit of increased collaboration with a decreased focus on competition and how it will influence changes in the financial industry.