support@stormitfinancial.com 
FinTech Trends Newsletter Week 5th Feb – 9th Feb 2018
Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs Have a Vendor Management Problem
If Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs want to stay ahead of competition and ensure high-speed decision making and trading doesn’t start the next flash crash, they need better insight into vendor delivered IT support and infrastructure. Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs know better than anyone how one little hiccup with their IT infrastructure can seriously impact competitive advantage. That advantage can be weeks, microseconds, or something in between. The race to build quickly, sometimes forces IT infrastructure updates to be done on the fly, even while the market is trading. We all know Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Managers thrive on risk, but anyone in the IT industry also knows that patching infrastructure is like trying to change a piston inside a race car engine at 200 mph.
Increasing velocity, combined with the constant need for IT to reduce costs, means Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs are under extreme pressure. Much is being outsourced to low-cost MSP’s (Managed Service Providers) through either traditional out sourcing or Hybrid solutions. So making sure what’s being rolled out and used won’t crash or corrupt the underlying architecture is harder than ever. MSP’s have processes in place to handle proper testing for these systems, but most financial firms are severely underestimating their vendor management needs and, in turn, throwing money down the drain.
Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs have been relying on third-party MSP vendors, like Storm IT Financial, for IT support, infrastructure, cyber security and cloud services for years to help increase support, security and data needs and reduce cost. However, management has limited visibility into IT support and infrastructure quality once it’s delivered and being used, and whether MSP vendors are making good on their expertise and promises. The tendency is to rely on IT infrastructure reviews and gap analysis, combined with lots and lots of functional testing and service-level agreements that focus on IT support performance. However, these do little to tell IT executives if their money is being well spent, or if the infrastructure being used is bringing undue risk into the business due to inadequate quality. Business leaders have been able to overcome these problems in other processes by measuring outcomes and answered queries lead times, where the cost and requirements of the help service are defined up front, rather than a time and materials approach, where cost is incurred as the project progresses.
Over the past decade, huge strides have been made in fast, automated remote support and remote access functionality to ease some of the cost and time constraints while increasing consistency and objectivity. If Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs want to stay ahead of competition and ensure high-speed decision making and trading doesn’t start the next flash crash, they need better vendor management acumen to get insight into MSP delivered support and infrastructure services. Or, if cost cutting is the objective, it’s easy to negotiate the rate card, but that doesn’t guarantee lower factor costs or quality of the service. With most of the IT industry going to outcome-based sourcing, CIOs have more work to do to know they are improving their IT infrastructure, cyber security and help desk support without sacrificing quality.
At the end of the day, Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs cannot blame IT department teams or third-party MSP/ vendors for their lack of insight into their infrastructure portfolios. And if they are ignoring outcome-based sourcing, doubly so. The only way to reduce IT costs and validate outsourced work is to proactively monitor IT infrastructure and help desk quality standards for answering and solving IT queries, speed, performance, security and reliability before acceptance and implementation.
Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Manager CIOs have been relying on third-party MSP vendors for IT Support and cloud services for years to help increase throughput and reduce cost. However, management has limited visibility into IT support quality once it’s delivered and being used, and whether MSP vendors are making good on their expertise and promises.
For further advice and assistance in ways you can increase efficiency and reduce costs at your firm – without sacrificing performance or service – and to learn more about IT support & infrastructure, cyber security, back up, disaster recovery, cloud services, telephony, call recording & data Compliant Solutions, RegTech, data management & managed solutions, Contact Storm IT Financial.
Storm IT Financial FinTech News & Trends picks: Week 5th Feb – 9th Feb 2018
Why Microsoft Is Ruling The Cloud, IBM Is Matching Amazon, AndGoogle Is $15 Billion Behind
The Cloud War is showing us how big the enterprise cloud has become, how rapidly it’s growing & how Microsoft is all about the hybrid cloud:
SEC Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations Announces2018 Examination Priorities
Crypto, cyber and clearing to be focus of 2018 SEC exams:
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-12
The Future of the City
Speech by Andrew Bailey, Chief Executive of the FCA, at the Future of the City dinner:
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/speeches/future-city
FinTech didn’t fail—the prophets did
Did or didn’t “disruption” happen?:
Where will 2018 take banking’s tech?
The real trick is being ready for trip: http://www.bankingexchange.com/news-feed/item/7335-where-will-2018-take-banking-s-tech?Itemid=637
Finance executives worried about AI
As many as 83 per cent of financial sector business leaders say they are concerned artificial intelligence could see them out of a job:
https://www.fintechbusiness.com/industry/940-finance-executives-worried-about-ai
Robo Advisor Websites Crashed, Cutting Clients Off From Accounts
Two Robo Advisor Websites experienced outages as the stock market tumbled on Monday:
http://www.wealthmanagement.com/technology/robo-advisor-websites-crashed-cutting-clients-accounts
Compliance challenge continues…
Regulatory outlook for 2018, rule by rule with links:
Thomson Reuters sees divergence in regulatory reforms as firms race to harness tech
According to Reuters report Compliance & regulatory pro’s try to keep up digital technology affecting them:
Cybersecurity dominates EU Fintech Action Plan
Cybersecurity takes top billing in the European Union’s upcoming Fintech Action Plan:
China to stamp out cryptocurrency trading completely with ban on foreign platforms
Offshore platforms targeted after recent efforts to shut down domestic exchanges failed to eradicate trading:
Three-Quarters of Businesses Saw Phishing Attacks in 2017
The war against email phishing is still on, with 76% of firm’s experiencing phishing attacks in 2017:
