India has evolved as an increasingly important hub for fintech globally, given an immense pool of talent and expertise, which propelled "us to invest significantly in building out our team here", says John Stewart, co-CEO of post-trade market infrastructure company OSTTRA.
In the first interaction with Indian media, Stewart told Moneycontrol that the company selected the nation for technology product engineering and other functional capabilities as it will help it deliver full value and promise of OSTTRA to its clients.
OSTTRA is an equal JV between CME Group and IHS Markit (now S&P Global) and is a leading provider of post-trade solutions for the global over-the-counter (OTC) markets across interest rate, FX, equity, and credit asset classes. The company, which mostly caters to institutional entities, was formed in 2021 and is led by co-CEOs Guy Rowcliffe and Stewart.
"We are at the heart of Post Trade, so our name (OSTTRA) comes from there," Stewart says.
Explaining the rationale behind forming OSTTRA, Stewart said that to date, innovation in post trade has been held back by the cost and complexity of change: Deeply entrenched workflows and networks are hard to shift, and greenfield technology initiatives have struggled to gain traction in institutional markets. Hence, the combination created by OSTTRA is uniquely placed to change this dynamic and drive real change.
"By starting with an established network and proven workflows, we are able to use our platforms and expertise to evolve the post trade landscape, enabling the industry to bridge between existing networks and emerging technology, without having to build communities from scratch," Stewart says.
OSTTRA is the combination of four businesses that have been functioning in the area of post-trade evolution and innovation for the last 15-20 years: MarkitServ, Traiana, TriOptima, and Reset.
Asked about the complexities and volumes that OSTTRA manages, Stewart says, "We have more than 9,000 connections on our network of financial market participants, including all of the world’s largest banks, investment managers, and clearing houses and we process more than 80 million trades per month – matching, confirming, and booking transactions, managing credit limits and reconciling portfolios."
That apart, OSSTRA performs more than 10 trillion calculations per second, which include optimising counterparty risk, margin, and capital efficiency. Further, "we have more than 500 trillion of notional outstanding in contracts on our platforms and process more than 22 trillion of notional in new contracts each month," Stewart adds.
As regards India, Stewart says, OSTTRA businesses have had a significant presence in the country for many years, with a strong track record of building world-class development and operations teams.
"During this time, we’ve seen India evolve as an increasingly important hub for fintech globally, with the wealth of talent and experience in the sector underpinning our decision to invest significantly in building out our team here. Our engineering teams in India will play a pivotal role in bringing together OSTTRA networks and services and driving the next wave of technology evolution that will transform trade processing," Stewart adds.
