While the vendor space within capital markets has seen a period of uncertainty with cost-cutting and market exits, Itiviti has been a company that, in 2019, stood out as one to watch.

The 2018 merger saw the firm bring together its core strengths within agency trading, the NYFIX order routing network, and vast connectivity portfolio from the ULLINK business.  Itiviti brought with it, the most advanced and modern principal trading stack built around the firms Tbricks technology platform, FIX engines, and connectivity hubs.

Now, a company with over €200 million in revenue, 2,000 global customers in 50 countries, and more than 1,000 staff, the firm has the credentials to take on any of the larger legacy vendors.

The Stockholm-based firm appointed Rob Mackay as the firm’s chief executive on the 1st of April 2019. Mackay came with a formidable track record having joined Itiviti from Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), the world’s largest provider of banking technology solutions, where he was most recently Chief Operating Officer for the FIS Cross-Asset Trading & Risk business unit.

To achieve his vision to position Itiviti as the dominant vendor within automation and connectivity, Mackay hired Linda Middleditch, who joined Itiviti in June 2019 as Chief Product Officer from Bloomberg LP, where she most recently was Global Head of SSEOMS Product Management.

Middleditch offers a valuable perspective, having held senior product development positions with tier one investment banks, including Citi, where she was global head of equity product development for six years, Morgan Stanley, where she worked for over a decade, and UBS.

Middleditch told Global Investor that proprietary traders remain a crucial audience for her new firm.

“At Itiviti, we cover a wide spectrum of customers, including proprietary trading firms. We have invested heavily in Tbricks and all of our products, and we will continue to invest in functionality that is important to our customers growing their businesses, including speed and flexibility,” she said.

The Itiviti Principal Risk Trading and Market-Making solutions support market-makers, quantitative, algorithmic, and volatility traders, and offer the relevant compliance and reporting functionality to underpin these strategies.

Itiviti’s prop solutions enable individuals and teams to trade futures, options, warrants, ETFs, and foreign exchange. They are also available through various delivery models, including on-premise deployment or managed services, covered by 24/6 multi-language support by Itiviti’s global team.

Middleditch said proprietary traders’ technology preferences are changing.

She said: “The trend within the proprietary trading community is that they want packaged products more than ever before. We are starting to see increasing client demand for more standardized features instead of bespoke features, traditionally built by the client’s in house development teams.”

Middleditch said prop trading firms are starting to appreciate that they don’t have to do everything themselves, which is a testament to the progress that firms like Itiviti have made in recent years.

She said: “The reason for this is that firms are realizing that they would rather focus their development resources on true intellectual property. Our technology is very modular and flexible, so we feel we are well-positioned to support this trend.”

Yet Itiviti is careful not to become prescriptive in how firms use its technology services.

Middleditch said: “Every client is different so some will still want to own and support their functionality themselves while others are much more comfortable with off-the-shelf solutions. It comes down to where the client wants to position itself in the trade-off between speed of deployment and customization.”

Looking ahead, Middleditch said Itiviti is committed to staying at the vanguard of trading and FIX technology and services provision.

She said: “Over 2020, we will continue to build on our best in class platform to expand our cross-asset market making and volatility trading capabilities. A continued focus and investment in performance is at the forefront of our strategy, and we will continue to innovate and adopt new practices and solutions to assist us with this.”

Middleditch said the firm will also continue to invest in new technologies and to cover more of its clients’ trading requirements

“Core to Itiviti’s strategy is to leverage partnerships to enable us to deliver best in class, holistic workflows. We are working on a number of strategic partnerships in areas such as AI/Machine Learning to drive automation benefits. Other exciting areas of focus include the expansion into new asset classes such as fixed income,” she said.