Whatever happened to longtime Aite Group clearing industry analyst Matt Bienfang?
After a short stop at Microsoft, Bienfang recently joined start-up trading industry consultant BlueMetal Architects in Watertown, Mass., as its director of U.S. client services. BlueMetal, founded by ex-Microsoft executives, has signed up several large custodian banks.
BlueMetal officials believe that "software technologies, properly applied, create sustainable competitive advantage," according to the mission statement on the company’s Web site.
Company officials wouldn’t comment on clients in an interview with CQ&D. However, reportedly, State Street and BNY are among them.
"People really need executive advice," Bienfang said.
Rob Daigneau, one of the founders of BlueMetal Architects, said the consultant is advising brokerages and banks with "the complex problems they have within trading, within analytics, within complex data models and within adopting new technologies." He added that BlueMetal will also help firms with risk management and compliance.
But how does the firm propose to help the clearing broker-dealer?
"I think one of the biggest issues they face today is that their customers are asking for tools in the risk management and compliance space that they historically have not been asking for," Bienfang said.
Brokers and custodians are having to move into new data management areas and need help, he says. The brokers are pushing the responsibility for data management to the custodians, Bienfang explained.
These custodians, he added, are the repositories of more and more information that leads to new business. "But the brokers don’t want to focus on that. Their core management is asset management and asset gathering or trading."
The more efficient use of these bits of information, Bienfang said, will be critical factors for clearing brokerages.
BlueMetal is providing a link for several clearing brokerage that allows them "to be connected to data that they haven’t historically been connected to," Bienfang said.
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