Our CTO, Antonio Melé, discusses how best to set up a technology platform that can work well in the face of external pressures, such as the global pandemic we are faced with today.
When markets go into freefall, working practices fly out of the window and business as usual is a distant memory, having the right tech in place from day one is key to success.
How do you prevent tech outages at a time like this?
Investing in prevention is key to prepare your systems and processes against any eventuality. Your technical architecture and IT processes must be designed to guarantee business continuity under unpredictable conditions.
It’s impossible to predict any possible scenario – nobody anticipated the situation we’re in now – but there are many best practices that can be implemented to build robust and resilient system architectures.
Your technology infrastructure must be able to handle unexpected traffic peaks and system or network outages. It must be able to keep operations running under harsher conditions. Take wealth management platforms: at times of uncertainty, markets are more volatile and investors tend to check their investments more frequently. Therefore, it’s extremely important to guarantee uptime and ensure platform response times are as low as possible.
With proactive monitoring and dynamic scaling of IT infrastructure, your systems will be able to adapt automatically to situations like this. Monitor your cloud resources and set rules to scale your infrastructure automatically by provisioning additional cloud resources when certain conditions are met – for example, if the load server is higher than 70% CPU for more than two minutes. This kind of setup gives you peace of mind that you can service your clients if traffic suddenly peaks.
How important is data?
Data plays a huge role both internally and externally. Consistency and accuracy are important in financial services, but especially in a crisis scenario. Data reliability is crucial for appropriate decision making and for maintaining client confidence. All stakeholders expect the platform to consistently provide reliable data under any conditions.
Clients need to know their money is safe, and in the world of investing they need to be able to understand why the market has dropped and how much it has affected their portfolio. Failing to provide accurate data at such a crucial time can have a hugely negative impact on client relations and brand.
What measures can we put in place to prevent this from happening?
Nucoro’s platform has fully automated processes which can scale up as needed to allow all clients and partners to:
- Conduct automatic pre and post trade checks
- Reconcile cash and invested positions with the custodian bank on a daily basis
- Monitor trading execution
- Set up retry and fallback policies for processes
- Guarantee data consistency after each process is completed
- Automatically detect any missing or abnormal data in portfolios
We have built our own rule-based system that combines system monitoring tools and business data analytics to actively monitor the platform and send automatic notifications if any unexpected situations occur.
So how can we stay prepared for something that hasn’t happened in our lifetime?
As I mentioned before, prevention is key and building in powerful monitoring tools from the beginning are a must.
Business operations have to be supported by efficient enterprise IT systems that increase efficiency throughout the organization and guarantee operational continuity in case of a disaster. There are many best practices to follow to design a robust, scalable, resilient platform – but it takes time and resources, so clear top-down buy in to make technology core to the company’s strategy is a must.
What about a larger organisation with legacy technology, which can’t implement this from the beginning?
Banks often struggle with legacy technology and if there was ever a time to illustrate this, it’s now. For both business and technology to transform within a bank, the process can be slow, costly and complex. However, launching digital propositions that use technology to provide added value to clients is fundamental to position the business in the digital age – and it’s key to staying resilient at times like this.
By partnering with digitally native companies like Nucoro, banks and insurance companies can accelerate the digitalisation of their business. They can break free from the constraints of existing legacy systems and launch cutting-edge digital propositions with a reduced time to market, ready for the challenges of the digital age and the unexpected events of the outside world.
Learn more about the Nucoro platform here.
