After more than 15 years serving traders, FIS Astec Analytics Lending Pit has been rebuilt from the ground up to meet the demands of the modern securities finance industry. David Lewis, explains all
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The Lending Pit dashboard has been a faithful companion to traders for many years. What drove the decision to update it?Ìý
Yes, that’s very true. People certainly like what they know, and I did agonise for some time over how it might be accepted. However, Lending Pit has been around for over 15 years and, although it has undergone many enhancements over that time and reliably delivering around five million data items a week to its users, it was beginning to show its age a little.
With the speed at which technology moves forwards, along with the rising expectations of users, it was the right time to completely rebuild it. Lending Pit 2.0 is not an update as such, it is a brand new piece of software, built from the ground up using the latest technology and techniques to bring the greatest flexibility and speed of operation.
The new dashboard has a fresh colour scheme, but there is much more than that for users. Can you outline what’s changed/been added/taken away?
We have included an option for the screens to have a dark background or a light one, so those that really miss the old black and gold scheme are catered for. I suspect that most will opt for the crisp white background as this works better with the data visualisation work we have done. There are many additional data fields, such as the percentage of rerates going up or down by value, as well as more granularity on the recall and return data, but, even greater effort has been expended on workflow and visualisation. For example, all trade life cycle events have common colours across various screens enabling the user to immediately identify the type of activity going on in our intraday data.
Every year, data becomes a moreÌýintrinsicÌýaspect of the securities finance market. What can the Lending Pit do in terms of crunching numbers?Ìý
Correct. Data is vital for effective programs, but that data needs to be presented as actionable information. One of the key enhancements we have added is the trade blotter. Intraday data is a key dynamic of the Lending Pit offering, being part of its DNA from day one. The intraday trade blotter gives users an instant visual understanding of what is happening in a given security, showing activity type by colour, value by the size of the bubble and located on the graph by trade timestamp and applicable rate (see figure 1).
I imagineÌýthere was aÌýrigorousÌýtesting period. What did that teach you about your users’ needs?Ìý
Indeed, there was a lot. This was a ground-up build in brand new software, so we needed to be sure it was industry-ready. Rigorous testing internally ensured that, but we also had a panel of early adopters. A selection of clients had access to our beta site and gave us great feedback about functions and flow, enabling us to tweak designs as we worked toward launch.
The revamped dashboard is also more closely aligned with FIS’ other securities finance services, such as Apex. How did that streamlining operation go and what benefits does theÌýnew holistic offering bring?
That’s right. We have been working on ever closer connectivity across the Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Finance Product Suite. This reflects the direction the market is taking, demanding better workflow and more automation. Lending Pit 2.0 is built on an effective and resilient application programming interface platform which allows that same data to be easily incorporated into other systems. For example, we have enhanced both Apex Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï Finance and Apex Collateral to not only include Lending Pit data but to actively involve it in improving workflow and automation to improve program efficiency.
In conclusion, Lending Pit ‘classic’ as we now call it has served its time. Lending Pit 2.0 is now bringing new levels of functionality and analytics to our global intraday data.
Traders are creatures of habit. What has the reception been like so far to the new look and feel of the Lending Pit?Ìý
Yes, and that was a concern, of course. I had nightmares of repeating that terrible launch of the new taste of Coke some years ago. However, the reception has been even better than I had hoped. We hosted some product launch webinars in July which were well attended and started an avalanche of requests to have access. As the new Lending Pit 2.0 had been used in anger by several beta clients we knew we were ready to go but were not quite prepared for the speed of uptake I have to confess. By the end of August, we had transferred more than 800 users and now everyone has access to the new software. We will be turning off the old version at the end of this year, so we are actively transitioning anyone who has yet to move.
How did the roll-out go and what’s next?Ìý
We took the decision to launch in July because the vast majority of functionality that our clients relied on was complete, along with many of the new functions and features. We have and are continuing to develop the service, however. I have more ideas to add and our clients are coming up with additional requests as we go along. Since July we have added functions in releases every two to four weeks and will continue to add enhancements as well as roll out new versions of our Excel add-in and benchmarking and reporting application.
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