The financial services industry is increasingly interconnected, and the volume of data processed is growing exponentially. While much has been written about the importance of fast data transfer in the front office, where milliseconds can determine the success or failure of a trade strategy, the ability to communicate, absorb and transform data is also a key success factor in the post-trade. As both DTCC and our clients’ digital strategies continue to evolve in this fast-paced, high-volume, big-data world, the preferred channels for access to DTCC services will increasingly be interfaces that support on-demand, real-time interaction.
We have embarked on a multi-year journey to modernize our client interfaces and their underlying architecture to deliver tangible, incremental benefits to our clients. First and foremost, this will deliver a better and more consistent user experience. But a streamlined interface architecture won’t just enable the delivery of new and enhanced services – it will strengthen resiliency, onboarding and support capabilities. For example, end-to-end traffic management enables DTCC’s internal teams to more effectively monitor potential issues and quickly address them as soon as they arise. This enables clients to have more visibility into the state of their transactions as they are processed by various DTCC products and services.
We are modernizing our technology and rationalizing business capabilities to protect capital markets and transform the post-trade ecosystem while elevating the client experience.
Our primary goal is to offer our clients the flexibility to interact with us using the interface that best suits their needs, no matter which type of interface they leverage. To make it easier to learn about our APIs, and associated tools and guidelines, we created the DTCC API marketplace, and over time will expand to include our range of interfaces. Streamlining access to DTCC will also be achieved through an improved MyDTCC Portal, which will facilitate users’ navigation between products and access to support tools. The multitude of DTCC graphical user interfaces (GUI)/Web Applications will be rationalized and streamlined to enable a more user-friendly interaction.
Related: Four Things to Know About DTCC’s API Marketplace
While file interfaces will be used in some cases – for instance, when it is mandated by a regulatory requirement – our multi-channel approach prioritizes on-demand, real time interfaces. We’ll implement a user-centric design to rationalize interfaces across product lines and adopt industry standards, such as FIX and SWIFT, whenever possible. At the same time, we will continue to invest in emerging innovative interfaces, such as direct data share via cloud-based data exchanges and distributed ledger technology (DLT), to support emerging best practices for data exchange.
In addition, we are working on upgrading DTCC traffic management infrastructure, including edge gateways and the inbound/outbound orchestration of data from clients and partners to DTCC business applications, to strengthen resilience and security.
Through ongoing dialogue with our clients and partners, we’ve identified the following areas as immediate priorities:
- Enable the replacement of Common Data Transfer Service (CDTS) with CMF (Common Messaging Framework) along with additional discrete reusable capabilities
- Improve REST API implementation and support
- Establish a consistent experience across all DTCC interfaces
- Prove the viability of emerging client interface options, including direct data transfer and DLT
Effective industry dialogue will be key to our success going forward and we will work with our clients and partners to determine the best path forward on a per-product basis. Together we will deliver a transformational interface strategy that elevates the client experience while enabling more secure, traceable and efficient data communications in the post-trade lifecycle.