In this episode, John Straley, DTCC Executive Director, Global Head of Strategic Partners and Alliances, shares how the DTCC Partner Program is harnessing a global network of resources from post-trade technology providers and FMIs to drive client value and accelerate the adoption of new initiatives across the financial services industry.
Transcript:
Hi, I'm John Straley and I manage the partner team globally for DTCC. The team consists of a presence in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. managing important vendor relationships across the globe. As some of you know, DTCC sits centrally in the financial ecosystem. Because of DTCC's worldwide footprint we are connected to some of the world's largest financial market participants, clearing houses and CSD's.
With this foundational base, we find ourselves connected to most of the vendors that offer solutions in the financial landscape. Our client-first focus entails that we understand the challenges our clients face, the tools they use and the vendors they leverage to meet their objectives. Through building these critical relationships with partners, we look to expand flow to DTCC services, create new business opportunities with clients and technology providers, and look for new entrants in the fintech landscape.
The partner program stands as an intermediary to these relationships - to help the larger partner vendors navigate across our enterprise - so that not only are they seeing an effortless connection to DTCC, but so are our shared client base. We are constantly working with our partners and our shared clients for opportunities to ease the client's daily efforts with their chosen service providers, including identifying solutions for their common challenges.
But how did this start? Historically, the partner program was developed by the ITP business, recognizing the need for relationships and sales within the vendor landscape. Once the Qasys and CTM products had developed their networks across the globe and needed to expand it some more, our clients started hiring vendors to capture their trading activity and we needed to work with those vendors to bring that transactional flow into the trade confirmation services. Hence the development of the partner program, a few names included in the development offhe community initially were Bloomberg, FIS and Fidessa These relationships exist today with the ITP team. But it's key to note that today, the focus of the Partner Program is not only ITP, but also DTCC and its various business lines.
Across our enterprise, we have over 100 partners, whether it's for RDS, ITP, Asset Servicing or the SIFMU clearing houses, that we interact with. We work extensively with our sales and relationship management teams to understand who clients are working with and those respective value propositions.
We spend a lot of time talking to these partners to understand what their plans are, what their priorities are and making sure that they know what we're trying to do at the same time. An example of an ongoing and exciting partnership is one with Broadridge, one of our largest SIFMU partners. We have taken Broadridge across the organization to meet with different business leaders to identify potential opportunities to work together for the benefit of our shared clients. This is an ongoing activity and something we continue to do with Broadridge and other large partners.
So, let me talk about each of the different partner categories we maintain here at DTCC. We have Connectivity partners, Infrastructure partners, and Technology partners.
Connectivity partners are the team's original remit, the firms that bring in the trading activity initially. I talked about this group and the history of the effort but it's important to note, this is now not only for ITP but also the broader organization, especially with the information we supply our clients on a daily basis. The Broadridge's, Beta NXT's and FIS's have become instrumental to the success of our clients and thereby important to our success as well — and so are these relationships.
Second are the infrastructure partners, which are a new focus for this team. Consider them providers that are like DTCC. They clear securities, they connect globally to banks and CSDs or are CSDs themselves – it is a very limited community with a very large footprint – a similar footprint to us. We’re collaborating with these companies as we continue to look to bring the industry together to advance the markets forward. Companies in this space are Euroclear, Clearstream and SWIFT and other large financial infrastructures and we are strengthening these relationships as the world grows smaller.
Finally, the third group are the technology partners. Whether it's a small fintech or a name like AWS, Microsoft, or Snowflake, these are the firms that are helping us, and the industry change the future and modernize the existing financial landscape.
We expect to see a lot of exciting activities across our technology partnerships, where we are looking to find emerging technology providers and in parallel, enable DTCC technology to strengthen its partnerships.
Relationships with these key names, will be key to executing DTCC's vision of becoming the most influential, strategic and tech-focused partner.
But it comes down to how the DTCC partner program supports our firm’s strategic pillars and why we’re the most influential, strategic and tech-focused partner. And how we are becoming that? Well, I'll start with the first question. The partner team plays a central role in expanding DTCC’s global network, maximizing the value of our platform that we deliver to our clients. Recent examples include the white paper we released in collaboration with Euroclear and Clearstream, and some of the relationship we brought to bear on that. Two of the largest European ICSD’s and a US CSD came together, calling for more industry collaboration and advancing the digital asset ecosystem.
As far as maximizing the value of our platform, we ensure market participants have multiple connectivity options to our service, whether in ITP with firms like SS&C or in the SIFMU space with firms like Broadridge. We are constantly exploring new opportunities to partner with third parties to introduce operational efficiencies for our clients and will continue to do so to keep our focus as THE Partner in the financial world.
Thanks for your time, and if you'd like to understand more or are interested in becoming a partner, please contact the DTCC partner team. Thank you for listening to Take Five.