Eleventh annual seminar of ARQA Technologies was held in Moscow

ARQA Technologies carried through the eleventh annual seminar for clients and partners which was held in Moscow on February 13th, 2015.

About 300 participants from 107 organizations for the most part represented clients of ARQA Technologies – banks, investment and management companies. Among partners who participated in workshops and exhibition there were Interfax, MB Technologies, Moscow Exchange, MFD-Infocenter, NAUFOR, NP RTS, St-Petersburg Exchange, CME Group, DataSpace, Deutsche Boerse, IXcellerate, KASE, London Stock Exchange, S&P Capital IQ, SunGard, THOMSON REUTERS, TMX Atrium, TRADING CENTRAL, and Turquoise.

The seminar hosted three sessions devoted to hot topics for financial and technological communities.

The first session ‘New instruments in financial markets’ dealt with topical questions. Given the economic sanctions, high volatility of exchange rates and sharp fall in the value of ruble, what other instruments could be attractive for investors apart from foreign currencies and blue chips? Does a private investor have a place in the Russian financial market, and what is the future of personal investment accounts? Should one buy foreign securities?

The first session was moderated by Vladimir Kurlyanchik (Director of Business Development of ARQA Technologies). Participants of the discussion included Anna Kuznetsova (Managing Director of Securities Market of Moscow Exchange), Evgueny Serdyukov (General Director of St-Petersburg Exchange), Alexey Timofeev (Chairman of the Board of NAUFOR), Pavel Sorokovoy (Head of Department ‘Internet-broker’ of BCS).

The second session was called «In-house vs outsourcing». In his opening report ‘Moscow Exchange: practical experience of combining in-house and outsourcing approaches’ Victor Malakhov (Director of IT-architecture of Moscow Exchange) shared his experience in defining criteria and making decisions about internal development versus choosing a vendor as well as accumulated feedback from the process of cooperation with the latter. It has become quite clear from the report that vendors are not the right choice for projects addressing the core competencies of the client company. Another conclusion that could have been drawn from the report is that interaction with an external vendor may improve internal business processes of the client company. Throughout the ensuing discussion its participants hotly disputed pros and cons of both approaches citing examples from own practical experience.

The session was moderated by Alexey Khorunzhiy (IT-Director of BD Otkrytie). Participants of the discussion beside Victor Malakhov were Alexander Lesnov (Head of Product Development of KIT Finance Broker), Victor Kustov (Head of Project Office of ITInvest) and Danil Baburin (Head of QUIK development, ARQA Technologies).

The last session ‘In search of liquidity’ started with an emphatic report of the same name by Robert Barnes (СЕО Turquoise), who shared with the participants his insight into building new types of markets augmenting those represented by the classical exchange infrastructure. This led to a heated discussion on whether it was possible to change volume and quality of liquidity in the Russian market and how various financial institutions may contribute to this process. Probably the only topic where the participants seemed to agree was introduction of the Central Counterparty which had transformed transactions in the institutional part of financial market significantly reducing risks.

This discussion was also moderated by Vladimir Kurlyandchik. The participants beside Robert Barnes included Igor Marich (Moscow Exchange Money Market Managing Director), Roman Lokhov (CEO, Global Markets and Investment Banking, BCS), Alexander Ospischev (Head of Product Development in Electronic Markets of Sberbank CIB).

It should be mentioned that great attention was drawn to the address of the General director of ARQA Technologies Yury Voronov as well as to the report of Vladimir Kurlyandchik entitled ‘ARQA Technologies: 15 years of history’ that retrospectively commemorated milestones achieved by ARQA Technologies since its setup in 2000.