Prop trading firm OSTC has said its new performance analytic tool is attracting interest from companies both inside and outside the financial sector.

In an interview with Global Investor, OSTC’s CEO Lee Hodgkinson said: “We’re really interested in taking this service to external clients and are in discussions with a number at the moment about rolling it out to their traders.”

Hodgkinson said it is still early days, but OSTC is talking to firms with a similar profile as well as non-financial services companies.  “Anybody that employs humans that are material risk-takers can think about biometric performance in the same way,” he added.

The rationale of the performance tool called ZISHI Elite, winner of FOW’s 2019 best new product in trading and execution award, is that the mental and physiological capabilities needed to succeed in sport are the same as those needed to be a successful trader.

Over 100 traders signed up for the app when it launched in early 2019. The product is part of a diversification strategy to reduce OSTC’s reliance on transaction revenue, and to position the company at the forefront of the digital revolution.

Hodgkinson said OSTC aims to position itself at the vanguard of technology change by focusing on two key areas, the fusion of physiological and digital environments, and artificial intelligence (AI).

With these goals in mind, OSTC has developed and deployed an AI recruitment tool to help identify candidates who are better suited to its trading activity. This involves capturing data from company’s successful traders to create profiles of candidates with the potential to succeed. 

“We use that data as an input to the hiring decision, not as a replacement,” Hodgkinson said. “That’s a common theme for OSTC generally, that we use technology to augment our human capability, not to replace it.”

Adoption of the AI recruitment tool will follow a similar path to ZISHI Elite. Currently it is being used for OSTC’s recruitment processes but once OSTC has proven the case internally, it will look to roll it out to external clients.

OSTC in February hired a director from HSBC and reshuffled its senior management to increase its focus on innovation.