Draconian cost cuts pave way for Itiviti growth

Global tech firm Itiviti is looking to fill the gap where competitors are pulling out as part of its growth plan following a post-merger rebranding.

New Itiviti chief Rob MacKay, who joined in March after almost two decades at FIS and Sungard, explained that one of the biggest opportunities for the firm is leveraging strengths where others are pulling back. 

“Legacy competitors are looking either explicitly to withdraw, or implicitly to withdraw by reducing service through draconian cost cuts, and that is providing an enormous opportunity for Itiviti,” he told FOW.

Earlier this month, Itiviti said it is already picking up participants that were using Bloomberg’s Sell-Side Execution and Order Management Solutions (SSEOMS), after the latter decided to sunset the platform.

“Our top priority is securing a number of SSEOMS resources to ensure we can do an outstanding job onboarding. The important thing is that it is a smooth upgrade for Bloomberg’s SSEOMS clients,” Mackay said.

The task ahead is to migrate Bloomberg SSEOMS’ 170 customers globally before the product is discontinued from April 2021, and Itiviti plans to secure senior experts to help with the migration.

For example on May 21 the firm said it hired Frederic Villain as head of agency trading sales, Asia, from Bloomberg, where he was regional manager and head of sales and services, Asia Pacific.

At the same time Itiviti is looking to leverage its next generation technology and strengths under a rebranded and combined product suite one year after merging with trading platform Ullink. 

“This year is focused around SSEOMS but in parallel we are expanding our connectivity market share.

“One of our real strengths is in the connectivity space and we are looking at expanding on that and laying more tools and services on top of that,” Mackay said.

Another area of focus is to build on strengths in customer high touch.

According to Mackay, there is a big opportunity for participants to switch from a solution whose provider is cutting support by more than half, and there is also a big move from software to service.

“We help our clients accelerate the onboarding of their clients from months to just weeks or days, which is important as revenue is directly related to how quickly they can onboard clients,” he said.

Richard Bentley, Itiviti’s chief product officer, who was interim chief executive officer after former chief Torben Munch stepped down in December, told FOW in March the firm also sees opportunities for growth in the exchange-traded fund market making and volatility trading spaces.