Meeting client needs

Host Mike Wilson welcomed to the stage Pieternel Kimman, Sales Manager at Genesis, to talk about key client themes and business drivers.

“The client journeys I am seeing are really maturing,” Pieternel said. “Companies such as ING and StoneX are coming back and  asking for more integrations and more functionality. This is a testimony to the Genesis platform and the fact that we are enabling clients to keep up, and providing the innovation they need at speed. We’re catering for their evolving needs.”

Pieternel also spoke about legacy innovation: firms often struggle with their legacy IT stacks, which are costly to replace and difficult to innovate around. “The Genesis platform can wrap applications around legacy systems by retrieving data, integrating with other systems and onboarding new assets,” she said. “This is extremely important to our clients, who want to keep the technology they’ve invested in whilst still being able to innovate. Genesis caters for that very well.”

To demonstrate this, Pieternel introduced the use case of Genesis’ prime brokerage client portal as adopted by a prime broker wishing to broaden its client base to include smaller firms. The Genesis portal allows client firms to access data and put through requests without the need to make a telephone call. The portal integrates with a wide range of existing IT systems.

Looking forward to 2022, Pieternel said that she would like to see Genesis’ client projects evolve from single applications to a more ecosystem-based way of thinking, with even more integrations and functionality. “I really want to see that innovation journey with my clients,” she said. “The speed to innovation we can provide is truly unique.”

New Industry Applications

Ben Jeffreys then re-joined Mike on stage to discuss Genesis’ new industry applications, which replace existing software applications with a modern alternative, purpose-built to fit the exact requirements of the client. “It’s about choices or alternatives for organisations,” he explained. “A large scale operation may traditionally have been hampered by very few choices, or, at the other end of the scale, a business might have been limited because it can’t find an effective software solution. Low-code/no-code changes all that.”

Ben introduced a demo of Genesis’ Treasury Money Market Rates (TMMR) application, explaining the challenges which the bank for which it was built were facing. “They had to disseminate rates among the client-facing teams,” he explained. “ and therefore needed a bespoke solution.”

Although the use case in question is specialised, Ben said, the key element is around the concept of building blocks – reusable components that help to build applications. All Genesis applications have core building blocks which we were able to be offered to the client straight out of the box.  

Buy-to-build

Commenting on the concept of buy-to-build, Ben said, “There is more and more demand from clients to use technology such as the Genesis low-code/no-code platform to build their own applications. Their development teams are snowed under so they are coming to us for a new way of doing things. Buy to build is about that and  that’s the path that we are on to get people on to build their own applications on the Genesis platform.”

Ray Chee, Genesis’ Head of Platform Delivery, then took to the stage to elaborate on buy-to-build and explain what influenced the idea.

“Fundamentally, we respond to our clients,” he said. “A lot of our clients typically have some degree of tech teams  – some large scale, some less so –with varying degrees of sophistication. Once they’ve gone through the process of building a system using the platform and experienced the acceleration and the capability, its’s a powerful message and they are keen to get involved.”

Ray then introduced a video segment highlighting the development of Genesis’ no-code tooling as part of the messaging of buy-to-build. In the video, Chris Anderson, Platform Product Manager at Genesis, explains the use of no-code tooling to drive some data modelling elements.

“It’s about choice,” Ray said. “Different people want different things. Some clients want to get technical immediately, others want to explore how far they can get with the no-code tooling. It’s our mission to support the breadth of use cases from the simplest to the most complex.”

Looking to the future

Ben and Pieternel re-joined Mike along with Ray for a panel discussion, beginning with the question of whether buy-to-build is the future. Ben said that there is no doubt.

“We’ve seen some great statistics about the growth in demand for new applications,” he said. “Sadly, there’s not a supply of newly skilled developers to meet that demand, so we have to find a new way. The Genesis low-code/no-code platform enables that, and elements like the building blocks and reusable pieces of functionality reduce time to market and make teams more efficient. It’s definitely a game changer.”

Ray agreed. “IT department budgets only go so far,” he said. “So now you can get deeper into your book of work with the same teams and the same resources. Code less, do more.”

Pieternel said that this doesn’t mean that Genesis is shifting away from building for clients. “They can build with us or build themselves,” she said. “It’s only the beginning when you start with the Genesis platform.”

“There isn’t a financial markets organisation that isn’t plagued by the challenges of new industry applications, legacy systems and end-user computing,” Ben said. “To be able to use our technology to develop applications in an efficient and viable way gives a different perspective.”  

“It’s all about choice,” Ray added. “What do our clients need and how can we provide it for them?  I’d like people to have a sense of excitement about how far we have reached and where we’re going. Our future looks amazing.”

Pieternel remarked, “The time to market we offer is truly unique. I want to grow and partner with our existing clients, and to do the best job possible for them. We handle very complex use cases, but we try to do it in a simple way. I think that’s a unique combination.”

“The demand is only going to increase,” Ben said, “so embrace change and let Genesis help you find a new way of doing things.”

James Harrison, CTO and Co-founder of Genesis offered some closing thoughts. “Our team is amazing,” he said. “Our big focus into next year is platform, but self-service is also a theme. Rather than have clients coming to us and explaining the problem, we want them to be as powerful as our internal teams. It’s all about making our clients supercharged.”