Meet The Backbone Of Many Major Finance Platforms, Institutions

Benzinga, a leading news and data provider, will be holding its annual Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, a day of dealmaking, networking, and recognition in the financial technology space, on November 11, 2021.

The event will award Benzinga Listmakers, those top companies part of Benzinga’s Global Fintech Index, for their accomplishments innovating, as well as merging the best of finance and technology.

In recognition of the top disruptive innovators creating positive and diverse change within the financial services space, Benzinga spoke with Kenneth Chan, managing director at ViewTrade Holding, as well as the president and CTO of Orbis Systems, a ViewTrade Holding subsidiary. Chan co-founded ViewTrade Holding Corp. along with James StClair and Bob Dombrowksi over 20 years ago.

First Mover: Not long ago, financial markets operated differently.

That’s according to Chan who after developing military systems at IBM Corporation IBM, and monitoring systems for nuclear power plants at ABB Ltd ABB, held multiple roles in innovation at the Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC), a subsidiary of the New York and American Stock Exchanges.

Unlike today, Chan said, manual processing was the norm, so humans had a much bigger role in liquidity provision and clearing, two factors paramount in maintaining fair and efficient markets. His work on the first TCP IP network at the New York Stock Exchange forever altered the size and efficiency of markets.

“If you look at some of the old pictures of the NYSE, they have these big square boxes,” Chan said in reference to built-in monitors across floor trading posts. “I was in the engineering group, and we upgraded every post on the floor over a weekend. We had carpenters, electricians, the union, as well as software people literally tear the whole thing down, and rebuild it from scratch, so it could be ready for Monday morning trade.”

Since then, the executive has worked in multiple roles, bringing the internet and email services to stock exchanges in the early 1990s, as well as to ViewTrade and its subsidiaries.

“We wanted to build a system that enabled global financial firms to overcome existing hurdles to empower their customers to trade stocks 24/7, all over the world,” Chan said in a reference to his work on developing early cloud-based trading systems. “It was very expensive for firms to access FIX directly at that time, so we built custom technology to give those firms the power to serve as a conduit for inbound access to the U.S. markets, because they were -- and still are -- the most popular, liquid markets in the world. We went to Asia, the Middle East, and Europe to help financial institutions overcome technical challenges and satisfy a significant demand.”

The Market’s Backbone: Today, ViewTrade is an innovation-focused giant, helping global fintechs, banks, broker-dealers, and advisors access markets efficiently and at low cost.

The B2B firm’s core focus is allowing financial institutions, especially those that are smaller and underserved, the infrastructure and connections to streamline access to markets. ViewTrade’s solutions include cloud-based APIs and services that address onboarding, digital KYC, AML checks, bank account linking, cross-border funding, fractional share trading, as well as market data and insights.

“Our system is very modular,” the co-founder said in a statement on ViewTrade’s mobile development toolkit. “We have the core proprietary system, and we also provide open-source technology to enable firms to create and customize their front-end user experience.”

ViewTrade, simply put, is the backbone of the largest fintech platforms and institutions in over 20 countries on 5 continents. From working with large clearing firms and global banks, to innovative platform providers, ViewTrade has cemented its role in the democratization of finance.

Innovation Outlook: In light of the digital disruption, ViewTrade is looking to amp up its efforts around the next generation of fintech, the intersection of risk monitoring and mitigation.

“We can build, or they can build; we’ve made it very easy to deploy,” Chan said in a statement regarding his team's efforts around bringing markets into the future. “In regard to our presence -- ViewTrade Securities and Orbis Systems are keenly focused on helping our clients not only access the markets -- but do so responsibly. Monitoring for AML and KYC are just as important to me as my early days monitoring nuclear power plants. We’ve been staying quiet, behind all of the clients we support. We don’t want to overshadow the relationships they have with their own customers.”

Specifically, ViewTrade is working with leading U.S. exchanges and fintechs to increase engagement through the provision of more efficient and lower cost access, fractional investing capabilities, as well as the increasingly important social networking aspect of trading.

“We’re the people behind the trading technology and brokerage experience,” Chan said in reference to the work Orbis Systems does.

Through Orbis.dev, developers -- both expert and novice -- can learn about available APIs, how to overcome development challenges regarding trade, global money transfers and data security.

To learn more about disrupting finance with ViewTrade and its subsidiaries, click here.