Today, April 8, 2013, the brightest of Wall Street are meeting at the 10^th Annual High Performance Computing Linux for Wall Street event in New York to learn about the latest technology innovations that give financial trading firms a competitive edge. With network latency achieving speeds of less than 50 nanoseconds, this year’s event focuses not only on speed but also on cutting-edge advances in network visibility, analytics and instrumentation. One way Cisco is helping traders gain a competitive edge in this area is by offloading the gathering of analytics data to the network devices, and working with industry leading monitoring firms like Corvil and TS-Associates to decode these new sources of data.

No doubt, high performance trading systems are becoming faster, processing more data than ever before. Network performance is of paramount importance in high performance trading markets where obtaining and acting on real-time equities, options and other financial market information, nanoseconds faster than competitors, may be worth millions of dollars. While complex trading analysis and risk mitigation still need to be performed outside the network layer, significant cost savings and scale advantages can be obtained by leveraging embedded intelligence in the network to enable key functions such as fabric congestion monitoring and intelligent traffic mirroring. Read More »

Tags: acitve buffer monitoring, Cisco, financial markets, Financial Services, HPC, HPT, HPTF, network latency

Cisco attended the Next Generation Insurance Summit (March 11-13) in Newport Beach, CA and the Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium (March 13-15) in Carlsbad, CA. Some of the top minds in the financial services industry were in attendance and it was great to see these leaders deliver ideas and solutions for how to further the customer experience for both industries as well as the agent experience in insurance. Both conferences focused on reducing the amount of time it takes to adopt new technology and innovative ideas for competitive advantage, a current problem many financial institutions are going through.

At the Next Generation Insurance Summit, Cisco’s Michael Cantwell, Financial Services Solutions Architect, delivered a keynote on building a customer centric distribution network and how the expectations of today’s insurance customer has of their insurance institution/agent. He stated that from the end customer’s point of view everything is getting more integrated and simplified, but that insurers have yet to create that agent or customer omnichannel capability that allows for communication channel choice as well as fluid switching during an interaction to answer questions or assist in self-directed channels. Michael also touched on how enabling insurers with new tools and technologies, including sales force automation and mobile devices, will be key to fulfilling overarching business goals of improving sales interactions through traditional channels and, therefore, driving revenue.

Attendees showed immediate interest when Michael spoke about the best methods for line of business executives to work with their IT executives and vice versa. The success of customer retention rates among insurers who have incorporated Cisco solutions to improve customer-centricity was also of special interest to attendees. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, customer experience, Financial Services, insurance, multichannel, omnichannel, retail banking

Geoff is the Lead for Cisco’s Business Transformation solutions for the Financial Services Industry in Canada. To read Geoff’s full bio, please click Here.

This is the first in a series of blogs where I will discuss the capabilities that are driving innovation in the design and structure of retail financial services organizations. These capabilities shape where and how work is done, how resources are allocated and positioned, where geographic expansion  is executed, how customer points of presence are designed and staffed and how workplaces are configured. In sum, these capabilities offer new ways to engineer retail financial services organizations, the service delivery models that are critical to superior client experience and highly productive and cost-effective operations. Organizations that embrace and implement these capabilities will have a significant edge.

Imagine for a moment that you and your executive team are working to establish a new upstart financial services firm in a market with established competitors.

1. How would you shape and structure your organization, operating model and service delivery system so that your retail bank, insurance and wealth management businesses can effectively compete with the established players?
2. What would you offer that would drive superior, clearly differentiated level of satisfaction to the point where more clients move their assets to your firm?
3. What factors would influence and guide your organizing model? Also, what capabilities would be essential to win market share, enable cost effective expansion and growth?
4. What choices would you make in terms of how you allocate and locate your critical knowledge experts to drive the differentiated level of service and simultaneously achieve high productivity and the requisite level of profitability?
5. What infrastructure assets would you decide to own and operate within your organization, and which would you choose to have outside and provided by others?
6. Finally, how much time and focus would you and your executive team place on those assets and capabilities that make these advantages possible?

These are a few of the decisions and choices that would be paramount to you and your executive team. Why? Because these decisions and choices will influence the success of your enterprise. Read More »

Tags: Cisco, customer experience, Financial Services, innovation, retail banking

Cisco’s Financial Services Industry Marketing team is pleased to welcome a monthly contribution from industry professionals sharing their insights and observations on key trends in the Financial Services industry. The opinions expressed in these posts are those of our welcomed guests and may not reflect the opinions of Cisco.

Jerry Silva, Principal  at PG Silva Consulting, is a 25 year industry veteran in retail banking business and technology, and advises institutions on technology strategy as well as contributing thought leadership to a number of industry conferences and publications like the Financial Times, the Economist, and the Wall Street Journal.

Time for Banks to Join Us in Our Daily Lives

I’ve been in the market for a new pair of earbuds. Due to the big storm that hit Boston a few weeks ago, my earbuds were lost during the hectic scurry to fly home before the blizzard hit. Once I was safe at home, I visited a few “big box” retailer online sites to check out the latest technology. Using the stores’ customer review sections, I found a suitable pair that seemed to fit my needs, then I checked prices and searched for physical locations near me that had them in stock. My local store didn’t have them, but another location five miles away did have a few. After a quick sales chat with a store representative, I bought them through the web site, drove to the store, and picked them up at the customer service counter saving me the wait at the cashier.

Most of you will recognize this series of micro-experiences as a typical, and more importantly, single event in our e-commerce lives. The experience was seamless to me; A single journey – using transparent channels – to acquire a new set of earbuds. I was able to get the “Three C’s” I needed to complete the transaction; Credibility from other consumers on the quality and reliability of several models, Convenience of homework and shopping from anywhere (using my smartphone at one point), and Choice having the earbuds shipped to me if I wanted, or in my case, picked up at a physical location.

This post is about Banking, so you know where I’m headed with this… Read More »

Tags: branch, Cisco, customer experience, Financial Services, omnichannel, retail banking

Financial markets today have become so dependent on well-designed technology architecture in support of growing automated trading business. I was recently part of a webinar centered on discovering how optimized latency performance, mitigation of microbursts, traffic filtering and analysis, and precise timing and synchronization are beneficial to all participants in the trading value chain.

The webinar was hosted by Wall Street & Technology, entitled, “Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance.” If you weren’t able to make it, register here to view a recording.

During the discussion, I was joined by some great minds in the financial services sector including Alex Tabb, Partner, TABB Group and Paul Jameson, Senior Director, Financial Services, Cisco. We discussed how high-performance trading fabric architecture and innovations like Cisco Algo Boost and the Cisco Nexus 3548 can help financial firms address challenges and capture opportunities in today’s financial markets. Here are a few key take-aways from the webinar I would like to highlight. Read More »

Tags: Algo Boost, financial markets, Financial Services, high performance trading, High Performance Trading Fabric, HPT, HPTF, low latency, microburst