Too many Fintechs offering too many overlapping solutions in the DCM space, leading to confusion and adoption paralysis.
That’s a common complaint we pick up from banks and, up to a point, we can sympathise.
Nobody wants to be stuck with a shiny new Betamax cassette collection and so, even though the vision for a semi-automated, straight-through processing future makes sense to all participants, many banks and issuers are still unsure where to commit their resources.
This head-to-head competition plays out more directly in the execution and post-trade space, but there is a relevant question to answer also for the DCM pre-trade workflow: what will the future of bank/issuer interactions look like and how will new issue pricing delivery channels evolve over the medium to long term?
The Future of Bank/Issuer Interactions
Will we still be sending out emails and pdfs in 3 or 5 years? Will those banks who try to steer issuers towards their proprietary portals be able to realise competitive advantages, or does this just shift the current problem from standalone pdfs to standalone websites?
Are issuers better served by a consolidated view of indications, in the same way consumers can shop for a mortgage through various online portals? And if so, which will be the prevailing platforms and how long will it take for a clear winner to emerge in each region (nevermind globally)?
And in the meantime, do banks need to sign up to all of the different platforms and service each of their clients via that client’s preferred portal?
We certainly have a view on each of these questions (and would be delighted to discuss!), but the main value we can bring to the discussion is to clarify how Bots fits in.
A Single Solution for ALL Issuers
Our proposition to banks is clear: we offer a single, output-agnostic solution for ALL issuers without any network dependencies.
Our solution focuses on streamlining banks’ internal processes and data management, across all their teams, sectors and regions. This is where 90% of the pain, bottlenecks and manual work in the pre-trade process happens.
Whether an issuer then wants to receive an email, a spreadsheet, a presentation, a web page, an API feed or a combination of the above, the difference to each DCM banker effectively boils down to which button to click.
Common goals and incentives will take care of the minor integration requirements that remain. It’s inconceivable that any vendor will stand in the way of a willing issuer and bank exchanging their data across platforms.
The key implication of this is that there’s no need for banks to wait for a critical mass of issuers to converge on one or two platforms. Banks can solve their internal inefficiencies today, with the best platform for the job, safe in the knowledge that any downstream integrations (if at all desired!) will be technically trivial once the internal workflow and data is digitalised.