Pranat Pathak, Millennium’s Chief Information Officer, EMEA, and Global Head of Fixed Income, Commodities and Risk Technology, shares his perspective on the evolution of technology in investment management and what Millennium is doing to navigate rapidly evolving markets.
What trends are driving the evolution of technology at Millennium?
It’s hard to believe that next year will mark a decade since I joined Millennium and 25 years since I first started my career at the intersection of technology and finance. Today I lead a team of software engineers, data scientists and quant modelers in developing cutting-edge technology solutions for sophisticated portfolio managers.
To start with, markets are becoming increasingly complex and investment managers need new tools and data to help navigate this complexity. Technology is no longer just an enabler, but a gateway to accessing new markets and managing risk. This is particularly true in areas like systematic investing and derivative volatility trading that require specialized capabilities.
Additionally, portfolio managers are increasingly tech savvy. They often know how to code and in some cases are classically trained developers and engineers, pushing our technology teams to innovate and focus on higher value challenges for sophisticated users who understand the value that technology can provide.
Finally, as firms grow, there can be a constant tension between the need to scale while also providing customized service to the end users of their technology. At Millennium, we have over 330 investment teams and continue to grow, so we are constantly working to strike the right balance between customization and scale.
What is Millennium doing to stay ahead of these trends?
One of the primary ways we are working to stay ahead of these trends is through the development of our proprietary analytics platform that challenges the traditional way portfolio managers view risk and identify opportunities. By integrating five asset classes into a single analytical engine, we are providing our portfolio managers with a holistic view of the market and the ability to identify risk and opportunities that they might not have seen before.
How does the analytics platform work?
The platform provides a centralized suite of tools for portfolio managers that can help them to get a clearer view of the market and better manage their positions. At the same time, it gives portfolio managers the ability to plug into the underlying analytics library to build their own custom solutions. This ability to leverage centralized tools while also providing access to the underlying analytics is one way we are addressing the need for both customization and scale.
The platform also has its own version of an app store with dozens of tools for portfolio managers to leverage in their investment process. The tech behind the store allows for interoperability between applications, enabling portfolio managers to build their own dashboard composed of multiple applications that work together.
What can portfolio managers do today that they couldn’t do before?
While many innovations are coming out of investment management, one way that we believe our platform is differentiated from others is our cross-asset capabilities.
Historically, portfolio managers in our industry would specialize in one asset class because they often didn’t have the capability to trade across multiple asset classes. Today, one portfolio manager may trade across multiple asset classes.
We are building our platform so that asset classes can be treated consistently in a common model. This can help portfolio managers find trade opportunities between asset classes and risk manage positions across very different markets.
What is Millennium’s approach to building technology?
Our platform is an illustration of our approach to technology. We believe technology does not operate in a silo – we build technology in close partnership with our end users, who are often sophisticated portfolio managers who want and need cutting-edge technology. This partnership allows us to incorporate real-time feedback and ensures that our solutions are not only technically robust, but also practical, fit for purpose, and help drive business results.
