INDIVIDUALS could find it easier to invest in the TT Stock Market (TTSE) and to trade foreign stocks, due to innovations in financial technology (fintech), an official from one fintech firm told Business Day on his recent visit to TT.
Finastra is a global firm whose fintech services help individuals access the stock market and help banks carry out investments and other financial management roles. Business Day met Finastra's Peter Lawlor, senior business development specialist, at a recent networking reception for local bank executives at the Maraval residence of UK High Commissioner Harriet Cross.
Lawlor said, "We provide software across several different verticals – treasure, capital markets, payments and lending. What I represent is our treasury and capital markets business."
Treasury management involves a company’s daily cash flows and larger-scale decisions regarding finances.
In a capital market, suppliers such as banks and investors provide funds to businesses, governments, and individuals in exchange for securities like bonds and stocks.
Lawlor said Finastra provided the enabling financial technologies.
"Our focus in TT is to bring software to help with wealth management and treasury, giving these firms the software to enable more people to invest in the markets. That's really the software we provide."
Lawlor said such software enables the average investor – in the middle market to high net worth – to access the TTSE, plus regional and global stock exchanges/equity markets.
"If you're a cab driver here in TT and you want to buy a share in Massy Finance, you'd go through your broker but you'd use our software.
"The broker would use our software to offer that (stock) to the retail investor. So if they wanted to do it on a mobile app, if they wanted to do it over the web, whatever they wish.
"Or if it's a high net worth investor they can do it over the phone. That's the software we're trying to promote in TT."
He said two of Finastra's existing clients in TT are First Citizens Bank (FCB) and Republic Bank.
"They're great partners.
"They'd take our core software and put their own spin on it.
"It's a cost-efficient way to get to market."
Saying Finastra software was behind the FCB app, he said that fact saved each bank from having to create its own software from scratch but instead adapted theirs.
"There is no competitive advantage to make your own. There's no economy of scale there.
"The competitive advantage is the relationship that these banks have. The relationships are there, the customers are there, so we want to give them the tools to enable them to do that."
Regarding Finastra's software he said, "Those systems were developed for our global customers – HSBC, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo – those types of clients.
"It takes a tremendous investment to make that kind of software."
Due to a lack of economies of scale in the Caribbean amid this very high cost, it does not make sense for each bank to try to develop its own software.
Lawlor viewed Jamaica's stock exchange
