Luke Marriott of ANZ: Digitizing fixed income business
Inside the Sell Side
Luke Marriott
Global Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities | ANZ
Luke oversees digital innovation, the day-to-day running of ANZ’s markets platforms and delivery of Application Programming Interface (API)-based product capabilities to customers.
Firms operating a modern-day financial business must think differently and the reality is that the operational and regulatory obligations in today’s global financial markets do not allow for manual operational gaps.
Q. What are your key priorities?
My key priorities include driving innovation in customer market-based solutions in Asia Pacific and ensuring secure, stable digital capabilities for our customers by means of their chosen medium of execution. ANZ uses data analytics through machine learning and AI to facilitate automated customer service including providing our customers with insights on managing risks and enhancing returns.
Q. Share more about why you’re proud of what you do.
I’m proud to lead one of ANZ’s most innovative groups where we leverage technology to respond to daily changing market structures and customer demands. Everyone has a limited budget – so you have to choose wisely and be strategic. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. Working with multiple groups – customers, sales and trading teams, technology, enablement – is required for success. We continue to lead the way domestically and regionally in foreign exchange, commodities and credit.
From accessing liquidity to distributing automated pricing to customers, technology is key to the future of trading.
Q. What needs to be done to eliminate manual errors and bottlenecks in the sell-side and how big a priority is this for your organization?
We have always taken an end-to-end view of our product development and innovation. At times, this requires short-term manual processes so that we can deliver richer client front end solutions tactically, as we work on delivering a longer term complete automated solution. Firms operating a modern-day financial business must think differently and the reality is that the operational and regulatory obligations in today’s global financial markets do not allow for manual operational gaps.
Q. What role will technology play in the future of trading? How are you leveraging technology to generate revenue?
From accessing liquidity to distributing automated pricing to customers, technology is key to the future of trading. It provides the power to distribute beyond traditional boundaries, allowing for increased volumes to substitute margin compression from transparency.
Technology also plays a key role in risk management. It allows for real time regulatory oversight and improves transparency and surveillance by providing a digital finger print/data on every trade, price and decision, which is key to customer relevance and trading returns optimization.
Q. How are the sales and trading desks moving towards higher-value tasks? What are the top trends you see in your industry this year?
One trend is flow based or transactional market products, which carry less value, are being migrated to channels where customers can choose to self-serve. This is the result of regulation and compliance oversight, as well as banks using technology to scale tasks with minimal value. As a result, sales and trading staff are seeking higher order value tasks to maintain customer relevance through value added solutions. This transition has led to our sales teams tailoring specific solutions with surgical precision for each individual customer through data analytics.
More investor-based customers are using Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA), a tool that allows customers to benchmark themselves against the market to ensure best execution for a particular trade. Central banks are also looking to digital currencies to improve operational efficiencies across financial markets.
Q. How is ANZ leveraging technology to customize solutions for customers?
ANZ has a dedicated team called Markets Client Franchise Management, whose primary responsibility is developing data-led machine learning and AI signals to feed to our sales and relationship management team. These signals could be customer focused or focused on market conditions and structural changes that lead to a relevant client opportunity. This helps them better understand liquidity, market conditions and hedging opportunities.
This team works closely with our insights team, led by Richard Schroder, ANZ’s Head of Analytics & Platform. A group of data scientists in the insights team analyze trends in the financial markets for patterns that may be of interest to our customers.
Another tool we have developed to improve visibility in financial markets is the TCA which is used across all asset classes. This allows our customers to benchmark themselves against the market to provide the best execution for that particular trade.
ANZ’s commitment to technological developments has put us ahead of our peers locally, as we use digital technologies and data to transform our traditional transactional sales teams into advisors of the future.
Q. What is the biggest opportunity for ANZ in the year ahead?
The biggest opportunity in the next 12 months is the digitization of our fixed income business. ANZ has a dominant position in voice execution fixed income and we are investing in technology and further data analytics to maintain this position. ANZ today streams bonds and credit pricing and is extending these capabilities to its fixed income derivative products in September 2021.