Originally published on John Lothian
BOCA RATON, Fla. (JLN) – April 1, 2025 – Eventus, a leading trade surveillance platform provider, will launch a new AI interface called “Frank” next quarter that will revolutionize how clients interact with their surveillance systems, CEO Travis Schwab announced in an interview at FIA Boca50.
“Frank is going to come out next quarter. It’s going to really allow for a novel way to engage with the platform,” Schwab said. “Our clients are always pushing …. to understand pattern and practice. The goal of Frank is so that you can say, ‘tell me what John Lothian has done from a trading standpoint. How many alerts has he generated?’”
The new interface will enable users to have conversational interactions with their surveillance system, which then generates code that can be implemented for consistent results. Schwab emphasized that data security has been built into the platform, addressing a critical concern for financial institutions handling sensitive trading information.
Growth Strategy
Eventus has maintained consistent growth over its decade-long existence by expanding both geographically and across asset classes.
“We’ve been expanding our business… We’ve been doing this now for ten years. And so we keep getting better at that and keep getting better at how we sell our product to our clients,” Schwab said.
The company is pushing into new territories including South Africa, Canada, and Brazil while also expanding its coverage across fixed income, foreign exchange, and cryptocurrency markets.
AI Implementation
While Frank represents Eventus’ newest AI initiative, the company has been incorporating machine learning into its platform for years.
“We’ve been using machine learning in the product for the last six years. That use case was helping to automate the resolution of alerts,” Schwab explained. “We’ve been thinking about the right use cases and being very deliberate on how we roll out these technologies.”
Schwab stressed the importance of deterministic results in trade surveillance, noting that “you have to have repeatable, auditable results.” The new chat interface will maintain these standards while giving clients a more intuitive way to interact with their surveillance data.
Regulatory Compliance
Staying ahead of evolving regulations has been fundamental to Eventus since its founding.
“It’s not like regulations are static. They change every year. And so for us we’ve had to build that flexibility into the platform since day one,” Schwab said.
The company employs subject matter experts globally and uses feedback from its 120 clients worldwide to stay current with regulatory changes across different jurisdictions and asset classes.
System Performance
To handle increasing market volatility and volume, Eventus has invested heavily in its backend processing capabilities over the past 18 months.
“Some of our clients are the largest exchanges in the world. And with their volume increases, it taxes the system,” Schwab said. “We’ve really looked at from the very ground up how we process trades and the data in the system and have rebuilt that, really from scratch.”
This infrastructure overhaul not only improves the platform’s ability to handle market surges but also supports the computational demands of the new AI interface.
Company Evolution
Reflecting on Eventus’ journey, Schwab noted that the company’s focus has evolved significantly from his initial vision.
“I thought when we first started that we could build this platform that would handle all of the risks around trading,” he said. “The first clients that we got focused us on trade surveillance. And so that really became the driver of our business.”
Schwab also acknowledged underestimating the challenges of market data integration. “The amount of time and energy we spent dealing with market data issues and reference data issues and trade data issues overwhelms the firm sometimes,” he said, adding that in hindsight, building their own data technology might have been preferable to relying on vendors.
