Originally published by John Lothian News
Eventus Systems’ CEO Travis Schwab has been coming to the FIA conference in Boca Raton for 20 years and said it was great to be back to seeing clients in person again this year. Schwab spoke with John Lothian News at the conference about Eventus’ marketing, regulatory and volatility challenges, and the burgeoning crypto field.
It has been a transformational couple of years for Eventus, Schwab said. The company now has close to 85 clients globally and close to 100 staff globally.
“Markets never become less regulated so there is always a tailwind behind our back, in all the asset classes, including new ones like cryptos,” Schwab said. He said the company is seeing activity across all aspects of its client segments, whether exchanges, banks, FCMs or commodity firms, and across all asset classes. The last three years, there has been a big surge on the crypto exchange side, he added. And it is making some serious investments in EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
“We continue to market to FCMs; we’re not just here to see old friends,” Schwab said. “Futures firms are expanding, looking at crypto and other asset classes, and innovating within their businesses, and we can help them with their FinRisk [financial risk] solutions.”
The challenges Eventus faces in the coming year include volatility spikes, which are disruptive and challenging to its clients. “Business as usual is very challenging right now,” Schwab said.
And there are regulatory challenges, including the battle between who covers spot crypto regulations.
“A couple of weeks ago Chairman Behnam said the CFTC should be [regulating spot cryptocurrency],” Schwab said. “Chairman Gensler said absolutely most of these things are securities, so the SEC should be doing it. We handle both those regulatory regimes, so of course we’re trying to figure out how to help our clients pick regimes that are applicable to their businesses. The landscape is shifting for the crypto firms.”
The 24/7 nature of the crypto market was a challenge when Eventus first got into the space four or five years ago, he said. But now it is not just the 24/7 nature of the matching engine that is a challenge but the sheer amount of data coming through the system.
“Just being able to change our infrastructure to be able to handle the data….took some innovation working with our first clients on the first crypto exchanges,” Schwab added. “Thankfully that’s worked out pretty well.”
About Eventus Systems
Eventus Systems is a leading global provider of multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions. Its powerful, award-winning Validus platform is easy to deploy, customize and operate across equities, options, futures, foreign exchange (FX), fixed income and digital asset markets. Validus is proven in the most complex, high-volume and real-time environments of tier-1 banks, broker-dealers, futures commission merchants (FCMs), proprietary trading groups, market centers, buy-side institutions, energy and commodity trading firms, and regulators. The company’s rapidly growing client base relies on Validus and Eventus’ responsive support and product development teams to overcome its most pressing regulatory challenges. For more, visit www.eventus.com.