Matrix Applications has emerged as a prominent leader in the fintech industry, specifically in the fixed-income capital markets. The company provides comprehensive front-to-back support to firms of all sizes and caters to their diverse business needs. Recognizing their exceptional contributions, Matrix Applications has been named one of the “Innovative Companies to Watch in 2023” by Alltech Magazine.
The company is recognized for its innovative approach and has made significant contributions to reshaping fixed-income collateral management. Their solutions have helped institutions optimize their processes, increase efficiency, and manage risk effectively.
Read the full story below in Flipbook or the article version and immerse yourself in the growth story of Matrix Applications. Enjoy the read!
About Matrix Applications:
Based in New York City, Matrix Applications (“Matrix”) is a financial technology service bureau, that provides enterprise applications for collateral management, margining, and clearing of institutional fixed income and equity securities lending transactions. Established in 2000, the company leverages deep industry and technical expertise to deliver simple solutions to complex operational problems in financial markets.
Featured Leader: Tom Miller, Head of Product Development at Matrix Applications
Tom Miller has spent over 30 years acquiring extensive knowledge of financial services, leading teams to build, innovate and grow the business. He now heads up Product Development for Matrix Applications. Mr. Miller has a background in Enterprise Software, specializing in providing fintech SaaS solutions for Banks, Broker-Dealers and Investment Advisers. His expertise spans trading, risk management, treasury and operations. His past roles have included leading sales teams, implementing product growth strategies and performing end-to-end development of new products from design to desktop.
Strategic Partnerships and Innovation
“In the short term, Matrix Applications is incorporating various aspects of artificial intelligence (AI) into what we do, less for user analytics and more around intelligent platform health monitoring and cybersecurity solutions. There’s a lot of hype around AI that’s hard to filter. More interesting to us is the potential for blockchain and digital settlement of securities trades – no doubt that evolution is coming, but we’re in an industry that changes quickly in the front office, but slowly in the back,” shared Tom Miller, Head of Product Development.
Matrix Applications is also looking to expand its business by partnering with ZeroBeta, a technology firm that offers an integrated risk management platform called BlueShift RP. Leveraging its advanced risk engine, this platform allows customers to manage real-time exposure across different asset classes. Blueshift RP incorporates multiple onboard models as well as those imported by the customer. It also deploys some repo-specific models that aren’t found anywhere else.
System Enhancements
“We operate in environments with heavy regulation and audit requirements that require a never-ending list of changes. Also, much of the enhancement work is behind the scenes where we’re building capacity in DevOps for velocity, more sophisticated testing solutions and evaluating new front-end frameworks that can provide a better UI/UX for the users with less overhead. And, of course, there’s cybersecurity, everyone’s existential battle…” he continued.
“The Better Business Bureau (BBB) awarded Matrix Applications an A+ rating, affirming its exceptional customer service and ethical business practices”
Evolution
More than anything, the evolution of Matrix has been centered around its people and capabilities.
“Over the years, this team grew from a team of five to now over 35 talented people, bringing us new skills and more creativity to solve bigger challenges,” stated Tom Miller. “Matrix now serves so many more clients who help us understand where new opportunities lie. And, of course, we couldn’t do any of this without the continued support and patience of our parent company and our investors.”
The Foundation of Success: Exceptional People, Client-Centricity and Core Values
Matrix Applications owes its success to the people at the heart of the organization and their unwavering commitment to the company’s core values. From its humble beginnings as a visionary team of just a few individuals, Matrix has grown into a dynamic organization boasting over 35 talented professionals. The team brings their expertise, passion and unwavering commitment to excellence to every project, constantly pushing boundaries and delivering cutting-edge solutions that surpass client expectations.
From its humble beginnings to its current stature, Matrix Applications has thrived on the passion, skills and collective dedication of its exceptional workforce.
Driving Excellence: Fostering Talent and Leading Innovation
Matrix Applications drives excellence by cultivating a culture of continuous learning and professional development. The company recognizes that its greatest asset is its people and invests in them accordingly. By providing opportunities to expand their skillsets, delve into emerging technologies and stay ahead of industry trends, Matrix ensures that its team remains at the pulse of industry. This unwavering commitment to fostering talent enables the company to shape the industry with pioneering solutions and unmatched expertise.
At the forefront of the financial technology industry’s pursuit of progress, Matrix embodies the essence of a trailblazer. Beyond corporate existence, the company radiates an aura of boundless innovation that enables clients to navigate the intricate terrains of capital markets with unparalleled expertise.
“With a relentless commitment to embracing industry trends and equipping clients with the tools to seize opportunities, Matrix Applications empowers its partners to embrace the future in an increasingly dynamic marketplace confidently.”
Differentiation Through Expertise and Client-Centricity
Matrix Applications differentiates itself from competitors through its deep knowledge and expertise in the capital markets. Comprised of industry veterans and financial professionals, the company possesses an intimate understanding of the challenges faced by its clients. Leveraging its experience, technical know-how, and team of operations, regulatory, and legal experts, Matrix Applications delivers bespoke managed services and enterprise applications.
“Innovation, customer-centricity, and industry expertise are the pillars that distinguish Matrix Applications.”
The company thrives on a hands-on approach, working closely with clients to identify their unique requirements and deliver customized solutions that address their needs effectively. This client-centric philosophy has earned Matrix Applications a reputation for excellence, fostering long-lasting partnerships built on trust and superior service for firms of all sizes.
Matrix Applications has become synonymous with innovation, customer-centricity, and industry expertise. Despite the complexity inherent in the financial technology industry, the company has mastered the art of simplicity. Through their streamlined solutions and deep understanding of client needs, Matrix Applications simplifies the most intricate challenges, enabling clients to thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
Core Values Guiding Success
Matrix Applications is guided by a set of core values that underpin its journey. Accountability, Adaptability, Collaboration and Commitment form the foundation of the company’s culture.
Accountability is deeply ingrained in Matrix Applications’ DNA. The team takes ownership of their responsibilities, ensuring that commitments are honored, and work of the highest quality is delivered. This dedication builds enduring relationships with clients, who rely on Matrix Applications to help them achieve their goals.
Adaptability is another area of focus for Matrix Applications. Recognizing that each client is unique, the company provides customizable products and solutions tailored to specific requirements. By staying agile and responsive to the evolving needs of the financial industry, Matrix Applications equips its clients with the tools they need to thrive in a dynamic marketplace.
Collaboration lies at the heart of Matrix Applications’ success. Recognizing the unique needs of each client, Matrix ensures that its products are customizable, tailoring solutions to specific requirements. The company’s collaborative approach, rooted in active listening and collective problem-solving, allows the team to meet the evolving needs of customers. They honor commitments and deliver work of the highest quality, fostering trust and building strong relationships with customers.
Commitment is the driving force behind the team’s dedication to providing exceptional customer service and delivering cutting-edge financial technology solutions. With a strong belief in the transformative potential of their work, Matrix Applications goes beyond the ordinary by actively listening to their clients’ needs, continuously investing in R&D to stay ahead of industry advancements and providing ongoing support to ensure long-term success. Their commitment is not just a promise, but a guiding principle that fosters trust, fuels innovation and cultivates lasting relationships with their valued clients.
Flagship Solution: TradeBlazer Collateral Management System
TradeBlazer is an inventory and collateral management system providing clients with end-to-end trade life cycle support for fixed-income trading. Using straight-through processing, TradeBlazer connects to the industry’s wide variety of trading and settlement venues to process and settle institutional fixed-income security trades. Our solution allows users to seamlessly manage the lifecycle of a transaction from execution to settlement. TradeBlazer also serves as a centralized database and analytic platform for fixed-income trading. It houses static data on counterparties and securities while generating all industry-standard accounting and reporting information.
“Through TradeBlazer, Matrix Applications empowers its clients with a comprehensive collateral management system that simplifies trade lifecycle management for fixed-income trading. The system’s end-to-end support, real-time visibility and efficient exception management provide clients with a competitive edge in their day-to-day operations. With TradeBlazer, clients can streamline their collateral management processes, enhance operational efficiency and make data-driven decisions to maximize their success.”
Continuous Enhancement: Empowering Users with Streamlined Workflows
Matrix Applications is committed to continuously improving TradeBlazer to ensure it remains user-friendly and aligned with evolving industry needs. The company’s dedicated team consistently releases bug fixes to address any identified issues promptly. In addition, Matrix Applications focuses on enhancing reporting capabilities, trade uploads and overall functionality across various screens to further streamline user workflows.
So, how does TradeBlazer handle high-volume trading scenarios, and what kind of performance metrics can customers expect to see?
“Early on, the architects employed object-oriented event-driven logic to ensure speed and performance. Over time, their flexible design allowed continuous improvement to the automation and velocity of transaction processing with surprising scalability. The guiding intent is that users handle exceptions, and the system handles the rest. This side of the industry – post-trade processing – requires high-scale throughput performance for very high dollar transactions – that is our mission. Indeed, some analytics require extra processing time at the presentation layer, but we expect a typical information screen to present in a few seconds,” answered Tom Miller.
“Additionally, we try to be deliberate about broadcast versus refresh-on-demand because our users want to control that in the UX. For machine-only processing, we stress-test for the regulators at 10x our largest customer and find the system quite performant. Absolute metrics are interesting, but user satisfaction is much more complicated than that.”
What’s Next?
We asked Tom Miller: As a leading fintech service bureau, what are some of the key areas that Matrix is focusing on in terms of innovation and development? Are there any upcoming advancements or developments that you are particularly excited about?
“Matrix’s market position as an independent software vendor in post-trade technology gives us front-row seats for every significant market evolution. While not all of them affect our immediate roadmaps for development, our clients continue to collaborate with us on designing solutions for processing at scale. As mentioned before, there’s little doubt that distributed ledger technology will change the core of security settlement processing; it’s unclear how that change will propagate across the landscape… there’s a lot of ancient plumbing on Wall Street. It’s been around a very long time… It’s possible that more evolutionary change will come to address the overwhelming amount of legacy technology that’s still in production. The ‘ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality can’t hold up much longer and new builds will be required, which will consume a large part of everyone’s budget.”
Contact Matrix Applications:
For media and press-related inquiries, please contact Colleen Judge at colleen.judge@matrixapps.com.
To learn more about Matrix’s product and service offerings, please contact the Sales Team at sales@matrixapps.com.
